Tell me about your horrible vacation lodgings--mine's a doozy

[Harriet Vane]

We are having a ski weekend in West Virginia. My dh grew up skiing tons and really loves it. As an adult, we just cannot go as often as he did as a kid, so he has really been looking forward to this. Big time. I cannot ski due to arthritis and injury issues, but the kids are finally old enough to really ski.

 

We rented a condo, and it's not cheap.

 

It's horrible. Really, truly nasty here.

 

There are mice. I saw one today. The droppings are in the kitchen. I was up early this morning (5am) and listened to them scrabbling in the walls. This afternoon, I saw the mouse run across the kitchen. I also heard them scrabbling under the stove for about 45 minutes.

 

The wifi is patchy at best. The management office also provided security passwords that were incorrect. More than once.

 

The phone in this condo does not work, and cell service is almost nonexistent.

 

The water heater will only produce enough hot water to fill the hot tub halfway. We are paying dearly for that jacuzzi, and are not getting the full use of it at all. Our plan tonight is to heat some water on the stove to help it along.

 

The condo itself is just nasty. There is thick, visible dust on the wall decorations. The blankets are really, really ancient.

 

Dh will agonize over my comfort if I complain, and I don't want to do anything that will rub the shine off his Great Skiing Weekend. I cannot believe I will have to sleep in this nasty little hole for another two nights. I'd rather camp, quite frankly--the great outdoors feels cleaner than this and waaaay cheaper.

 

Help me laugh about this. Tell me your stories. Anyone else ever put up with icky vacation lodgings?

 

[Moxie]

Is there a working toilet?? See, already better than camping!!

 

Flushing, FTW!!

[alisoncooks]

Bah!  What a disappointment.  I hope you guys can complain and get some of your money back.

 

Not nasty... but my honeymoon was quite a disappointment, in terms of "resort" accommodations.  We thought we were staying at a nice resort in a popular honeymoon location.... and it probably was.... 30 years ago.  Our little cabin was clean (thank goodness!) but had brown shag carpeting.  On the walls, even (and this was in the year 2000).  Big, cheesy, heart-shaped bed... with mirror on the ceiling overtop.   :eek:   Just everything tacky, we had it.  Felt like honeymooning in a 80s p0rn0.   There was supposed to be a putt-putt course... what we found was a large room with a cement floor and some plywood putt-putt holes (like you'd see homemade at a church carnival).  There was a lake... that was absolutely coated with fat, green algae blobs.   Could hardly see the water.... well, that's if you could walk to it b/c most of the grassy areas were covered in mounds of goose poop.

 

We were appalled... but poor college kids and we'd spent our every last dime on the honeymoon.  No worries... we made the best of it ;) and laughed heartily over the tackiness.

[QueenCat]

The worst was when I was at a conference, and had younger ds with me. The first room had a hole in the ceiling. The hole wasn't there when I checked in but was there when I got back from dinner. The hole had thousands of insects coming through it. Second room, different building, was damp but it was the beach and raining. I had not opened the blinds to the sliding glass door as it overlooked the parking lot. Last night there, I peeked out to assess some noise and discovered the sliding glass door was propped up against the door frame, and not actually in the door, so anyone could have walked in on us............. They comped us for the weekend for the first room, and offered me a free week another time for the second room. No thanks, I won't be back............

[Halftime Hope]

Once in a blue moon, we stayed in motels in Central America when I was a kid.  My parents bought a camper and truck for the last eight years they were there.  My mom, bless her, used to joke about the roaches coming out to play baseball at night; we kids would joke with her about it and make up names for the leagues.  She managed to make it seem as though that were a normal, funny part of life!

[Halftime Hope]

We are having a ski weekend in West Virginia. My dh grew up skiing tons and really loves it. As an adult, we just cannot go as often as he did as a kid, so he has really been looking forward to this. Big time. I cannot ski due to arthritis and injury issues, but the kids are finally old enough to really ski.

 

We rented a condo, and it's not cheap.

 

It's horrible. Really, truly nasty here.

 

There are mice. I saw one today. The droppings are in the kitchen. I was up early this morning (5am) and listened to them scrabbling in the walls. This afternoon, I saw the mouse run across the kitchen. I also heard them scrabbling under the stove for about 45 minutes.

 

The wifi is patchy at best. The management office also provided security passwords that were incorrect. More than once.

 

The phone in this condo does not work, and cell service is almost nonexistent.

 

The water heater will only produce enough hot water to fill the hot tub halfway. We are paying dearly for that jacuzzi, and are not getting the full use of it at all. Our plan tonight is to heat some water on the stove to help it along.

