You might be
better off at the Bates Motel or a roach motel than one of these
horrors. Below are some of the funniest and most horrifying hotel
experiences we’ve found around the Web. (Note: reviews
have been edited for grammar and spelling.)
1) “Yours
Is A Very Bad Hotel”
The DoubleTree Club in Houston, Texas
Tom Farmer and
Shane Atchison of Seattle made a PowerPoint presentation after their
experience at DoubleTree Club of Houston, Texas to fully express
the customer service nightmare. A night clerk named Mike was the
subject of their wrath. “We held guaranteed, confirmed reservations
at the DoubleTree Club for the night of November 14-15,” they
wrote.
“These rooms were held for late arrival with a major credit
card. Tom is a card-carrying Hilton Honors Gold VIP. Yet when we
arrived at 2:00am, we were refused rooms!”
The PowerPoint
presentation has traveled far and wide enough to merit its
own page on urban legends site Snopes.com. In recent interviews,
Farmer and Atchison have begged for the 2001 presentation to be
laid to rest: “We are beginning to think even Night Clerk
Mike and his bosses may have suffered enough.”
2) “Bathroom
ceiling was leaking massive urine”
Plaza Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada
One Vegas hotel served TripAdvisor user MadamZCalifornia
a horrifying cocktail for New Year’s Eve—urine, water
and electricity. She met with a terrible stench after checking in.
“The room smelled horrible. We were gagging. It smelled like
sour milk and feet mixed.”
At first she
tried to cover the problem. “We walked to Walgreens and ABC
Store to get three bottles of air freshener. The lady who worked
at ABC said that a lot of people who stayed at the Plaza came there
to buy air fresheners!”
But soon the
problem was traced to a streaming light fixture in the bathroom.
“The bathroom light was filled with water and the light was
blinking. It felt so dangerous with the water and electricity. I
didn’t DARE try to turn the light off. We were traumatized…We
were FREAKED OUT.” MadamZ says that her group had nowhere
else to go since the city was booked solid for New Year’s
Eve. After much hassle and arguing with the management, they were
upgraded to a room with no smells or leakage, but MadamZ vows never
to return.
3) “Smelly,
Hot, Shabby & Dirty-Otherwise OK”
Galt House Hotel
& Suites in Louisville, Kentucky
“To call this a 'fleabag' hotel would be
an unconscionable insult to both fleas and bags everywhere,”
writes TripAdvisor user BruceLafleur. “In my 25 years of business
travel, I have never experienced such a consistently, depressingly
mediocre property.”
An employee advised user Firemedic599 to trek up
two escalators and across a covered walkway to the other tower,
where he was told that he needed go back down two escalators to
the first floor. “SHE COULD HAVE TOLD ME TO JUST WALK ACROSS
THE STREET—IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FASTER SINCE WE HAD LUGGAGE!!!”
he writes. His room “smelled like burnt rubber and a doctor’s
office.” It was so cheap that “the only thing missing
was a quarter slot and vibrating bed.”
However, other TripAdvisor users rated Galt House
favorably, even giving it multiple stars.
4) One-stop
shopping
Ramada Inn and
Convention Center in Aberdeen, South Dakota
The Ramada Inn and Convention Center in Aberdeen,
South Dakota, seems to serve a niche market. “We stay here
each year as pheasant hunters because we can eat, sleep, drink,
and get our birds cleaned and frozen all in one location,”
writes Priceline.com user George from Sissonville, West Virginia.
But user Greg from Brookings, South Dakota was unhappy
with his stay. “I would not tell anyone to stay here. Old
and staff did not know what they were doing. Could not even help
us find our rooms. We had 5 couple with us, and we were all very
unhappy with our stay. Rooms were dirty and smelled bad.”
There couldn’t be any relationship between butchering pheasants
and bad smells, could there?
However, the
Priceline.com page says that the Inn has been recently remodeled
(no date is given), so perhaps any unpleasant pheasant smell is
gone.
5) Many
brown delights
Waldo Emerson Inn Bed &
Breakfast in Kennebunk, Maine
The wife of a B&B owner in Kennebunk, Maine
seems to be trying to sabotage the operation. While the male innkeeper
offered stories of the inn’s history on the Underground Railroad,
his wife offered charred slice-and-bake cookies. The inn’s
namesake dog also did his part to make the place homey. “They
had a new adorable black poodle, Waldo, who left us little smelly
packages outside our bedroom door!!” writes user Leslieannadams
at Trip Advisor. “Now this would have been funny, because
I am a big dog lover, but after all, we were paying for this. When
we told the innkeeper the response was, ‘Oh, bad little puppy.’
