A lot of people on this board travel frequently and I'm sure have had more then their share of nights they'd just as soon forget staying in rent-a-beds. An ex and I rented a room at a mountain top hotel on a Wednesday in the dead of winter for a romantic night together. All was going well until about 11PM when a party erupted in the room next to ours. After 15-20 minutes of people yelling and screaming I got out of bed and banged on the common door used to connect our two rooms yelling for them to hold it the fuck down. They banged back and laughed, so I called the front desk. I heard the phone ring and ring in the next room but the party never answered the phone. Another 5 minutes and I was getting highly pissed off and called the front desk asking what they were going to do about this. I was told "They aren't answering their phone so there is nothing we can do about it." Oh fucking really? Then I'll do something about it. I sprang out of bed and went storming out the door ready to kick someone's ass, followed close behind by my girlfriend who didn't want me to cause any trouble. (Some close friends of hers owned the hotel.) I stood in the hallway in my boxers and pounded the ever loving shit out of the door next to our room. They all got quiet and refused to answer the door. It was about this time that I realized I'd made a horrible miscalculation in my brilliant plan to have them quiet down. I didn't bring my room key with me. I had to walk down into the lobby clad in only boxers and ask for someone to let us back into our room. A security guard was summoned and took us back to get back in our room. By this time the party next door was in full swing again and he started to understand our frustration and reported it to the front desk. They're response? "We can move Mr. and Mrs. Toytoy to another room." I was fed up, tired, and somewhat embarrassed. Why the fuck should we have to move? We weren't doing anything wrong, but we were told that's the only thing they could do to rectify the situation, so we agreed. We got to our new room at 1AM. Bear in mind that this was an off peak day at a mountain resort in the middle of winter. They'd had the heat turned down in the room to 45 degrees for days since they weren't expecting anyone in that room. It had a wall heater that would raise the temperature about 1 degree per hour and a king sized bed with one fucking thin quilt on it. The night at the hotel cost me $250 to get pissed off, have to wander into the lobby in my boxers, and then freeze my ass off. At least we were lucky and knew the owners of the place. The whole night staff was fired as soon as we got home. Focus: What's your worst stay in a hotel/motel?
I'm sure everyone knows about the whole concept of adjoining hotel rooms for the point of letting larger groups effectively share one room. Great concept. What's not so great is when the people on the other side of the room want to fuck and have zero shame about it. I played some soft music so the people on my side could ignore the sounds emanating from the other and get some sleep. To make matters worse, it wasn't so much that sex was going on that was bad, but the combination of the door being open and sound travelling effortlessly between the rooms, and the particular people involved. Oh well. P.S. As an anti-focus, and for your enlightenment, I highly suggest findind one of these hotels if you're travelling where one is: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.althotel.ca/en/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.althotel.ca/en/</a> It's pretty barebones in terms of service and amenities, but it's cheap as hotels go and has some seriously nice furniture on the inside (the most comfortable mattress and sheets I've ever slept in). Also, they serve booze at the front desk. Just try to ignore the irritating trendiness.
You actually paid for the room?! What kind of pussy are you?! If it had been me, they would have been lucky that I didn't bust down the door and start beating them with a tire iron! Not really a bad experience, but the last time I shacked up with my lady friend at a Days inn, I explained to her that whenever I stay in a hotel that I hide my valuables under the box springs when I'm out. She didn't know that was possible and thought that they were bolted to the floor, so I felt obliged to show her. When I lifted the bed, what to our wondering eyes should appear but a crack heads' party gear! There was aluminum foil, empty coke bags, baking soda, cut-up and charred cans with crack residue on them, and some pine cleaner for some reason. Here's a picture:
I work as a receptionist in a hotel, and the horror stories are much worse from behind the scenes. The hotel i'm currently at? The cleaners do jack shit. I have to go around and check the rooms to make sure they've done their jobs, and 99% of the time they're fucking disgusting. -Pubic hairs on taps and in sink? Check. -Still-wet urine puddled all over the toilet? Check. -Toothpaste smeared over sink and taps? Check. I could go on. Seriously, the cleaners just walk into the rooms, make the beds, and pretend the bathroom doesn't exist. This wouldn't be THAT disasterous if the room checks were done in the morning whilst the cleaners were still in the hotel - in that case they're made to re-clean the rooms before they leave, and most importantly, before the guests arrive. But due to ridiculous budget problems and staff-shortages, we don't have any receptionists in the hotel in the mornings. That means that when I come on shift at 3pm, the cleaners have gone. The guests are allowed to start checking in at 3pm. Thus ensues a crazy game of "switch the guests to a cleaner room without letting them know about the dog hairs on the pillow in the original room." I have to be creative with the excuses I make. But on the other hand, some of the guests are just as bad. Some of the people who stay in our hotels are complete fuck-ups. I've had: - A guy check in for two nights, and proceed to get high on god knows what, then BUTTER HIS SHOE, and throw ALL his crap (clothes included) plus aforementioned buttered shoe, out of the window. - Another guy decided instead of being normal and having a shower IN the shower, he'd stretch the shower head and have a shower in the middle of the fucking room. For about an hour. When we went into the room after he'd left, the floor was flooded with 1 1/2 inches of water. The carpets and floors were ruined, putting the room offline for weeks. - Some guy who decided he wanted to smoke in the hotel room (which is illegal and you can be fined for doing so), and had the idea of smearing an entire tube of toothpaste on the smoke detector in the ceiling. Damn, that thing was a bitch to clean afterwards. And the two worst ones? One guy had a shit in the wastepaper bin. Without a binbag. And another person decided to stuff toilet paper, covered in his own shit, down the back of the cushions on the sofa. It took all the staff so long to work out where the fucking disgusting smell was coming from. I think it was around that point when I lost faith in humanity.