 

The condo itself is just nasty. There is thick, visible dust on the wall decorations. The blankets are really, really ancient.

 

Dh will agonize over my comfort if I complain, and I don't want to do anything that will rub the shine off his Great Skiing Weekend. I cannot believe I will have to sleep in this nasty little hole for another two nights. I'd rather camp, quite frankly--the great outdoors feels cleaner than this and waaaay cheaper.

 

Help me laugh about this. Tell me your stories. Anyone else ever put up with icky vacation lodgings?

 

I'd ask for part of your money back, and cite why.  Then I'd leave horror story reviews if possible; maybe the owners can be shamed into taking care of the place?  I'm so sorry!

 

[Miss Tick]

We were on a trip once and checked in for a night and the young, sweet desk clerk told us to call up if we had any trouble with the "Millers" I was worried about who was in the room next to us?! But it turns out millers are a kind of moth.

[Spryte]

Yep, your story's a doozy.  You win a prize for that one.

 

No vacation horror stories, but I used to do art shows up and down the east coast, back before kids.  36 weeks a year on the road.  :)  I grew up in the art show circuit, too... my mom's a metal sculptor... Personal best story ever: we checked into a place in Myrtle Beach, everything was booked up that weekend and it was a last minute thing... There were mushrooms growing behind the toilet!!!  Yes, mushrooms.  Best part: we called the front desk, and the young guy was so funny, he said, laughing, "Ma'm, we don't allow farming in the rooms!"  That was bad.  There was no place to change rooms or hotels, either.  Ugh.

 

 

[trulycrabby]

Well, I could tell you about the spiders, snakes, bats, and feral dogs at the hotel we stayed at in Bali, but it's not really fair to compare a less developed country to your US ski vacation. The bathroom was outdoors in a walled, private garden, and was quite large, clean, first world in regards to plumbing, and lovely to look at, but still took a little getting used to. :) There was a lizard the length of my arm that lived in the ceiling on the front porch, but he ate bugs, so I was happy to have him, even though he would sing very loudly all night long. :)

 

The feral dogs would roam the outdoor restaurant, but were well behaved and would let you pet them. It did not occur to me that none of these dogs had rabies shots, and that rabies is indeed a huge problem, but I was in my twenties and blissfully unaware of all the things that can go terribly wrong when one is in a third world country a long, long, way from home.

 

One day I fell asleep on the beach and got woken up by a hermit crab the size of a dinnerplate trying to eat my hair, but once I got over my shock, the big guy turned out to be relatively unafraid of humans and would take crackers from my hand. :) Our "friendship" was the beginning of my long-standing love of hermit crabs.

 

Anyhow, sorry I rambled so, and I don't mean to dismiss your bad accomodations. However, if the kids and DH are having a wonderful time, I would prolly just get out a dustrag, try to ignore the mice, and just try to get through the next few days. You could always quietly speak with the management about the dust and critters so future guests might have a more pleasant stay.

 

Perhaps Beverly Cleary got her inspiration for The Mouse and the Motorcycle from a stay at that condo... :)

[SKL]

Now, this isn't exactly a complaint.  I mean, considering where I was, this was luxury.

 

My friend's relative owned an estate in a forest preserve in India.  There was a cabin on the property for visitors.  We drove out there for a visit, and it started out with dinner in the owner's house.  (Way too spicy, but whatever.)  I used the bathroom.  They had toilet paper in there - proof that this was a posh residence!  I picked up the roll and out ran a white lizard, which proceeded to run up my arm.  Reflexively, I let out a little scream and flicked the lizard off.  In the process I accidentally threw the precious toilet paper into the toilet.  Dang.

 

I told my friend about it later.  After scolding me for wasting a whole roll of toilet paper like that, she told me that those white lizards often come out at night and walk across the ceiling.  She said that is why they teach children to sleep with their mouths closed, because a lizard could fall from the ceiling into your mouth.  And they are poisonous.

 

Needless to say, I did not sleep that night....

 

There were other issues such as a flooded bathroom in the cabin etc., a very large cockroach in the bedroom at our next stop, and a few other things.  But the lizard was the best.

[readwithem]

Eww I would definitely ask for your money back, and write an honest review on Trip Advisor or VRBO or wherever the place is listed.   I might even take pictures and post them - the Trip Advisor site is great about that.

 

The worst one I can think of is a place we rented to ski (maybe you jogged my memory - ha!) - the place hadn't been cleaned at all - but there was a washer and dryer so we did a quick load and it was pretty easy to clean the bathroom and kitchen - we got at least one night free, I can't remember whether we got our entire stay free.

