CYBER SUITE OFFERS LATEST IN VIRTUAL REALITY.

Byline: Kerry Fehr-Snyder The Arizona Republic

``God-frey!''

Nothing.

Louder now, ``God-freeey!!''

Again, nothing.

Screaming now, ``God-freeeeey''

``Yes, master?'' the electronic butler-in-a-box finally responds in a dry British accent.

``Party time!'' I command.

``It will be done.''

And with that, the drapes slide open, the track lights flicker on and the party CD begins to spin. The $2,000-a-night Cyber Suite at the Century Plaza Hotel and Tower is coming to life.

Loaded with $70,000 in computer equipment, the luxurious suite is a bold experiment in plying hotel guests with the latest gee-whiz gadgetry.

Like the voice-activated butler, Godfrey, who also knows how to set the room for romance, with soft lights and dreamy music.

Or the 37-inch NetTV, which looks like a big-screen television but is actually a giant computer. Equipped with a camera, a telephone handset, special software and a wireless keyboard that works off of infrared light, NetTV turns a Saturday night alone in the storied hotel suite into a virtual party of chatting over the Internet while actually seeing your newfound friends at the same time.

But when Godfrey gets old and the guys on the Internet turn into creeps, there's always the virtual-reality games in the bedroom to keep you entertained.

If you're interested in some down time, there's always ``Mighty Aphrodite'' on the laser disc player and the 21-inch plasma TV, a technology so new that it's available only by ordering it directly from the manufacturer.

Or if sightseeing is your bit, grab the digital camera, take some shots of the West Hollywood scene, where a movie likely is being filmed on a nearby corner, and return to the Cyber Suite, where you can download your photos onto the laptop, create a slide show of your vacation and display it on the plasma TV.

And when you're out of your room, perhaps checking out the hotel's 8,000-square-foot Plaza Suite, where former President Reagan frequently stayed while in office, don't fret about missing a phone call. The Cyber Suite's two cellular phones allow you to receive calls placed to your room while you're away - yet another example of the one-number-everywhere wave in telephone service.

Using the same phones, you also can call your room while away and punch in a code, triggering an electronic sensor in one of the suite's three bathrooms to draw a bath to a preset temperature and level.

The 2,100-square-foot Cyber Suite, which opened in late June, was created to celebrate the Century Plaza's 30th anniversary.

``When the hotel opened in 1966, we were considered advanced because we were the first hotel to have color TVs in every room,'' said Tim Groves, the hotel's director of sales and marketing. ``We also had electric blankets, which for a hotel in Southern California, I'm not sure why.

``That was cutting-edge then, so we asked ourselves, `What's cutting edge 30 years later?'''

The answer, of course, is computers, information and anything digital.

Waving a credit-card-size key in front of a green light, large wooden double doors open to the Cyber Suite, and a prerecorded voice welcomes guests.

The doors automatically close in about 30 seconds, which can be unnerving. The waiting time could allow anyone else to come into the room uninvited.

But that doesn't mean the suite wasn't developed with safety in mind. A security camera outside the double doors transmits pictures of what's going on outside the room to tiny monitors in the bathrooms so you can see who's at the door or what's lurking in the hallway.

Most of the high-tech equipment was loaned or donated to the hotel by companies that want to get their technology in front of the hotel's often-influential guests.

``They were reticent at the start, but it has turned out to be the premier way to showcase and test their products in a real-life application,'' said Jim Petrus, the hotel's area managing director.

But the hotel hasn't accepted just anything cyber.

At least one product - a compact disc player that stores and plays 100 CDs - was judged to be too expensive to stock.

Although much of the equipment and software was free, the hotel spent money to retrofit the 30-year-old suite with tomorrow's technology.

It also has been a time-consuming venture for the hotel's staff, which spends on average an hour per guest demonstrating the systems.

``Hotels have not been known as the epicenter of technology, but slowly we're getting on the right side of the curve,'' Petrus said.

That's not to say everything always works in the Cyber Suite.

The mechanism that closes the doors malfunctioned twice in a row during my recent visit. The Bang & Olufsen compact disc player, while chic in design, also didn't start playing on command several times, especially in the late afternoon.

And the microchip-equipped toilet spookily decided to flush in the middle of the night both nights I was there.

Plus, there's always the flaky Internet, which disconnected my videoconference calls on the NetTV several times in midconversation, and later, kept giving me that annoying ``server could not be found'' message, preventing me from using other parts of the Web and America Online, which also was loaded on the system.

Other guests have experienced glitches, too.

In the middle of the night, one guest reported that the lights started flickering and the drapes began opening.

``But that's the fun of it. It's erratic and cutting edge,'' Petrus said.

In short, the suite is a work in progress.

``This is a real-life exhibit here. We're able to work out the kinks and make it more user-friendly as we go,'' Petrus said.

The average stay in the Cyber Suite is two nights, something the hotel recommends to get a feel for it all.

A few political heavyweights have been by to check out the place. House Speaker Newt Gingrich dropped by for about 30 minutes to try out the virtual-reality setup and other systems.

During the Fourth of July weekend, Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole stayed overnight, but hotel staffers did not know whether he tried out any of the systems.

So far, the most computer-savvy guest has been a 9-year-old boy. While vacationing with his mother, the boy not only figured out how to operate the virtual-reality system, he tinkered with the software to make the games perform at a higher level.

But the Cyber Suite is not for the technologically faint of heart.

Technophobes who struggle to program their VCR will find virtual reality, the Internet videoconferencing and digital photography especially vexing.

More than a dozen remote-control units scattered throughout the suite also can be baffling when trying to do something as simple as turning the volume down on the television.

The hotel has printed cheat sheets with step-by-step instructions for each system. But like a lot of computer guides, they aren't much help to the technologically illiterate.

Still, even without taking advantage of the high-tech systems, most of which also can be controlled manually, the suite is an interesting place, steeped in history.

Formerly known as the Presidential Suite, it was the site of a reception held by President Nixon in 1969 for the three astronauts returning from the Apollo 11 moonwalk mission.

In 1984, Reagan was staying in the suite when he received the phone call confirming that he had won re-election.

More recently, the suite was used to film scenes for the movie ``Get Shorty.'' And throughout it all, the room has hosted numerous heads of state and other foreign dignitaries.

The room was designed to disguise much of the technology in armoires and cabinets, so that the place looks more like a home than something out of a ``Star Wars'' set.

``We didn't want the suite itself to look like a spaceship,'' Petrus said.

Since its reincarnation, the Cyber Suite has been occupied 60 percent to 70 percent of the treime, or four to five nights a week.

At $2,000 a night, the same rate the hotel charged before adding the high-tech features, the Cyber Suite is targeting the 5 percent of the travel market that doesn't flinch at such rates.

Meanwhile, other hotels in the Westin Hotel & Resorts chain are considering a similar Cyber Suite project.

``It might be duplicated in Asia,'' Petrus said.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) The Century Plaza Hotel and Tower ``Cy ber Suite'' features a 37-inch NetTV, a giant computer that can transport you to a virtual cocktail party right on the Internet.

(2) The voice-activated ``Butler in a Box,'' which responds to the name of Godfrey, will set the scene for business, romance or whatever the Cyber Suite occupant would prefer.

Myung J. Chun/Daily News