My wife had to request a new set of sheets at our last stay at La Quinta due to a brown spot on the bed sheets. I know the maid that changes those sheets doesn't know the English word for "shit stain". But she should.
Me and 4 buddies went to spring training in Phoenix back in 2006. My buddy had gone 5 years in a row so I trusted him with our hotel accommodations. Me and him drove from San Francisco to pick up his buddy in LA then on to Phoenix, the other 2 guys flew in from New York and San Diego, with the guy who lives in NY making the reservations. Now I had never been to Phoenix so the street address "32nd and Van Buren" meant absolutely nothing to me. We pull into the first Travelodge and he goes to check in and they say they don't have our reservation, that it's probably at the one down the street about a mile or so, but they have an open room and we're tired so we take it. We unpack our shit call a cab and head down to the local watering hole called "The OX" and proceed to get shit faced. Bells should have started going off when I called a friend who lived there and told him where we were staying at and he laughed and said "good luck" and hung up the phone. Coming back to our hotel we notice that there is a strip club across the street but its closed, but there are still a bunch of girls standing outside and about 5 minutes later 3 cops roll up and bust some guys for solicitation, the weekend is off to a great start. Next day we load up my car and head down to the other Travelodge and they say they have our reservation and we are early for check in and to come back later. Whatever, we park my car get a cab and head to the USA v. South Africa WBC game, then to the bars in Scottsdale. We get back to our hotel around 2 am and there is a lone guy working the desk. My buddy goes and talks to him...no reservation and no rooms available. What the fuck. We all go into the lobby because frankly I'm scared to be sitting in my car at this point. After 20 minutes of arguing about our reservation this conversation takes place: Friend: I was here earlier today and whoever working said you had our reservation and to come back later Desk Clerk: Nope, nothing under that name. Friend: Can you call your manager? DC: I don't have his number. Friend: You don't have your managers number? What is the number for your corp. office? Who was working earlier? DC: I don't have that number, and I don't know. Friend: So you can't call anyone? DC: No. Friend: Who would you call if this place was on fire? DC: The police Friend: Call them. So the desk clerk proceeds to call the police and tell him there are 5 guys in his lobby threatening him. Only two of my friends were talking to him, the other 3 of us were sitting in chairs trying not to pass out. Meanwhile in walks this skeevy guy and what looks to be a hooker. They walk up to the front desk and immediately get a room. We are dumbfounded. 5 minutes later the cops show up, and by this time all 5 of us are sitting/laying in the chairs in the lobby barely awake. The cops are confused and ask where the guys who were threatening the desk clerk went. He points to us and the cop gives him a "are you serious" look and asks the what the problem is. We explain the situation and why the desk clerk called the police. About 5 more minutes pass and the skeevy dude and the hooker come back down and say the room smells and they don't want it. We say we'll take it and the cop looks at the desk clerk and asks if thats alright to which he had no choice but to say yes. It later occurred to us that this was the type of hotel that probably kept a few rooms open for drug deals / sex and the only reason we got the room was because the cop was there. The couple wasn't lying though, the room smelled like sex and freshly smoked crack but we could care less, and we realized that no matter what damage we did to the room it wouldn't matter, so we destroyed it. Also when we left in the morning to go get drunk some more we saw flyers all around the outside of the hotel asking for information about a murder that happened there a month before we got there. Some sweet reviews of the hotel No idea why it says Knights Inn, but that is definitely the travelodge we stayed at.