 

 

[DawnM]

We were at a very nice hotel in San Diego on the beach.  We had two kids at the time who were very young.  My then 4 year old found a bag behind the mini-bar......it had a *ahem, toy* in it along with lubricants.    It still had sticker tags on it so I think it was new, but he was walking around with it saying, "What is this mommy?  What does it do?"

 

I marched it right down to the front desk and got a $100 voucher for dinner for all 5 of us!  

[Jeannie in NJ]

before dh and I got married, I was roommates with a girl from college.  Her and I decided to spend a few days in Martha's Vineyard.  We took the ferry (without taking our car) to the island.  Our hotel was nice except that next door to us was obviously an "lady of the evening"  .  She must have had a revolving door, the guys would knock, come in , do what they were there for and leave quick.  We could hear everything.  Eventually we called the front desk and complained.  They moved us to a new room, apparently they had no desire to kick the "lady" out.

 

Also we had arrived on the island on a weekend day and took a bus to our hotel all the way across the island.  Well this was in April and no one told us that buses only run on weekends and we were leaving on a weekday.  Well no buses and we could not find a ride to the other end of the island.  We had to walk across the island, 8 miles with all our luggage and not one car passed us.  We felt like it was a never ending walk.  We had no water with us so when we got to the ferry, we drank so much soda and just loved the trip back on the ferry to the mainland.

[Outdoorsy Type]

Once I rented a "cabin" sight unseen by a local lake. Got to the rental at a out 10pm. It was a trashy apartment building with two stories. Our room was on the second floor. The porch was rickety and had sheet rock to cover up missing boards. The inside was old furniture from maybe the 70's. the floor had not been swept or vacuumed and the walls had holes all over. I would have asked for a refund, but the office was closed, but I was 5 months pregnant and our other kids were worn out.

 

My four year old ran a fever that night and hallucinated about firey men walking on the ceiling and whales (?) floating in the room. Longest night of my life.

 

Drive to the drugstore early the next a.m. And my sons fever broke before we got to the store. The fever never returned, and he had no other symptoms.

 

Maybe the place had mold? Or ... Was haunted. Either way, we left before our second night.

[Truscifi]

We rented a houseboat in the Keys one fall. We specifically asked to make sure it had a kitchen because we were there for a week and planned to bring food to cook for dinner each night. When we got there we found that while it did have a small kitchen, the propane stove was out of propane. Then that night it rained and we discovered the roof leaked. A lot. The owner (who lived on site) gave us a bucket to catch the water and told us it was bad luck we had rain while we were there, normally it doesn't rain much so the roof isn't a problem.  :huh:  After 2 full days of rain, he finally offered to switch us to another boat. He said he hadn't offered before because it didn't have a stove. Um, the stove in the leaky one didn't work anyway! We did move to the other boat, only to discover at bedtime that the door didn't close all the way. There was a 1 1/2 inch gap, through which all manner of stinging insects came during the night. Poor ds was sleeping in the bed close to the door and the next morning he had bug bites all over his back. Then when I told the owner, he said he was going to refund the remaining days because I complained too much and he didn't think I was getting the spirit of a Keys vacation! :glare: 

 

We happily took our refund and spent the rest of the week in a nice, inexpensive hotel in Miami right on the beach and I wrote some pretty awful reviews on a couple of websites.

[Alicia64]

We were at a KOA campground at the beach. They had awesome cabins -- really updated and cute. Not cabins at all, really. It was like a little fancy  hotel room made to look like a cabin.

 

About an hour before bed we were watching TV and a spider came out. No biggie. Then a giant cockroach comes out like he owns the place -- and he emerged from the loft where my boys would have slept.

 

I think the thing that freaked me out was that there was no way to look at the room and know there would be a problem. It looked clean and darling. So when a two inch cockroach appeared it just seemed out of place. Within moments a second one appeared.

 

We got in the car and drove home. It was just a two hour drive and seemed like the best plan given what the rest of our week looked like.

 

Alley

[Mergath]

When my brother and I visited Mexico City, my bed in the hotel room had pubic hairs all over the sheet, and the toilet had very obviously not been cleaned after the last person checked out.  They put new sheets on the bed, but we were on our own with the toilet.

[Ottakee]

I have 2 of them:

 

First was when I was traveling with my family.  We stayed at the ONLY place open in Beckley WV.  It was decorated out of the 60s and totally mismatched at that.  Mold growing all over the bathroom.  Shower was a straight pipe with no shower head.  My roll away kept trying to fold up with me in it.  We left very early morning and cleaned up at the local McDonalds.

