Tell us your hotel horror stories!

[grinningghost]

While pawing through the internet to find a place to stay on the way down to WDW, I got to thinking of a couple real fleabag places we ended up on our last drive down.

One place had a whole bunch of bugs under the table and the toilet didn't flush. DH ended up repairing it with a paperclip he borrowed from the front desk. The bugs we just squished and tossed. It was the only hotel in the area we could find a room at without a reservation. Never again. I'm reserving something after careful research.

I'm sure others have had hotel/motel nightmares. I'd love to hear them. Oh, and feel free to name names - remember, I'm weeding out the bad ones.

 

[AirForceRocks]

I stayed at CBR once and I didn't get any towel animals...

 

[becka]

ROFL AFR!!!

I don't have an horror stories because everywhere I go I make sure to bring my 6 year old refillable mug. Being able to refill that mug anywhere I want for years and years makes me a happy camper (even without towel animals!)

 

[grinningghost]

Oops - wrong board - Moderator, can you please move to CB? Thanks.

 

[RUDisney]

In the mid-90's, I was president of a local chapter of a national banking organization, BAI. It was a tradition of the chapters to send their incoming presidents and outgoing presidents to the national conference. My area's tradition was to also send the person's spouse, at his/her bank's expense. Not a bad deal.

The year I was incoming president, they sent us to Colorado Springs, and put us up at the Broadmoor. Wow! What a hotel. That's not the horror of this story. The weekend we stayed there was also the weekend of the 49er's Superbowl Ring Ceremony. Boys to Men entertained them. But, being the cheapskate I am, sometimes, I booked us at a cheapy hotel to extend our trip by a few days. Before we checked in, we went to the AF academy and toured a little. When we got to the hotel, our rental was the nicest car in the lot. My DH asked if we had to check in. I am an optimist, so I told him that maybe it was nicer inside than out, plus, we had reservations there, they had our CC #, and AAA rated them 3 diamonds. How bad could it be?

Well, we checked in and got a room on the 2nd floor. We carried up our luggage and when we opened the door, the dirty/urine smell hit us first. Then, there was the dirty bedspreads and carpet. We stopped for a moment and DH said he wanted to find somewhere else. I agreed, but we took a moment to decide whether we would actually check out or call Visa to dispute the charge. We decided to check out.

When I got to the front desk and told the woman that I wanted to check out... I couldn't possibly stay there... she said, "ok," and she asked me if we used the beds. Now, our entire round trip from the lobby to the room and back to the lobby was all of 5-minutes. I told her if we planned on being that quick, we'd have found a dark side-street and done it in the car. She said she figured that we didn't use them, she just needed to ask.

The next hotel that we found was inexpensive, but we asked to see the room before we'd check in, even though the hotel itself looked nice.

That's the worst hotel I have ever almost stayed in. The bad hotels that we stayed at in Russia were nicer than this one was.

 

[doxdogy]

Not any horror stories for myself. But, my poor DD had one on her honeymoon. They decided to drive down to the Keys. She told me when they got to the hotel, that there was a lady of the evening standing outside the hotel. Needless to say they left and found another hotel. My poor SIL, he had to listen to my daughter repeatedly tell him that he should have let me plan their trip.

 

[minniepumpernickel]

Is this a debate?

Nothing beats staying in a hotel room, and having a whole tour group stay in the room next door. Yeah, the whole group, had one room! It must have been about 200 people!

Heaven knows what they were all doing in there!

Yeah, those were the days....

 

[Muffin]

This happened at an all-inclusive resort in the caribbean.

When we first checked in the room was pretty warm so we called the front desk to have maintenance come up. Throughout the afternoon, no one ever came so we finally checked the filter ourselves. It was so full of dirt/dust/hair/whatever, that it was actually being sucked up into the duct because no air could get through. So we took it out and the room finally cooled off by the time they got there with a new filter. My husband cut his hand doing this. So we asked about the supposed nurse on premises. Well she wasn't there, but they offered to get us a doctor that would cost $150. We told them to forget it

Much, much later that night, when we turned the bed down, we found the sheets full of blood. I'm not kidding, it was absolutely disgusting. By the time the front desk got a call from us for the umpteenth time that day, the general manager himself came to our room. When he saw the state of the bed, he had us immediately moved into a beautiful oceanfront suite.

Our vacation did get better, but that first night was just horrible.

 

[RUDisney]

I had to laugh at Minnie's tour group story. Our last night in Russia, we were in a hotel that was a 3-star Russian hotel. It was spartan, but clean. Since there was only 1 English-speaking station, BBC News, that runs ever 1/2 hour like CNN, we decided to go to bed around 9:00. Well, the couple in the next room was obviously on their honeymoon.

We figure that if we could hear them, they could hear us.... giggling like elementary school girls. I finally said to my DH, it sounds like they're finished. Then.... round 2.... the giggling started again. Then... round 3... then... a shower... then... round 4. I told my DH that there had to be more than one man in the room.

The next day, every time I'd hear a door open in the hallway, I'd run to the peephole to see who was in the next room. Never got to see them, though.

 

[year2late]

Originally posted by AirForceRocks
I stayed at CBR once and I didn't get any towel animals...

That is because I have it in my home.