I think I was in the 8th grade when I had to go on a trip to some science competition. Don't laugh. We were staying somewhere outside of Albuquerque, NM I think, but I'm not quite sure where. It wasn't a large hotel chain, but rather some mom and pop enterprise. The name should have been Squalor Inn. The furniture was half broken. Some lamps didn't work. I wasn't used to fancy digs by any means so this wasn't a problem until I saw the bathroom. Behind the toilet was a full fledged mushroom colony. We tried to get out science advisor to change our rooms. That was a no go. Instead he deemed it an instructional opportunity. And yes, it was the first time I heard the "C'mon, Mr. Bartender I promise I'm a fungi" joke.
Toytoy, I feel your pain, except in my case the loud music was coming from a nightclub next door. One that apparently didn't believe in soundproofing. Then there was the time we had to change rooms twice because of cleanliness issues. Another time there was a cop interrogating a hooker right outside our window. The fanciest hotel room I've ever stayed in was the venue for my most memorable hotel mishap, though by no fault of the hotel's. The Seoul Plaza Hotel in South Korea. First night there, having arrived from the Phillippines that day, I was looking forward to a hot shower. I stripped down, then opened my toiletries bag to pull out my shampoo....and saw movement. Screaming at the top of my lungs, I flung the bag down and dashed out of the bathroom. Afraid of it getting out of the bathroom, I bravely went back in and dumped the contents of the bag into the tub. I frantically searched my belongings for the...whatever it was. Nothing. I was horrified by the possibility that The Thing had indeed escaped out of the bathroom. If I couldn't find it, there was no way I would be able to sleep that night. I looked everywhere, wondering if maybe I had imagined the whole thing, and then it finally occurred to me that maybe it didn't make it out of the bag. I crept back over to the bag (mind you, I'm stark naked this whole time) and peered in. More movement! After I finished screaming, I shook the bag more thoroughly over the tub. Finally the behemoth emerged. It was a cockroach the size of a teacup chihuaha. I could only think that maybe it had been normal size when it crawled into my bag, and then when it went through various x-rays at the airport, it had mutated to its current mass. Fortunately it was still susceptible to the usual methods of dispatch - I happened to have a can of bug spray and unloaded the entire contents onto it. After shoveling it up and flushing it down the toilet, I briefly wondered if it would mutate further in the sewers of Korea. Apparently it did not - I haven't heard anything regarding Godzirra vs. Cockloach.
Thailand. That's probably enough said, but let me tell my story... In '95 I went with my family to Thailand. Sadly we didn't hit the touristy spots like Phuket, we hit the local places. One of those places was Ray Yong. It seemed to be a great deal, a room on the 10th floor overlooking the ocean for about $50. Then reality set in. The goddamn hotel was made out of concrete and it was well over 100 degrees outside with the humidity approaching the same. The only way to activate the AC in my room was to be in the room with my hotel key in the thermostat. Thankfully I found a way to defeat that thanks to my McGyver instincts, some carefully placed tape, and a credit card, I could leave my room and the air conditioner would continue to run. The Gecko (Or whatever the fuck it was) that was living on my wall did not appreciate the sudden drop in temperature. When I returned to my room that night it was chirping (Or whatever the fuck noise it is Geckos make when they're displeased) to high hell. I ignored it as best I could, raided the mini bar and passed out. The next morning I found a dead lizard (I'm guessing he died of hypothermia at 68 degrees) and a huge blood spot on the bed I'd just slept it. I mean a fucking HUGE bloody mess. Like someone had slammed a Nautilus class submarine into an unwilling virgin while I lay peacefully passed out worrying about the lizard that was freezing to death. I didn't even bring this up to the folks at the front desk because I already felt bad enough about killing their lizard. I hate to admit this, but I taped the lizard to the wall and hoped they wouldn't notice...and thankfully they didn't. Those lizards don't move a whole lot and he had a nice sheen to him when I checked out. That sheen was probably thanks to the cellophane tape. Fuck it, if the maids don't notice a bloody sheet I highly doubt that they'll notice I taped one of their lizards to the wall.
I was trying to think of a time I stayed in subpar accommodations, but that has yet to happen. I don't fucks with poor people shit.