 

On our honeymoon (in the days before internet reviews) we reserved a nice "lake front cottage" for our wedding night.  It was dark when we got there.......never did see a lake.  The room was so tiny that the bed was shoved up against the wall.  The shower didn't drain and was about 2x2 in size (not great for a wedding night :-) ) and to top it off.............the rest of the "cottages" were rented on the hourly type basis.

[Susan in KY]

Crew's quarters at the Ferry station in Nantucket on cots less than 2 feet wide.

 

We decided to go to Nantucket on a three day weekend over Memorial Day because I wanted to see "The Shoe" from Cheaper by the Dozen. No one told us that there was a yacht race over and back and that every.room.on.Nantucket was rented, from $100 to $5000/night.

 

First we tried sleeping in the park, which didn't work as all the drunken yacht people were relieving themselves in the bushes near the benches. Then we tried to get a place at the local jail, but they told us we had to charter an airplane out, we weren't allowed to loiter and if we got arrested they would make us fly out. Then we went back the the ferry where the night watchman found us and threatened to charge us with trespassing. As he was threatening, the captain came out and said he should let us sleep in crew's quarters. The watchman agreed grudgingly, but kicked us out at 3:45 am in case he got inspected. So we walked around, watched the seagulls, saw the shoe, we had breakfast and got back on the first ferry in the morning.

 

Did I say dh was coming down with the flu, too?

 

It was a vacation mishap, but makes a good story. :)

 

 

[Amber in SJ]

We used the timeshare from a member of our extremely extended family to honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.  We paid the family member a ton of money for the privilege, too.  The day of our wedding they took Dh aside and told him that they had rented the condo out to someone else for the final two days of our five day stay, but they had contacted the couple who had a different condo in the same complex so we could stay there for the last two days.

 

The second condo was a nightmare.  The power was not on and it smelled like something had died in the refrigerator.  We tried to get the power turned back on but the managers told us that the people who "owned" the timeshare had stopped making payments and there was nothing they could do.  They thought they were being kind enough to look the other way and let us stay at all. They gave us a flashlight.  There was no other place we could find to rent for the next two nights.  There was so much sand packed into the shower drain that the water wouldn't drain.  It was stifling hot and the windows had no screens so opening the window for a breeze was an invitation to every critter & insect around.  the first night in that condo, I heard a noise while falling asleep so I grabbed the flashlight and clicked it on, in the room with us was the biggest iguana I have ever seen.  There were lights all around the condo complex, so we dragged our bedding out onto the screened in porch which was facing the beach and slept there.  It was cooler, there were actual screens and the view was amazing.  For those two days we spent as little time as possible in the condo.

 

We tried to get some of our money back but it didn't happen.

 

Amber in SJ

[lavender's green]

We stopped for the night in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Colorada.  We had five or so kind of weird encounters in that town as we looked for a hotel and some food.  Nothing special, we just kept running into slightly unusual things/people.  Then the room we got at the chain motel (which had obviously allowed the owners a bit of license in decorating), was decorated to look really old-fashioned and homey.  Old wall paper, antique fixtures, lace doilies, etc (nothing wrong with that, imo).  The ceiling was tin and kind of creeped me out.  It made me feel claustrophobic.  But the worst part was that there was tons of old photographs.  So these long-dead strangers were staring at us all night long!

[Harriet Vane]

You guys are awesome! I am laughing and crying. Our place is nasty but not as bad as what some of you have lived with. Thanks for sharing. Keep the stories rolling!

 

:thumbup1:

[Word Nerd]

Then we tried to get a place at the local jail...

Wow! I don't think it would have ever occurred to me to see if it would be an option.

[Spryte]

We stopped for the night in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Colorada.  We had five or so kind of weird encounters in that town as we looked for a hotel and some food.  Nothing special, we just kept running into slightly unusual things/people.  Then the room we got at the chain motel (which had obviously allowed the owners a bit of license in decorating), was decorated to look really old-fashioned and homey.  Old wall paper, antique fixtures, lace doilies, etc (nothing wrong with that, imo).  The ceiling was tin and kind of creeped me out.  It made me feel claustrophobic.  But the worst part was that there was tons of old photographs.  So these long-dead strangers were staring at us all night long!

 

I think DH and I stayed at the same place in CO!

 

And this post reminded me of something slightly off topic, but still weird... In the early 2000s, we spent a lot of time in Sedona, and one of our visits we kept running into the same guy over and over - dressed all in black in flowy robes, carrying a samurai sword and a little voodoo doll type thing.  I know, I know, it was Sedona... But still, the sword freaked me out, and we were always bumping into him.

