Hotels in Kissimmee: Anyone stayed at Thriftlodge or HoJo?

[DannyDisneyFreak]

Any one ever stay at the Thriftlodge in Kissimmee or the Howard Johnson Express Inn Parkside. In Dec. they are both under $30 per night. I'm just worried they are "roach motels". There are only two rodents I want to see in WDW

 

[anniee66]

I checked into the Thrift Lodge and Checked right back out. Also There are Two Travel Lodges one right infront of Old Town the other down the road about 2 miles. Old Town Travel Lodge is an excellent place, the other one horrid!!! I live In florida so we go to WDW often. Spur of the moment trips are frequent, I am staying tommorrow night for the first time at the Buena Vista Suites, Nice I hope. Thrift Lodge is stinky, Horrid Orange carpet type room with the worst mold smell.Some sort of workers lived there and hung around all around it. Really Bad place scary. I would not stay a single night And I have stayed IN some questionable hotels. lol. I do not know about the hojo it looks nice from the outside but we all know thats not a good judge. I hope that helps.

 

[plutofreak]

We stayed at the Thrifty Lodge for one night back in 2003.

NEVER AGAIN

The room wasn't bad, the problem was on check in I paid my $20.00 deposit in cash. When we checked out the next day they told me I wouldn't get my Deposit back because I never paid it. We must have waited their for over and hour discussing this with the manager. Finally, I broke down I didn't want to but I had to. I told her how this was the first day of my vacation and the Thrifty Lodge had ruined it. I told all the guest in line behind me not to check in here and find a decent place to stay that won't steal your money. Finally the manager said she would give me back my deposit if I gave her a copy of my Driver's License in case they found out other wise.

I vowed never to stay at another one of these and I haven't, I probably over reacted, but $20.00 is alot of money to me. So in my opinion NO, and NO to the HOJO either.

 

[DannyDisneyFreak]

Thank you both for the posts! Yeah, on orbitz.com you could book the Thriftlodge for $23 a night in December!!! I knew it must be a dump with bad service. I've always stayed on site except once long ago at the Comfort Inn Lake Buena Vista, but I can't remember what the room was like. We've been planning on the Pop century, I think we'll stick with that unless we find anything cheaper. We don't plan on renting a car so if we stay off site we would need one. The off site hotel would have to save us enough $$$ to pay for the rental, parking and gas.