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My Hotel Ruined My Vacation
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AAAMy fiancé and some friends went down to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands and booked the Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort & Spa. The resort was fantastic, with a nice beach area, a bar, and lots of game areas.
From where we were staying at the resort, there was a very long wooden staircase that led all the way to the beach. We were all out having a good time one night, but my fiancé decided to head back to the room. Later, when I was walking back up the wooden staircase, I started seeing drops of blood periodically. Weird. So I followed the trail to the elevator and when the elevator door opened I saw a large pool of blood on the floor. It looked liked someone had been stabbed. I didn't want to get into the elevator, of course, so I walked up the stairwell. The trail started again on the third floor and led to another elevator, which also had a pool of blood in it. I was really afraid at this point, and ran back to the room to make sure my fiancé wasn't in trouble (he was fine). I told him that we had to go tell someone at the front desk that someone at the hotel was in big trouble. With all the blood, it really was like a scene from I Know What You Did Last Summer or something!
We hurried to the lobby and the man working the front desk just sort of brushed it off and hands us a couple of towels so we could clean it up ourselves. I'm really upset at this point. It was offensive that he would give us towels to clean up blood and I refused to take them. It's a health issue! You're at the beach, a lot of people are walking around barefoot, and just the amount of blood in so many different places. If anyone had stepped on any of that blood it could have been a precarious situation.
I did hear later, through word of mouth, that someone had cut themselves pretty badly on the beach, and the cops were actually in the room of the injured person. I don't know if it was an accident or a crime, but I assume it was an accident.
My husband and I try to go away every year. For this vacation we went through one of those travel agents in the mall, who helped us arrange a one-week trip to the Occidental Grand Xcaret, an all-inclusive resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
Only after we arrived did we realize they were filming the reality show Celebrity Mole at the resort.
We saw some of the cast on their time off between shoots -- Angie Everhart, Dennis Rodman, Mark Curry, and Corbin Bernsen (who was sporting short shorts). There was no escaping them and all anybody could talk about was "I saw so-and-so by the pool today!"
The folks in the room next to ours must have been part of the crew. They would leave their room early in the morning without turning off their alarm, which was set for 5 am. On multiple occasions we'd have to call the front desk and ask them to come and shut it off.
And since the filming was going on, areas of the beach were closed off for lighting equipment and what not. The huge equipment looming in the public areas didn't exactly add to the ambiance. There would also be random restaurant closures. One night we went to the buffet restaurant, where reservations weren't required, only to find out it was closed. It was too late to reserve a table at one of the other restaurants, so we were stuck with quick-service pizza and burritos for dinner. Another night, we were hanging out at the sports bar at the resort. There was still half an hour before it was supposed to close, but we were told we had to leave now because they were hosting a private late-night party for the crew and celebrities.
On our last day at the resort, a cell phone company conference descended on the hotel and banners were placed all over the pool area and elsewhere. You pay a good amount of money to be on vacation and you don't want to see all these advertisements hanging by the bar, by the pool, all along the walls. It's not attractive. We haven't been back and I don't think we will.
My now-husband and I ventured up to Mendocino County for a romantic weekend in September 2008 to celebrate an anniversary. We had booked two nights at a hotel called the Beachcomber in Fort Bragg because it was the only place in town with direct beach access. Its name made it seem quite quaint and remote, so we were hoping for a relaxing stay away from the city.
We arrived to find the hotel not at all what we were expecting, nor what the website depicted. The room was more or less a rickety bedside table, TV bolted to the wall, and double bed with a scratchy quilt (I cringed thinking about taking a black light to it). The bathroom didn't look like it had been cleaned after the previous guests, and there was a filmy residue all over the shower. The place was pet friendly, and since the walls were paper-thin we were forced to listen to a dog bark all night through one side of the wall. The neighbors on the other side of our room were a couple whose adult activities were not muffled either.
By 5 am, it was clear we weren't going to be able to sleep due to the noise, so we decided we'd find another hotel for Saturday night. Once it was a reasonable hour to get up and move around, we went down the road to a much nicer hotel. We explained the situation to the woman in charge and asked if they had rooms available. They did, but unfortunately it was way out of our price range. In a moment of error, I named the hotel where we were staying. That's a lesson to learn in small towns: Everyone knows everyone else's business.