 

Ooooh, and another time, we were driving cross country and there was a severe weather situation, so we just stopped for the night early - at the only place for miles around.  They gave us the "special" room with the hot tub.  We checked in, and peeked at the hot tub, and there were dozens of silverfish swarming out of it.  Ewwww!  We switched rooms.  :)

[Forget-Me-Not]

We stayed at a B&B cottage one or two nights on our honeymoon. It was actually a very nice little place. The morning after we arrived, well, let's just say we decided to opt out of the continental breakfast. They called . . . And called . . . And called to remind us about breakfast. Seriously, called and let the phone ring until it disconnected more than once. We tried to ignore it but finally DH picked it up and let them know we wouldn't be there. And they KNEW it was our honeymoon. They gave us a little gift basket on arrival. Then they double charged our CC by accident.

[Donna]

One year when traveling to Cavan, Ireland we were given the name of a woman to contact for a bed and breakfast during the All Ireland festival. Our qualifying competition was held after all the Ireland qualifiers so there were very limited places left to stay (tens of thousands of people converge on the town during the All Ireland festival). So we went expecting a B&B only to find out it was an elderly couple renting out rooms in their home for the festival. They were lovely people and breakfast was delicious. We even went back to see them our next two years in the same town. But....

 

We had the hardest time finding the place. Our only directions were for a certain area in town...no street name or house number. I was told, "The mailman knows how to find me." when I asked how to get there. Then when we got to the area of town there were many different streets so I called and the woman said, "Paddy will be at the gate." Uh, there were gates around every home and I had no idea which gate we were looking for on which street and I had no idea who Paddy was. We happened to see someone near a gate on the 2nd street we went down and it was Paddy. LOL

 

The room we stayed in did not have clean sheets...we put bath towels on the pillows and slept in our clothes.

They took in more people than they had rooms so one family ended up staying on the living room floor.

The bathroom was disgustingly dirty, the shower barely worked, and there was only one small bathroom for all 4 families staying in different rooms...there was one glass in the bathroom that people obviously drank out of (yuck!).

 

[Melinda S in TX]

hot water in toilet

 

On our honeymoon, our car broke down halfway to our destination.  We ended up staying two days in a hole in the wall motel while we waited for the car to be fixed.  Roaches in the motel and there was nothing in this town.  We spent a lot of time sitting in the snackbar at the convenience store.

 

On our first anniversary we stayed in the honeymoon suite at a nice hotel.  Waterbed heater was stuck on high with no way to turn it down.  The chocolate they put out melted on our pillows, and Steven and I ended up sleeping on the floor.  The hot tub we paid extra for was "out of order."

 

Dh had training for his work and we went with him.  The town where we stayed was very humid.  At the motel, the first room they gave us oozed water when you walked across the carpet.  The second room didn't ooze, but had mold and water damage everywhere.

 

Another time we went to training with Steven and stayed at a high price hotel.  All of the water was hot.  Super hot.  As in no cold water at all.  The shower was hot.  The sink water was hot, and the toilet water nicely steamed your bum if you sat too long.

[Kerileanne99]

Hubby and I once decided to drive down last minute one weekend to South Padre Island on a warm summer weekend...and thought we would just drive toward the beach and find a place to stop when we got tired, lol.

Of course, we now know better! We must have stopped at 20 hotels that were full. We FINALLY found a place that had a room, only because the previous tenants had suddenly left 'due to an emergency.'

Uh huh. We KNEW it would be bad when we pulled around the back to find the WAY, WAY overpriced room to find huge overflowing dumpsters, trash on the ground, and about 15 feral cats milling about...but we were so exhausted we thought we could handle it. We slept on top of the bed on a blanket we took in, fully clothed...with the lights on all night to attempt to deter the monster roaches from carrying us off.

I have stayed in some scary places, especially in the Army in other countries...but this place was truly gross.

 

Yet...not as gross a the cabin we stayed in in beautiful, mountainous Idaho (where I am from). After a long drive we pulled in desperate for a toilet. Hubby was chivalrous enough to insist I go first, so I was the one to find the swollen, bloated squirrel that had somehow drowned in the toilet😩

[mytwomonkeys]

Well. It wasn't a vacation, but when we were traveling from CA to NC several years ago, our car broke down. There was some kind of event in town so every single hotel was booked. We managed to make it to this one. Oh.my.gosh. We had to video it or no one would have believed us!

 

 

[Violet Crown]

Last summer I had to stay here for a week:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/american-airlines-training-and-conference-center-fort-worth

 

I'll let the reviews speak for themselves, and only add that Wee Girl, after paddling in the goldfish-pond-sized "pool," developed what looked like chemical burns on her fingers and toes, as did another little girl.