No ‘I'm sorry’ or anything!”
And when it was time to go: “She LITERALLY—and
I mean literally—pushed us out the front door. As soon as
we paid she physically began nudging us with her body toward the
front door and said, ‘You've got to go. Go! Go! We have work
to do! Leave now!’ We were literally stumbling backwards trying
to get out as quickly as she wanted us to. It was almost comical,
but not quite.”
6) “Go
and sleep on the subway, it’s cleaner”
Hotel Carter in New York, New York
The exterior looks like the Chicago motel home of
Jake and Elwood Blues, with the bustle of Times Square instead of
constantly-rattling El Trains. The no-tell motel made TripAdvisor.com’s
2007 list of the dirtiest hotels in America. “We believe the
9th floor is the point of origin for every bacteria known to man,”
writes TripAdvisor user kevinWestMids.
Writes user caio_cunha: “The hotel itself
remembered a bad horror movie.” (Hmm…)
“The first room I stayed (for 30 minutes)
had such a terrible plumbing problem that the roof was falling in
pieces all over the bed,” caio_cunha continues. “The
second room I got was so dirty and smelly that I had to buy sheets
to sleep in. There were spit marks on the wall, the AC had 1 inch
of dirt on the filter and when we turned the shower on, it was impossible
to keep the water in the bathroom. I felt sick every minute I spent
on this hotel. I could never imagine to find such a trash place,
not even in my worst nightmares...”
7) “Visit
a third world hotel on a Pennsylvanian budget”
Days Inn Lancaster
in Lancaster, Pennsylvania
“Where do I start?” fumes cdbell0102.
“The lack of air conditioner in the lobby and hallways? No
locks on the exterior hallway doors? The dirt and dust on the exterior
edge of the floor? Bedsheets that did not cover the mattress? The
lack of temperature control on the shower (hot one second, cold
the next)? The sticky matted carpeting? The blood-stained washcloth?
There's the ticket. Blood-stained washcloth is the winner by a narrow
margin.”
User Gussie06 adds, “The two police cars sitting
outside the hotel for the entire night did not bode well, but I
sure am glad they were there.”
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g52970-d96554-r8619176-Days_Inn_Lancaster-Lancaster_Pennsylvania.html
8) "Something to remember us by"
Whiteleaf Hotel in
London, United Kingdom
Marie07Ireland’s boyfriend brought home something
special to remember their stay from the lovely Whiteleaf Hotel.
At the end of a scathing review, she writes, “[He] noticed
red lumps on his skin on the following day - like hives, really
itchy and red. We assumed it was just some kind of allergic reaction.
He got some lotion from the chemist which calmed it down a little.
[A few days later] he was sitting watching TV and scratching his
leg at the same time when he felt something 'give' and moved over
to the window for a better look. There was a small white maggot
on his finger tip—alive! I was nearly sick at the sight of
it. We only sat on the bed—imagine if we had slept in it!
The place was crawling.”
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g186338-d192091-r10765376-Whiteleaf_Hotel-London_England.html
9) "Perfect
for a six inch tall Indiana Jones"
Hotel Y Cabanas Del Lago in Puerto Varas, Chile
The Hotel Y Cabanas Del Lago has a respectable 3
out of 5 rating at TripAdvisor.com, but it hasn’t made everyone
happy. Consider the following mysterious, borderline-racist review
from user fdarcio: “The bathroom and the bed were too small…The
showers are made for local ‘mapuches’ (who) are shorter
than 5.5in.” (That’s pretty short.)
fdarcio continues, “The hotel has a new area
and an old area. Make sure you stay on an Executive suite, which
is a basic international suite, otherwise you may fall to the catacombs
of the very old area.” Good to know!
10)
"But the game’s on!"
Hotel La Marine in La Rochelle, France
Personal space appears to have a different meaning
in France—at least when the World Cup is involved. “We
left for dinner in the Latin Quarter,” says a TripAdvisor
user quoted on France.com. “We returned to the hotel just
before 11pm, just to drop off a camera and get a jacket. We intended
to venture out again and soak up our last evening in Paris. We walked
into the lobby and found the door to our room propped wide open.
The night desk manager was inside watching our television (the World
Cup) and smoking cigarettes. We were speechless. Our luggage, our
possessions were all out in the open. The man told us, ‘But
it is France!’—referring to the football match)—and
exclaimed, ‘I didn't touch a thing!’”
http://web.france.com/forum/travel/lodging/2007/05/bad_hotel_experience_la_rochelle
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