We finally found a reasonably-priced B&B, checked in, and went back to the Beachcomber to get our bags. It seemed like they were watching for us. We parked right near the room and went in to quickly grab our stuff, but soon enough the owner was knocking on our door. The woman from the other hotel had called and told the Beachcomber owner that we were dissatisfied with our room and were leaving. My husband was very polite and explained that the room was not what we were expecting. She said she could give us another room (even though we'd called the night before and they claimed they were booked solid all weekend and couldn't give us a new one). We stood firm and told her we had found another hotel. The owner starting getting teary and spouting all these excuses -- there had been management issues, they had a fire, and a lot of people had quit -- things you would never tell a guest. We had to stand our ground and leave for our own sanity. But it was very uncomfortable, and I have not been back to Ft. Bragg since then. I really love the area, but that experience sure left a bad taste in my mouth!
My girlfriend and I went to Roatan to go diving and to spend a little quality time in a luxury resort. For the diving portion of our trip we stayed at a rather bare-bones place. It was a lot of fun, but we were looking forward to upgrading to a fancier resort to finish our vacation. We'd been told by employees of the Infinity Bay Spa & Beach Resort that it was the newest luxury resort on the island, had been on a popular travel site's gold list, and so on. Yet when we arrived at the hotel, it wasn't even open!
Instead of a lobby there was a makeshift little room filled with old computers and ringing telephones. They couldn't find our reservation -- they had thought we were coming two months later. But no problem, there were plenty of rooms available. It turns out only 25 percent of the resort was even complete. Most of the resort was still covered in tarps, not quite the atmospheric, paradise ambiance we were expecting. And since it was still a construction site, jackhammering would start at 7 am and go until 5 pm. On the upside, our room was superbly finished and looked grand -- if you could tune out the noise. The pool was open and was quite nice, but the restaurant and gym weren't completed yet. The only place to eat at the resort was a snack-style restaurant by the pool with a very limited menu and a few tables under umbrellas.
The resort is located in an "off the beaten path" section of Roatan, so there wasn't a lot to do unless we wanted to drink constantly. Our nearest activity was a small strip mall with a convenience store and an Internet café (the Internet wasn't working at the hotel) where we ended up spending a lot of time since a small hurricane whirled above Central America the entire length of our vacation. I'm not blaming the hotel for the weather, of course, but it didn't help to improve our moods. We were going crazy from the rain, lack of things to do, and depressing state of the unfinished resort (we didn't see another guest at the hotel for five solid days). We decided to call our airline to see if we could fly home two days early, but no such luck. Instead, we bought some tepid and uninteresting books to kill the hours until we could leave.
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Roatan is a pit. Nude children with no shoes walking through raw sewage begging for pennies. Stay away for that hell hole. Even the fancy areas have armed guards with machine guns at the gates.
December 22 2010 at 7:02 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyIn July, I went to Ashland Virginia for a vacation of a few days. I was in the process of moving but could not move into my apartment in Florida yet, so I decided to do some sightseeing before going to FL. I stopped at what I thought was a Motel 6, as it was the only room available in the area. I checked into the room, and started putting my belongings into the room. I go to where the sink is, and the carpets are so wet that water sloshes up over my toes. I go to the front desk and ask for another room. THe front desk clerk was very helpful, let me look at a room on the second floor. I told him that the new room was fine.
I start putting my stuff back into the car since the new room was on the opposite side of the hotel. The owner of the motel comes to the room to look at it. He finds out which room that I am in, and says that since I am traveling alone I cannot stay in that room, since they charge for each additional person. He shows me the room next to the one that I was staying in. It has the same problem, and the door will not lock! He shows me a third room, and it is fine. But by that time it has been rented out. He puts me in the room above the first one that I was in. THe AC was really loud, but I could deal with that. I start moving my stuff.
I notice him picking up some of my belongings and ask him to leave the stuff alone, that I would mvoe my stuff myself. He refuses. I demand him to give me back my stuff. He says he is not helping, but he is taking the belongings as security. I ask him what for, and he says that it is because he does not trust my type. I demand again for my belongings, and he refuses to give them to me. I ask them what he meant and he said that he does not trust white people. I demand my belongs again, tell him that in America he is not allowed to take somebodies belongings without their permission. He refuses and calls his wife to the room, and I call the cops. His wife says that I will get my stuff back if I agree to leave the hotel and they will not charge me. I agree as I no longer want to do business with them.