[Ausmumof3]

We booked a holiday house with friends last year. It was a bit odd looking but it was short notice and we had to take what we could get to fit us all. We're talking six kids and four adults. Anyway, the house was on rain water. In the interest of saving rainwater they had a low pressure pump. And a really old toilet. The toilet wasn't working at all when we arrived, a plumber came and got it working but it took 15 minutes to fill.... Anyway kid one came down with the gastro... Then kid two and so on through them all. And the toilet stopped working again. You had to manually tip water into the cistern with a jug to make the toilet flush! And we had six kids with gastro.

 

That was the worst.

 

We also did an overnighter in a dodgy motel when we were on a tight budget... Think white rendered walls inside and out... Stairs that didn't know the meaning of stair code and awful electrical work. Then add in dust and mould in the room. We ended up leaving for home about four in the morning because we were all itchy and couldn't sleep. That pretty much prompted the caravan shopping decision.

[Ausmumof3]

Oh and I forgot the place we stayed where we came back to find the grounds on fire!!! Thankfully our unit was ok.

[Word Nerd]

A friend and I got a room at a hostel that gave me a bad feeling as soon as we walked in because it looked so seedy. Still, the rate was cheap and I had stayed at other not-scary hostels before, so we decided to give it a shot. We went into the room and looked around, and I felt even more uncomfortable and knew I wouldn't sleep a wink. There was graffiti all over the door, the paint was peeling, the beds were worn out, and on and on. We both looked at each other and started laughing. We got our money back and found a hotel room that I was happy to pay more for. I guess I'm not the adventurous type!

[KungFuPanda]

I have 2 of them:

 

First was when I was traveling with my family.  We stayed at the ONLY place open in Beckley WV.  It was decorated out of the 60s and totally mismatched at that.  Mold growing all over the bathroom.  Shower was a straight pipe with no shower head.  My roll away kept trying to fold up with me in it.  We left very early morning and cleaned up at the local McDonalds.

 

Ewww. Was it the Pagoda Inn?

 

 

I once TDYed to France. We stayed in Legionnaire's barracks on the Riviera. The location was great, but the barrack was a wooden shack with hanging lightbulbs and no heat. The bathrooms were outhouses with "bombardier" toilets. Fortunately, one of our mechanics foresaw this possibility and brought a toilet seat with him. They built a proper seat the next day :-) The toilets DID flush and i did get paid, but after a month I was ready for American barracks again.

 

My worse hotel experience was in Atlanta. This was before the Internet and cell phones when you had to make a plan to meet someone and stick to it. The hotel turned out to be some sort of subsidized housing. In the shower we found a giant pair of tighty whiteys and the hook end of a broken umbrella. We left the next day and found something nicer.

 

 

Am I the only one too terrified to hit Play on MyTwoMonkey's video? I can take the stories, but NOT the visual.

[aggieamy]

Well. It wasn't a vacation, but when we were traveling from CA to NC several years ago, our car broke down. There was some kind of event in town so every single hotel was booked. We managed to make it to this one. Oh.my.gosh. We had to video it or no one would have believed us!

 

 

 

I showed this to my DH and his comment was "They had kids?!?!  I think I still would have tried to sleep in the car!"

 

LOL.

 

How long did you have to stay there?

[mytwomonkeys]

I showed this to my DH and his comment was "They had kids?!?! I think I still would have tried to sleep in the car!"

 

LOL.

 

How long did you have to stay there?

We checked in at 2:00 AM and checked out by that morning (had a tow truck come for us). It was the craziest place I've ever slept!!! lol. Words could not do it justice!!! We thought about sleeping in the car, but there was literally no place to pull into & our phones got terrible service in that area! It was the darkest night ever. My son was only 2 and my daughter 4 -- they were so miserable & we had been on the road for two days :( We baracaded the door and slept on our own covers, lol

 

What a night!!! I think my husband and I are forever closer because of it!! :)

[Kerileanne99]

We checked in at 2:00 AM and checked out by that morning (had a tow truck come for us). It was the craziest place I've ever slept!!! lol. Words could not do it justice!!! We thought about sleeping in the car, but there was literally no place to pull into & our phones got terrible service in that area! It was the darkest night ever. My son was only 2 and my daughter 4 -- they were so miserable & we had been on the road for two days :( We baracaded the door and slept on our own covers, lol

 

What a night!!! I think my husband and I are forever closer because of it!! :)

After watching that video I wondered if the bulldozer in the parking lot was waiting for people to check out before a scheduled razing!

[nd293]

When I started this thread I thought "We've been so lucky - hotels all over the world sand never a bad experience!".

