The Dana on Mission Bay

This is going to be a mixed review, so I put the pros and cons lists below for everyone to be able to make an informed decision! My wedding was the best day of my life, but I would never choose to stay at the hotel again. PROS: - The Marina Garden at The Dana is by far the best outdoor reception venue I toured in San Diego. A lot of other waterfront hotel venues are more expensive, and their reception areas do not have a view of the water. The Marina Garden has a gorgeous view of sunset on the docks which made for perfect pictures. The grass was green, and the white rose bushes were blooming. It was amazing! - The venue also comes with so much! I loved the chiavari chairs they offered, and I didn’t have to rent tables, dishes, tablecloths, etc. They even had great seating and table options for the cocktail hour, so I didn’t have to have rental for that either. Christina helped us do a lot of different things to personalize our wedding and make it feel like ours! - The catering team at the Dana was awesome. Everyone raved about our food (we went with Polynesian buffet), especially the ginger beef. I’ve never had better wedding food, honestly. I’d say the only issue we had was some of the staff being rude to the groom and bridal party. A bit strange for such an expensive event! - Everything ran smoothly with the catering and reception. Nothing was late, passed apps were delicious, and everyone loved the drinks. People commented that the drinks were quite strong compared to the small pours you might get at other weddings. - The bathrooms were technically portables, but they were super nice! I think there was only a line once during the night because it was a transition time. But you could always walk to the lobby to use other bathrooms. - The location of The Dana is so perfect. It’s close to everything in San Diego, so not everyone needs to stay at the hotel. It’s easy to get to from anywhere, unlike a lot of waterfront venues in La Jolla or North County! - In terms of the cost for what you are getting, The Dana is much more affordable when you put it next to comparable venues. You really are getting so much for your money here. CONS: - We held our ceremony on the grass overlooking the bay on the Sunset Lawn. If you care a lot about your ceremony, I would not recommend this venue. For me, it was worth it because the reception venue was so amazing. There was trash everywhere The Dana property - all behind the seating for guests. Like old food that had been dumped out there, it was disgusting. I didn’t see it until it was too late! There were a ton of people on the public part of the grass, playing music and having parties. It was me and my husband who had to go around asking people to move so that we could take some portraits on the water. - When we toured the venue, Christina had shown us that when she comes in the morning the day of the wedding, she sets up a bunch of chairs and blankets out front to avoid this issue… basically to stake out the space. But Christina couldn't make it the day of our wedding. Whoever covered for her, did not seem to do this as there were a lot of people set up right out front. If someone had just let us know that Christina wasn’t there, I would’ve had my friends and family go out and stake out spots to avoid all the chaos, but no one let us know. - We had a ton of issues with the hotel in general. Only some of the rooms are redone - not all of them. The rest are old and rundown. The staff was rude to my family (paying tens of thousands of dollars to this place for our wedding). We heard that the staff at the hotel was rude to many of our guests staying there. The staff that was not rude, simply had no idea what was going on, as if they’d just been hired. - The room block was a mess, and led to a lot of issues leading up the wedding. It ended up being more expensive to book with the room block a year in advance than it was to book without the room block a week before the wedding. Yikes! - When we first put down our deposit, Christina had told us that we would be able to us USD family discounts on our room on top of the room black discounts. She later (once we paid our deposit) told us this wasn’t correct information. If I had to do this again, I would get a room block at any other hotel for my guests. I would not stay at this hotel ever again due to all the issues we had with them. I do not recommend staying here, especially for the price point on a summer weekend. - One big thing that caused a lot of unnecessary stress was that the bridal suite was not ready for us. We were assured it would be ready early. Instead, the staff seemed to clean all the other wedding guests’ rooms first (some of them got early check-ins), and did not clean the bridal suite early. They knew when our wedding rehearsal was, but the bridal suite was not ready until after our rehearsal started. So we brought all of our stuff to my parents’ room, got ready there, went to our rehearsal and Welcome Party, and then had to drag all of our stuff to the bridal suite and check into our room at about 10:00pm the night before our wedding. Again, if someone had just told us that our bridal suite would not be ready early like they said.. we would’ve made other arrangements. Seems strange that you’d have your staff clean all the other rooms first before cleaning the bridal suite.

Christina is by far the BEST part of this venue. The venue itself is gorgeous with multiple options for indoor/outdoor weddings. We loved the outdoor options and chose the venue for this reason. Christina was great at putting out (metaphorical) fires, contacting us quickly and helping coordinate with our other vendors. The only reason for the review to be 4/5 instead of 5/5 was for the people that work with Christina. For example, the front desk did not acknowledge us as the bride and groom when we checked in, did not provide our welcome bag that we paid for and had issues letting us into the getting ready room morning of the wedding, which was an unnecessary stressor on me as the bride. Additionally, the welcome bag had my last name spelled incorrectly, which Christina was able to quickly fix. The only other reason for the 4/5 is that the fish that we ordered for wedding reception was not how it was during our tasting trial. At the trial, it was moist, flavorful and full of sauce/cilantro. At the wedding itself, the fish was dried out and did not have much sauce. Disappointed, but not a deal breaker as everything else went swimmingly. Would book again regardless of the above comments

We had a great time working with The Dana. Christina definitely went above and beyond to help us. The space was perfect for our small group. I couldn’t have asked for more.