Hyatt Regency Cambridge

The Hyatt Regency Cambridge, at 575 Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was host to Gaylaxicon in 2005 and Arisia in 2007. Arisia will be returning in at least 2008, and is pencilled in for 2009 and 2010.

The hotel is built around a central atrium, and is pyramid-shaped.

Function Space

About 30,000 square feet of function space, including a 3-season function tent, are found on floors 1, 2, 10, 14, and 16.

Two function rooms, Empress and Media Room, have hard keys, and the rest are cardkeys. Since it is the only thing on the 16th floor, Charles View can also be secured by locking off the elevators from that floor and securing the (hardkey) stairwell doors. Any room can be "rekeyed" for $50. This does not make the room strictly client access only, but it does guarantee that no previous customer has access, and limits hotel staff access somewhat.

The dimensions of the Presidents A and B ballrooms are incorrect on the Hyatt's web site. The airwall as built is 4 feet further west (into Presidents B), making Presidents A 39x37 and Presidents B 34x37. The drawings in Meeting Matrix, however, are correct.

The function rooms on the Patriots Corridor have curtains which are not quite blackout curtains, but are good enough to project video if you remove the limit screws that prevents them from obscuring the emergency exits.

Function rooms 203 and 204 have boardroom tables which can't be moved. Function room 201 has no boardroom table.

Opening and closing airwalls in Dawes and Paine can be done in 5 minutes between adjacent timeslots if the rooms are otherwise set theater facing in the same direction and there are no other set changes going on at the same time.

Guest Rooms

469 guest rooms, including 10 suites, are found on floors 2-15 (there is no floor 13).

For the most part the rooms are very similar to each other, including the furniture. typical guest room layout

Guest rooms 237 through 252 are behind an automatic swinging glass door which can be disabled to either manual or open; if it is held open the fixed glass pane next to it should be marked so that people do not walk into it.

Guest rooms 205, 213, 239, and 249 are Murphy Bed rooms. The Murphy beds are Queen sized and the Murphy armoire, which cannot be removed from the room, also has built-in side tables.

Guest rooms on the 2nd floor except room 202 have 10 foot ceilings instead of the usual 8.

Guest rooms x06 and suites x32 have balconies overlooking the atrium.

Rooms on the 12th floor are smoking, despite some documentation on the Hyatt corporate site otherwise.

Headboards in all the rooms are permanently attached to the wall. Apart from this, furniture in the rooms is easy to move, and Arisia's 2007-08 contract specifies that the charge for this is $25 if two weeks' notice is given. There are no overhead lights in the main area of any of the rooms; all light is from desk and bedside lamps.

The front desk cardkey system has a limit of 99 keys per room. In addition to autosequencing, cardkeys are also encoded with an expiration date, so those extending their stays sometimes have to rekey.

There is an automated checkin/checkout machine in the lobby. This machine cannot do split folios; these have to be brought to the front desk.

Elevators

There are six elevators: four passenger and two service. All have recently been uprated, except that as of January 2007, work on one of the passenger elevators is not complete.

Elevators 1-4 are identical high speed traction glass passenger elevators with capacity of 3000 lbs, 8'0" elevator door height, 8'5" inside ceiling height, and irregular shape. Note: the width given refers to elevator door width; inside cab width is about 5 inches wider. Doors are not centered on the cabs. Elevators 1-4 travel from floors 1 to 16.

Elevators 5 and 6 are service elevators, 55" deep by 80" wide, with 42" wide by 84" high centered elevator door. Elevator 5 travels from the basement to floor 14. Elevator 6 travels from the basement to floor 15.

Hotel staff can lock off floors and turn on and off call response. If a floor is locked off, elevators with call response enabled will still respond to calls from that floor.