 

[Lanshark]

I stayed at a hotel once that had 5 people in a 4 person room and they were smoking on the balcony while breastfeeding their kids. To make matters worse they were throwing peanut shells into my BREEDER refillable coffee mug.

At least we got towel animals, which I took home, so the vacation was not a total loss.

 

[jipsy]

man oh man where to start on this one.

I had a job for 2 1/2 years that required me to travel eleven states. I was usually gone 5 or 6 days a week. I got $50/day per diem, so anything I didn't use I could keep. I made it my mission to find the cheapest and cleanest hotel room I could, so I could pocket more money. Sometimes they weren't always the cleanest.

One room, the door had been kicked in (from the inside ) and they just screwed a piece of sheet metal over it to fix it. The carpet was so nasty, I refused to take off my shoes. After about 30 minutes, I didn't even ask for my money back - I just packed back up, left and found another room. I lost my $12. LOL

Another room was a very nice best western. I had a habit of always putting my clothes in the drawers, even if it was just for one night, for some reason it just made me feel better. I opened the drawer and found a pack of condoms, a vial of cocaine and half a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Many, many times I brought in my blanket from the van and slept on top of the bedspread because I was too afraid the sheets had not been cleaned.

 

[twinz]

We went to an out door all day concert. We were so tired (8 of us), so we decided to check in to the first hotel we came across. Well it was about $30US a night. We got three rooms (outside of Sarasota, NY). Our room wasn't that bad. Our friends had orange water coming out of the tap, that leaned to the side. To use the toilet you had to sit sideways, needless to say they didn't actually sit. To this day we still laugh about it, and we call it the Funky Cheap Motel!
Twinz

 

[minniecarousel]

A Ramada Inn in Bossier City, Louisiana - just 2 1/2 years ago. We just didn't appreciate the cockroaches in the room! And the toilet had a stain that wouldn't flush away - I assumed it couldn't be scrubbed away either. We left from there to fly to WDW and checked into the Boardwalk - ahhhh!!!

 

[Pooh Girl 71]

It was a Days Inn in Columbia SC. We were on our way to WDW. The room was filthy. The electrical sockets on the walls were not even covered. There was a hole in the wall, looked like someone kicked it in. But, the really bad thing is when we pulled back the covers on the bed, it REEKED of stinky men's cologne. They obviosuly hadn't washed the sheets before we got there. Mgmt could have cared less too.

I refuse to stay in a Days Inn ever again.

 

[lisajl]

The first time we went to WDW, one of those nasty hotels that you really don't want to sleep in. It was horrible.

Can't remember the name, just remember a lot of us complaining of no hot water and all the bugs in the room.

YUK!!

So glad we went to POR!

Lisajl

 

[Mish19]

This is actually pretty funny. I went to Europe with a tour group a few years ago and one of the hotels in Wales was an OLD hospital. The hotel rooms were split up onto different floors eventhough it was the same run of numbers (100's). That wasn't the bad part. My roommate and I had the fire exit room, in case of fire people were to break open the little glass case on our door take our room key out and use the fire escape. Luckliy we were staying at a teeny tiny town in Wales, LOL!

 

[Wish Upon A Star]

When we headed to WDW in 1991, we were supposed to stay at the Quality Inn Maingate East . . .we checked in, and didn't stay more than 10 minutes . . .When we got in our room we were totally disgusted by its condition . . .carpet tears/stains, bedspreads were worn . . .it was truly scummy <sp> . . .but what made us check out of there was the bathroom . . .there were ants crawling over by the toilet and I totally freaked . . .I didn't even think of calling management and requesting a different room. That place really turned me off . . .They gave us our money back and we walked with suitcases in hand, to the Sheraton Lakeside which was next door (so we thought). We didn't realize it would take us through parking lots and a small ditch like area to get there. Anyway, we probably looked like idiots walking with our suitcases, but we needed to get far away from that place.

On the upside, the Sheraton Lakeside was a great hotel and CLEAN!

Live and learn . . .you get what you pay for

 

[julie_yet]

[color=0066ff]The only story I can think of one from a family vacation a few years ago and it's not that bad. We were driving up to Michigan to visit my grandmother and we stopped for the night at a hotel in Cullman, Alabama.
The room was fine and our dinner was included with the room. So we went down to the restaurant for our free dinner. We all got water except for my dad who got iced tea. I took one sip and gagged. It tasted like black dirt. So we decided to order sodas instead. Then we realized that the ice would make our sodas taste like dirt too so as our waitress is bringing our food out we're franticly fishing all the ice out of our glasses and putting it on napkins. I'm sure she thought we were nuts.
My dad btw didn't taste a difference and continued to drink his iced tea.[/color]

 

[chell]

My mother, my bother & I were headed to NY about 15 years ago and we had gotten behind schedule because of some very heavy rain and couldn't make it to the hotel where we had reservations. We were in some backwoods town in the middle of nowhere. We finally saw a sign for a hotel. We follow the directions and drive for what seemed like an eternity. We passed some really weird looking places on the way there too. At this point I told my Mom that if this place looked anything like the Bates Motel I wasn't staying there! We finally get there and there are the two nasty looking guys sitting outside drinking beer and probably waiting for us to pull up so they could kill us. Really, they looked scary! We took one look at the name of the hotel and decided we weren't that tired after all. It was the Bates Motel! We drove for a long time that night before we finally find a place.