That was a good read, especially the one about the break in while the guy was sleeping in his room. FOCUS: I once stayed at this dive in Allan, Saskatchewan with an ex-girlfriend. My car started making angry noises as we were passing through that shithole at 1am, so we turned around and hit the hotel. This hotel, is also a karaoke bar apparently frequented by hardcore alcoholics, bikers, the unemployable, and anyone else who would live in a shithole Allan. I don't give a damn what their website says. It should've been paved over years ago. Anyways, we walk into the lobby, which has several crusty fuckers and old haggard women playing on greasy VLTs, and my girlfriend decides she's going to go wait in the car while I get the room. She heads to the car, while I head inside to the bar. I'm easily the youngest guy in there by 15 years and I try to avoid eye contact as I walk up to the bartender to ask who rents the rooms. He says he does and asks for $20. I hand him the twenty and he gives me a key with one of those giant fucking rasps attached and I high-tail it out of there. I get back to the car to grab the girlfriend and she's understandably scared about staying the night here, but I convince her it'll be fine and try to act the tough guy by grabbing my hunting knife out of my pack and strapping it to my belt. Truth be told I think I was as scared as she was. We make it upstairs to where the rooms are, but none of them are labeled, and it then clicks in that I wasn't even told what room number we were given. I was in too much of a hurry to get the fuck out of there. So, we start trying doors, because I'll be damned if I'm going back down there. First three didn't work, and then when I tried the fourth one, this old man, easily 60 opens the door and starts going off on me, which I understand. I start apologizing profusely and say "I'm sorry, didn't know this was your room." He looks me right in the eye and says. "This aint my room, boy. I live here!" Jesus butt-fucking Christ... The old man slams the door on us and we find our room on the fifth try. It's a dingy little room with a lamp that didn't work, a double bed, and one of those pull string light switches. The bathroom is apparently down the hall. Great. Well, we try to make the best of the night, despite the shitty room and terrible singing coming from downstairs, and start fooling around. She likes to finish on top and she's riding me to the Breeder's Cup when someone walks in the fucking room. Some broad who just stands with her jaw-dropped like I was murdering a baby with a boning knife. She wasn't even in the doorway. She'd actually stepped into the damn room! I sit up, almost knocking the girlfriend off of me, and yell a string of curses at this woman until she smartens the fuck up and leaves. I guess the door locks don't work either. At this point, the girlfriend is righteously pissed at the whole situation, has gotten off of me and rolls over. She woke me up at 7am and we took off. The capper? No one was there to take my room key when we left. I just dangled it off the handle of a VLT. Fuck Allan. I didn't even get to come.
As a traveler, I've been lucky - no major mishaps. I was given keys to an already occupied room once in Fayetteville, NC. The only other bad experience was one that was partly my fault - it was on a university band trip to Florida. Let's just put it this way - 4 guys + Taco Bell + one bathroom/toilet = unhappy maintenance guy. That guy was so pissed at us, I know he was glad when we left. Like Cadders, I also work at the front desk of a hotel - not as a receptionist, as a Night Auditor. I honestly have more horror stories about customers than I do things done wrong by our staff (although, it's a comedy of errors to get shit done there sometimes). Our fire alarm system is a piece of shit - so terrible, in fact, that it often goes off randomly on very humid nights. I've had very angry fire marshalls in my face many times. What makes it even more fun is that our maintenance dept. doesn't really give a shit, so I'm fairly sure that when the day does come that our place is burning down the fire department is probably just going to ignore us. I can speak from experience - weird shit goes down after 11pm. You get to meet some interesting characters at that time of night.
Per a rep point, I wracked my brain trying to remember what the first room change was about. No memory of it at all. Whatever it was, it was something we noticed right away when we got into the hotel room. After we complained to the front desk, they moved us to another room. We took a good look around, were satisfied, then changed into our night clothes to go to bed. As I was setting my glass of water on the bedside table, I noticed a line of ants marching across it. I remember being so tired that I wanted to just ignore it till the morning, but it was the kind of setup where the table was attached to the headboard - so it would have been easy for them to migrate over to my face during the night. So this time we had to get dressed, repack whatever had made it out of the suitcase, etc, before heading to room number 3. The funny thing was that we joked on the way to the hotel that we would get a substandard room because we had a coupon that would comp our second night.
I stayed in a motel in Corona, CA about a decade back and I distinctly remember the hookers in the other room. The police that came to visit numerous times, and this thick colorless liquid on the nightstand. My friends and I still stayed there, sleeping fully clothed and treating the shower like a gym locker room, sandals needed. Not to be off focus, but at least HALF the city of Corona sucks. The only redeaming quality that side provides is room for dairy farms and paintball fields. And do you guys know where paintball fields are erected? Places several miles away from populated areas. And that special spot of Corona isn't populated because it smells like cow shit.