I go to checkout, and he refuses to give me back my money as he is at the front desk when I get there. The police say that since his wife gave me back my belongings that it is not a case of petty theft anymore, and since they have a sign saying no refunds they cant help me there either.
I complain the next day to Motel 6 Headquarters and to the Better Business Bureau. They say that there is no Motel 6 in Ashland. Turns out, they lost their Motel 6 franchise rights 6 months prior and the owner was too cheap to change over to the new logo, which was America Budget Inn.
I ended up sleeping in my car at a rest area that night since there were no hotels with rooms available anywhere near Ashland. That ruined my plans for visiting DC, since I was so tired, cranky, and had intended to leave my belongings in a hotel room, while I went sightseeing for the next day. I ended up heading to FL early.
I had to plan a trip to Bogota, Colombia a few months ago and decided that I wanted to stay on a really nice hotel. Very well, I booked 2 nights at the Dann Carlton located downtown near all the museums and so on. What a mess! Bogota is usually quite cold...at 6am I really just don't want to take a COLD shower; however, I had to because the hotel had no hot showers. I was also shocked when the lady at the desktop told me they didn't have shampoo, soap, rinse and all that stuff. My mother was coming the next day and for dinner she didn't want to go out (downtown area where the hotel is located can be quite dangerous after 5pm). Therefore, we decided to dine at the hotel restaurant. Good lord, I sincerely would've just starved to death! I asked for some napolitan pasta; which is usually quite good; at least for most places I've been to. alas! after waiting for over an hour (and I must say the restaurant was EMPTY) they brought my pasta... cheap pasta bathed on some really awkward red salty salsa; it was so salty I couldn''t eat it. My mother asked for a veggie soup, given the cold weather and this veggie soup contained the following: canned peas and carrots -not very well cooked-, water and too much salt. Neither of us could eat; the waiter was shocked when we told him that the food was terrible and... as because this isn't enough; they actually charged our meal and it wasn't cheap!! nearly $30USD... $30USD is NOT cheap for such ridiculously crappy food. That same night, I nearly broke 2 of my fingers because the bed was a bit of a facade; it had no back thing (I don't know how it's called), but pretty much the mattress was on its own and behind it, against the wall there was a big wooden thing that I thought was the "back thing" normal beds have...well no; I was going to move the bed because the remote fell behind it and it turns out the wooden thing was completely separate from the bed, therefore when I moved the mattress that REALLY HEAVY wooden thing smashed my fingers against the wall.
Breathless. Ridiculously expensive; terrible service, horrible food oh man... I still can't cope when I recall the experience.
Forget the East German guards, forget North Korean guards…now the abusive ones are in Portal, North Dakota!
I must begin by saying that as an American international executive I have been in and out of the United States hundreds of times. Always, I was treated with respect, dignity, and most of the time with a smile and a “welcome home.†Always, that is, until last week. This happened in the place you would least expect it: Portal North Dakota, a port of entry into the United States from Canada. There, our standard bearers of border protection seem to have bred in a primordial soup of harsh weather, isolation, lack of entertainment, culture and learning, with the outcome of a combination of arrogance and incompetence, unable to think clearly and relate to others. Another possibility is that they were trained by ex East German guards or the Iranian Republican Army, but that is a far more remote possibility. Forget their rudeness, inefficiency (dozens of truck drivers delayed and being questioned over and over about their name, etc.—questions that I can’t imagine yield any terrorist arrests since these drivers are handing over their passports at the border) but when my sweet wife was questioned for over an hour by a husky woman who at times would yell at her demanding that she tell her “who she really was, since the pictures in her passport and driver’s license weren’t hers,†I realized how much power we have given up and how close we have come to being just another police state. I know this seems bizarre, of course the pictures were hers, of course they eventually had to let us go since we are two tax-paying, law abiding citizens with the proper documents and nothing to hide, but the experience was frustrating, tiring and upsetting.
I imagine that Central American gang members, Mexican drug lords, and religious fanatics from the world over must use Portal, North Dakota as their favorite port of entry into the United States. It’s clear, isn’t it? If the guards there spend hours harassing hard working truck drivers and innocent law abiding citizens, what time do they have for those who pose a real threat? How and when did we give up our right to be treated fairly and with dignity? When does border protection stop, and heavy-handedness begin?
