I have stayed in countless hotels all over the world for business and pleasure but this one has been the best experience ever.
We stayed on the 39th floor in a Grand Delux Suite with an appointed butler who went out of his way to cater for our needs from measuring up my trousers for shortening to going out of the hotel to look for my particular brand of shaving head. Though most of the hotel staff are young in their mid twenties, their zest to assist in every way has made this hotel special. We stayed for 4 nights in a suite that can only be described as heavenly from the burgandy teak wooden floor in the sitting area to the stunning bathroom which can only be rivalled by the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles France, I was really impressed by the attention to detail in the room where everything was neatly placed even the shower head was turned towards the wall so as to avoid being sprayed with cold water when you put it on! The view was truely panoramic extending more than 180 degrees. Facilities were superb though we only tried the Chinese restaurant which had excellent food and a great selection of wines and champagne. You can book a private room there for dinner with a full view of the main skyline. The hotel is beautifully presented in contemporary style with high class fittings and enjoy the facilities and view at the Royal Club Lounge and Bar on the 44th and 65th floors respectively. There's 24 hour room service and please try the wanton soup and noodle soup ( Taiwan style). The only problem can initially be the lifts but there's sufficient staff to direct you appropriately. I will definitely be returning to this hotel.

My parents and I (Parents 66, I am 35) just returned from 5 nights at Le Royal Meridien Shanghai. We chose the hotel based on the reviews, location and royal club level amenities.

We took the MAGLEV bullet train (40-50 RMB/person ($6-7) ) from the airport for the 7 minute ride into Shanghai Pudong area. From there we took a ~40-52 RMB ($6-7) cab to the hotel. You could instead choose to walk across the street to the Metro station for a ~$1 fare for a six stop metro to peoples square station which is right next to the hotel. Its quite busy at the peoples square station and you will have plenty of opportunities to experience that insanity later in your trip so I would suggest just taking the cab from the MAGLEV. MAKE SURE you have the hotel address and location printed in CHINESE before you go. You can find this and print it from the Meridien website.

As others have recommended, we second the idea of upgrading to the Royal Club level. With access to the lounge, we ate breakfast, had daily cocktails, ate dinner and used the free internet to stay connected to our lives back home (although its very slow...56K when I checked the bandwidth). The food is buffet style but we found they had a nice selection of appetizer portions that could easily be substituted for a meal. We chose to eat at the hotel due to the high number of poor reviews of Shangahi restaurants. We did have a few meals out in the city but used the Royal Club more often than not in order to eat breakfast and dinner.

The rooms are modern, there are a number of english news and movie channels, we had amazing views of the city and the staff was very attentive. The staff booked tickets to see the acrobats for my parents, they called my cab driver and had my gloves returned to me after I left them accidently and they were eager to provide help whenever we wanted.

Le Royal Meridien has a great location on Nanjing road so you can easily get to several areas of the city by foot, metro or cab ride (very cheap).

Overall, we really enjoyed our stay in the hotel and our only gripe would be the painfully slow free internet in the Royal Club lounge as well as the upcharge if you used the internet in your room (also slow).

The service here is excellent, as is the breakfast and buffet dinner. However, I didn't like being charged to use the internet in the bedroom (which didn't even work properly) and I also got a little confused with all of the different lifts.

This was my 2nd time staying there...overall we have stayed here for 10 days. The room is very nice, but the problem is that they have hired people off the street to clean the rooms. These people have no experience it seems like, and have LOW STANDARDS of cleanliness!! This would be a health code violation in America!! The first day, I had the cleaning lady come into our room, and clean while I was there. She came from the next room over with a small handcarry cleaning caddy. I wondered where her big cleaning cart was. It didn't exist.
She first RINSED out our used glass with water, and then proceeded to dry it out with a DIRTY RAG, that she had in her caddy. She then used this rag to wipe the mirror. Then she went , and wiped the counters, and then went inside the bathroom. I am standing right there, watching her, and she is cleaning as if this is normal. She proceeds to wipe the TOILET, TOILET SEAT, where my toddler son had peed over the night before, and then starts wiping the toilet floor, and now is proceeding to wipe the entire marble floor with this cloth. She did not rinse/ exchange this cloth not even once. I finally had to tell her to stop cleaning, and after that, I did not let them clean our room. A few other staff who helped exchange our towels out, and garbage cans, had the same nasty cleaning knowledge. When garbage dumped out on the floor, they wiped up the garbage can, and continued to wipe the floor...with a dirty rag. Staff here are not used to clean ways. I really now question the cleanliness of the restaurants. I trust the Italian restaurant a little more, since they have a foreign renowned? chef working there, but as for the Chinese restaurant....I don't know. Le Meridien is part of the SPG Starwood Hotels Preferred Group, and they are aware of this problem, but have not fixed it at all of their hotels. I just watched a Fox news clip on the hidden cameras they installed. The hotel stay was okay, other than this problem. I do like the room set up, and decor. The only other problem was hotel transportation. We paid premium bucks for the hotel/airport pickup service, and the drivers drove like maniacs. Feel free to warn them that they need to drive slow and complain to management! This is a serious issue! I made sure they knew I wanted them to drive slow, and we still came 1 inch away from an accident, driver slammed on his brakes. He was tailgating, speeding, weaving in and out of 80% of other cars, and the traffic was very light. This is after I made sure the bellhop tell him to drive slowly, because of our first nightmare experience, where the fellow drove like a maniac at 1 am in the morning (flight was delayed) during thick fog. We are certainly not in any hurry to get to the hotel, and traffic was non existent.

Last thing about the hotel....it has 4 or 5 restaurants to eat at...so there are a lot of choices for dining. I do not trust all the food, but there was nothing else better that I knew of, so we ate there. If you can get Executive Lounge access, you are in good hands. You get free internet, free drinks (San Pellegrino), free alcohol drinks during happy hours, snacks, and free buffet breakfast. We ate breakfast at both buffets (the free one, and the expensive one downstairs). Of course, the expensive one is better, but if you have lounge access, I would just stick to the free buffet, since they have a lot of the same items from downstairs. Also, you can request/ order eggs at the lounge, though they do not tell you this.

Would I stay here again? Maybe. Because I do not know where else to trust in China. Will any other 5 star hotel clean better? I don't think so. Is there any way to complain and make the hotel better? I don't think so. The standards in China are lower, overall. That's my personal opinion. I have complained about both topics, but we'll see if there is any change.