 

But as I read further, I remember:

 

* mushrooms growing in the bathroom (Malaysia - edited after I falsely accused Australia!)

* rats, cockroaches and a HUGE spider in a villa in the Philippines (we'd seal ourselves into a room at night, with towels blocking the bottom of the door to keep critters out).

* 3 cockroaches in 10 minutes found in the bathroom of a hotel in Singapore. The front desk gave me their insect spray - problem solved! We've stayed there half a dozen times, and that was the only time we saw cockroaches. Maybe they were on holiday too, and horrified to find humans in their bathroom.

* The 'no paper in the toilet' rule in our hotel in Athens did NOT make me happy, and I wasn't wild about the squating toilet in Zanzibar either.

 

We're pretty easy to please, really, and the only place I really have a negative memory of was a place with a filthy carpet - we bought a plastic picnic mat just so ds (then at crawling stage) had somewhere clean to play.

 

We're just back from a rare 4.5* weekend away, and I do think I'm more suited to that than squat toilets and bugs!

[Hoot]

Eeeew.  That sounds awful.  Though, I must admit, like one previous poster mentioned, at least there is indoor plumbing. 

 

For quite a few years in a row my in-laws took us on a vacation and they always made all of the reservations, so we never knew what we were getting into until we got there.  As it turned out, my mother-in-law has quite a knack for choosing the nastiest places to stay.

 

One year we stayed in Oneonta NY.  When MIL made the reservations she said it looked like a great place on the website.  She gave us a run-down of the accommodations and everything sounded decent.  When we showed up, it turned out to be this seedy place that had turned into a sort of trucker hotel.  The hallways had almost no light and the rooms smelled horribly of mildew.  The wallpaper was peeling off of the walls and there were giant dark spots on the ceiling that looked to be water damage or perhaps the blood of whatever had died and made the place smell so awful.  In DH's and my room there was an ENORMOUS area under the broken air conditioning unit that was absolutely soaked.  The carpet was so saturated that it splashed up if you walked on it.  This covered nearly a full half of the room.  The air conditioner never shut off so it was about 50* in the room the entire time.  It's a good thing we don't mind it cold, but the wet floor was kind of a deal breaker for me.  Most of the lights in the room didn't work and the tub had a pretty nasty ring with mold and rust spots in every crevice.  The bath towels were so thin I could have read a book through them.   

 

Last spring DH and DS went to Clearwater FL for spring training.  The hotel they booked was considered 1-star, but it had stellar ratings on every website, so they decided to take a chance.  Apparently, they chose wrong.  Absolutely nothing worked in the room, the ice machine was broken and only had puddled water inside, and whenever they turned on the lights they saw roaches skittering up the walls.  Their very first night there a domestic dispute complete with MMA-style knock down drag out fighting broke out right outside of their room, which brought several cops.  The following night there was a bank robbery and murder within spitting distance of the hotel.

[Haiku]

I once spent and entire vacation sleeping in the back of a Ford Expecition because people "miscalculated" how many beds were available.

[flyingiguana]

How about a train track right out the back window?  With trains that ran all night long.

 

[J-rap]

These are funny to read!  Ours was a semi-nice hotel in the Middle East some years ago.  The room was tiny and hot (no AC).  We were relieved to see a window, but when we opened the curtain, we saw that a building had been built right up next to it -- I mean ALL THE way up next to it, so it was like opening the curtain to a brick wall.  Fortunately there was a room fan but it was a wind-up fan that lasted only 45 minutes.  They had stuck a Turkish toilet in the middle of the room (a hole in the floor) -- with sort of a wall separator around it, but no fan or anything to get rid of the fumes.  The sheets looked like they hadn't been changed for a couple weeks, and I was covered with bed bug bites when I woke up.  (Little blood marks all over my skin.)  In the middle of the night, a strange man burst into our room yelling, reaching into his bag pulling out something -- we thought for sure it would be a gun or a knife, but it was a banana.  He was just some crazy guy who had wandered in.  It was a hotel experience I'll never forget!

[Donna]

I was reading through these and one reminded me of another vacation nightmare. We were spending 5 weeks traveling across the US from our home in NJ, south to TX then north through CO, UT, and WY then back home through SD. We camped most nights (all but two) with our conversion van where dh, dd, and I slept and a tent for the boys. 

