Where do I put my luggage for the day in NYC?

November 24, 2005 5:00 AM

Post 9-11 locker storage in NYC train stations: Is there such a thing anymore? If not, what other options are there?

My friends and I are going to a week-long conference in Central Jersey, then spending the day in NYC before heading back out to Newark to go home. What do we do with our roller-bags for the day? The hotel has already said Nein to keeping them for us all day, something about another conference coming in right behind us. I know you used to be able to check luggage in at train stations but I don't find any info on that service online. Experienced travelers/City people, what am I missing?

posted by pomegranate to Travel & Transportation (8 answers total)

don't know about NYC, but at madrid central station you can now check-in your airline luggage, which is really cool (or would be, except iberia won't accept luggage for lan chile, even though they share the same plane).

if there's nothing similar at the train station then the only solution i know is to go to the airport, leave the baggage, and then return to the city. and this only works for some airlines - if it's small and/or cheap they may not have a counter open, or may refuse your baggage, if you try to check-in very early.

it's pretty poor for the hotel to refuse. can you not get the conference organisers to pressure them into accepting? typically the hotel tries to keep the conference organizing committee happy (assuming it's the hotel of the conference, if you see what i mean), since they want return business.
posted by andrew cooke at 5:58 AM on November 24, 2005

I've left my luggage for the day or a few hours in dozens of hotels around the world. I've never had anybody reject a request to do so. I suspect that if you ask nicely on site they will find space for them somewhere.
posted by keijo at 6:25 AM on November 24, 2005

I think that Amtrak still lets you check baggage at Penn Station, but only if you have a ticket.
posted by footnote at 7:07 AM on November 24, 2005

Rereading your message, if worse comes to worse, it wouldn't be that terribly inconvenient for you to go first to Newark Airport and check the bags there in the morning, then head to the city -- you can take the train straight from the airport into NYC. You'd have to make the hotel to airport trip once anyway, and this way you'd just be doing it at the beginning of the day rather than the end of the day.
posted by footnote at 7:11 AM on November 24, 2005

footnote's suggestion might make sense but before you get to the airport find out how far ahead you can check your baggage.
posted by biffa at 8:49 AM on November 24, 2005

Per biffa's note:

SAT (San Antonio, Texas airport) wouldn't let me check in bags four hours early for an international flight. That was a year and a half ago, and I'm usually not that early to airports, so I don't know if that's common. Has that happened to anyone else?
posted by cactus at 7:13 PM on November 24, 2005

You could email me - I live in Northern NJ, and work in Rockefeller Center. I could babysit a couple of roller bags, if they're not too huge.
posted by bashos_frog at 3:53 AM on November 25, 2005

Hello Mefi reader of the future. As an FYI, we solved this problem by convincing someone from Jersey to go with us into the city, and leaving our bags in the trunk of her car. Once there, we did check around, and there were no commercial solutions to the problem. If you have access to a cheap storefront near Penn Station or Grand Central, you might be able to make some real $$ storing people's stuff for them for the day. (That's supposing there was such a thing as a cheap storefront in Manhattan.)
posted by pomegranate at 10:53 AM on December 6, 2005