My friend died this last December. A few of us shared a Knight's Inn room in Atlantic City for the funeral. The tackiness of being buried in the Atlantic City area is a story for another day. $28 dollars a night got you a shower whose ceiling was completely molded over, a non-smoking room that smelled like an ashtray, a continental breakfast, and a crackhead knocking on your door at 10 p.m. asking about jobs in the area. We're in a motel, driving a car with out of state tags. We have our thumb on the pulse of this town. The Meth was strong with this one. At about midnight we're having a few somber drinks and I hear this faint voice. I tell everyone to shutup. Through the walls we can hear the neighbors. The same meth head and a woman. No doubt this guy has taken up residence here. They start getting into it. At first I thought they were having skeevy meth sex. No. I crane my head closer to the wall in time to hear "GEEYIT OUTTA MAH ROOOOOOOM!" "No. You're a fuckin PIG!" So, naturally, here's 3 drunk guys using the complimentary drinking glasses against the wall to amplify the redneck marital spat. Meth Man: "You're a liar and a PIG!" Meth Woman: GEYIT OUTTA MAH ROOM!" Meth Man: "Shut your mouth, you whore!" Meth Woman (screeching now): "Let go of me! Get outta my room!" It went back and forth like this for a solid 30 minutes. They said the same goddamn thing to each other. There was barely any variation with what they were yelling. We heard them tussling, some knocking around until Meth Man slammed the door and took of on his bicycle. In December. In Jersey. Apparently NJ has some fine specimens of Deep South caliber white-trash.
This really isn't so much a horror story, but it was kind of funny. Once again it involves Thailand. We checked into the My House Hotel (Which literally translated into English means "No House") in Bangkok. The first thing I noticed walking into my room was an overpowering stench. The previous occupant of the room had left durian in the mini fridge despite signs all over the place saying "No Durian." (For those of you unfamiliar with durian: <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian</a> ) The next thing I noticed was shit stains in my toilet. I got on the phone to the front desk and raised royal hell which did little good since they didn't speak English and I didn't speak Thai. They finally got the jist of my yelling and sent a maid up to my room. She couldn't understand my babbling about shit stains in my toilet so I led her to it. She looked at the shit stains, then at me and grinned. Then she kicked off her sandal, lifted her sarong a bit, and stuck her foot in the fucking toilet. She swished her foot around the bowl a few times and then grinned at me like she'd just shit a Christmas tree. I tipped her 50 Baht (About $1 at the time.) Fuck it, it was worth a buck to see a woman wash the shit stains out of my toilet with her bare foot.
Some old college buddies and I headed up to Charlotte N.C. for a weekend of drunken stupidity. By day the places didn't seem too bad, although there was definitely shit all over the bathroom wall. We got back at 2 or 3 in the morning and things got interesting. We had hookers on both sides of us. We had a couple very large, fresh out the pen, looking dudes come by our room for a beer and a smoke that were patrons of these ladies. Room with a gun clip in the dresser with the Gideon? Check. We call the front desk, who send an armed security guard up to the room, who proceeds to just toss the clip in the trash can. Find out he's one of the 'Assassins' from the old southern wrestling circuits. One of my buddies keeps on antagonizing the man, being an ass when he's drunk, and gets his ass whooped and twists his ankle after a bull rush. After hanging out another few minutes we get to watch him bust a guy trying to break into his pickup. While all this is happening there's a thunderstorm going on, and after a night of heavy drinking and other recreational activities, we were all pretty sure we were going to die in this shit hole.
"Anti focus" : A few people have mentioned SEA, especially Thailand. Well, I've had nothing but awesome experiences in south east Asia. And I never pay over 10-12 USD, and I've had some really nice places. I figure it is common sense to request to see the room before staying the night. I've avoided a few shit holes this way. But if you stay in a terrible place, you only have yourself to blame for not looking at the room first. I thought it was very common for people to do this! Sometimes when I arrive in a new place, I might see six or more different guesthouses/hotels/hostels before deciding on a place. In the southern part of Thailand, I stayed in an awesome guesthouse which was really just a house with a few extra rooms, for a few nights, for 250 baht a night. It was small, really peaceful, homey and nice, and I had access to the entire place: Kitchen, living room, etc. And the cousin (of the owner) even cooked me breakfast, no charge. In Vietnam, I saw a huge rat run under a bed. Good thing I was only looking at the room to see if I wanted to do business. I took my business elsewhere, and found a great place for maybe 8 USD a night.
This isn't a horror story, but it's happening right now and it's pretty funny. I'm in Key West right now staying at the "visitor barracks." A lot of military family members are here too. There's this black couple next door, and they're having a very loud, angry conversation with someone on the phone. I'm having fun trying to figure out exactly what's going on. Some excerpts include: "By the hospital! Axe somebody for a drug test!" "This whole TOWN is racist!" "Go to work, and go home! Get the drug test first! I DONT GIVE A FUCK! Hello? What's wrong?" Hmm.