 

We had gone white water rafting in CO one day and that night ds2 got a stomach virus so we spent the night in a hotel so he'd be close to a toilet. The next day we drove up through CO just before the most northeast corner of UT. It was getting late and there was nothing out there for miles and miles but one tiny little town with no hotel or restaurant...just a few houses and an "over night" campground. We had no choice but to stop. We pulled in and it was obvious many of the people there were not spending one night but lived there at least semi-permanently. The bathrooms were completely foul...swarms of flying bugs, no stall doors or really even stalls, drug paraphernalia (among other things) in the showers, toilets in pieces, and sinks too dirty to even brush one's teeth.

 

We made a quick dinner and while eating the man who managed the campground came over to say, "Hi." The kids were a little frightened because he had a hook in place of one hand and was otherwise rather scary looking...like an old pirate. He was nice and friendly so they were fine once we talked to him. We went to bed early and had the boys sleep in the van on the floor rather than set up the tent. In the night I got the stomach virus. We had a tiny port-a-potty in the van and it was all I could use every hour when I got up sick since there was no way I was going into the campground bathroom...at times I was sitting on that tiny thing and vomiting out the van door. Not only that but two drunken couples came in with a tent and camped next to us and were cursing, yelling, and playing loud music all night long so even if we could've slept between my stomach issues, it was too loud. We got up with the sun and left.

[SKL]

This thread is bringing back so many memories, and reminding me that it's the freaky moments that make life rich ... or something like that.....

[Brilliant]

Well. It wasn't a vacation, but when we were traveling from CA to NC several years ago, our car broke down. There was some kind of event in town so every single hotel was booked. We managed to make it to this one. Oh.my.gosh. We had to video it or no one would have believed us!

 

 

 

That was hilarious.  Do you recall how much you paid for those fine accommodations?

[mytwomonkeys]

That was hilarious. Do you recall how much you paid for those fine accommodations?

Yes! FIFTY DOLLARS!

 

Who do you think got the better deal that night?? lol

[plansrme]

This thread has been so fun to read.  Mine pale in comparison to some of your experiences, but I will add them anyway:

 

1.  Several years ago, my husband and I were in Namibia on vacation (that seems obvious, but everyone who heard we were going to Africa asked if it was for a mission trip; nope, just a fun trip) and staying in pretty luxurious safari cottages.  These are tents built on platforms, sort of, very expensive, remote (you have to be flown in on little planes).  Our tour took us to several of these camps for 2 or 3 nights each, and you were literally in the middle of nowhere, so once you were there, there was nowhere else to go.  No cars, no roads.  One of the supposedly nicest (it was an upgrade because the camp we'd booked was closed for renovations), we walked in and saw what was indeed a lovely set-up, except that the shower was in the middle of the room.  No curtain, no walls.  Just one of those fancy schmancy shower heads.  Perhaps in a culture in which showering is more of a recrational activity, rather than an act of personal hygiene, that would have been less objectionable, but I was peeved and pitched a fit.  They ended up moving us to a "family" cabin with a door for all of the bathroom facilities.  

 

2.  In another of these camps, the bathroom was separated from the rest of the room by a canvas panel.  That was about 4" shorter than the doorway.  That was more intimate than I want to be with anyone.

 

3.  And finally, I posted on here about this last summer, but we checked into a Doubletree in Denver for the last night of our vacation and found that the hotel had been taken over by a convention of furries.  They were everywhere:  adults dressed as stuffed animals, licking and petting each other in the lobby, elevators and Starbucks.  When I noted that this should have been disclosed to us when I made the reservation, which I did over the phone, the woman at the front desk told me, "We don't judge."  Well, I judge, and I judged them "weird." 

 

Thank goodness for TripAdvisor for giving us all a way to do something about these conditions.

[Dmmetler]

Not so much the accommodations, but...

 

DH and I got married in my hometown in VA when we were both grad students in TX, so rather than trying to fly out the same day as the wedding (especially since we were flying in and out of National), we booked a hotel room for the night in my hometown. Nice enough hotel, I guess. Except that we arrived, wedding finery and all, to discover that we were in the hotel that was housing the Cumberland Valley Harley Davidson Association. So, I'm checking in, wedding gown and all, surrounded by bikers in leather.

 

I'm sure they were very nice people, but it wasn't quite what I'd had in mind. And it's hard to sleep when almost every motor vehicle around the hotel seems to be tuned to maximum engine volume.

 

 

[Harriet Vane]

Thanks for sharing! I have laughed out loud, repeatedly.

 

We checked out this morning. I listed the issues and calmly discussed them. They were quite apologetic and refunded us a good portion of what we paid.

[VeteranMom]

Are you in Canaan valley?  There are a bunch of condos there that were really nice back in the early 90s.  I went back a couple of years ago and the place looked exactly the same- just very worn and not maintained.  My parents live in WV now.  My Mom's family is from Elkins.