I don’t intend to stop travelling internationally, but I will not make the same mistake again of driving across the border. I will from now on choose ports of entry with a higher emotional intelligence: Miami, L.A., Chicago, Washington. But I still feel bad for those truck drivers who are no doubt harassed at their every crossing, which for many must be more than once a week.
Remember American ex-pats, vacationers, retirees in Costa Rica, Italy, Uruguay or New Zealand. If you are planning to visit home, whatever you do, don’t come through Portal. The rude and inefficient border guards could be the reason that Air New Zealand hasn’t began to fly there yet…
Professor P
On a trip with my parents and their dog through Southern Utah, my mom booked all our hotel stays at pet-friendly hotels. This was a new concept for us.
Most were great but there was one in Moab that was kinda cheesy and kinda dirty. Next day I found out there was one other problem--fleas! I had been bitten about 40 times over my torso during the night. My parents were unscathed.
Needless to say, we will never stay there again.
I have sat here and read all the comments and stories people have told,,Some funny some not so funny! I will say and My husband tells me all the time I am a "Hotel Snob" We have stayed at some wonderful hotels and we have stayed at some dumps! Our most recent trip we took was just a weekend getaway with our two teenage daughters and our neighbors to Panama City Beach Fla. We literally decided last minute that we would look at the map, pick a beach location and go for Memorial Day weekend. Well Panama City was the concensus! So we started researching online,,I have booked alot of hotels and actually was in charge of doing so for a sports program both of my girls participated in so I know what to look for, know what to ask and felt certain we had a winner! Well,,, we did as long as we wanted to be outside on the property for the entire weekend! We booked and stayed at the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort Panama City. It looked Awesome as we drove in, it was a gorgeous beach, wonderful pool, tiki bar,kids play splash area,activities from sun up to sun down, with dive in movies poolside and native dancers on the pool deck etc. but the rooms were AWFUL! There was a little carpet around the beds and the rest was tile and old tile and carpet at that,,the rooms smelled old and musty, there were exterior entrances to the rooms which in my opinion means MOTEL not Hotel? Dont get me wrong,,we had a wonderful time,,, afterall, how much time do you really spend in your room anyway? But I think that if they would spend a few bucks on the rooms they have a gold mine because the property was perfect and they had so much to do we never had to leave the resort!!!
July 27 2010 at 9:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI am so sorry to hear of that womans' experience in Mendocino/Fort Bragg..it is a great place to refresh and relax..We have stayed in a cottage in the village of Mendocino (where they filmed Murder She Wrote) for over a decade..the people are laid back and friendly.
My lil heaven on earth for 2 weeks a year and dog friendly too!
My husband & I took a cruise a few years ago. We didn't have a lot of money, so we booked a "cheap" interior room. It ended up being an adjoining room. Our neighbor in the adjoining room (who we didn't know) REALLY liked his marijuana. The smoke would come through the adjoining doors. He smoked all night long. We stuffed towels around the door, it helped a little. The hallway reeked of marijuana smoke.
We had an air conditioner located in the ceiling directly above our bed, we kept it cranked on high to try to keep some fresh air coming in, but it was still really strong.
We talked to the Purser, but they said they didn't have any rooms available for us to move to. I was afraid to complain too much, it's to easy for us to "disappear" in one of the ports or to "fall" overboard if we alienated our neighbor too much. Especially with an adjoining door, our bodies might not have been found for days!
Our last port was Jamaica. Our neigbor scored some really strong ganja there.
The last morning, when we were back in the United States, the US Customs came into our room while I was in the shower. They stepped in, saw the towels around the adjoining door, told us to stay where we were, and went next door and arrested our neighbor.
I ended up with pnuemonia from the air conditioning and had to take another week off work sick. I work in law enforcement. Had to tell my boss that I would probably not pass a drug test when I went back to work.
We do not blame the cruise line, but it was an awakening of how great the USA is! We were glad to come home!
Or maybe it's because no one really likes you fat obnoxious Americans, especially the haughty and arrogant way in which speak with the hotel staff, as if by paying some money you believe that you own those people. Not every part of the world is as slave-service oriented as yours. People serve, but they are not your servants and definitely not your slaves, try to understand that before you venture out of your well the next time. Also, Europe is not cheap, certainly not as cheap as some of the villages you people come from. If you want extra-ordinary service, expect to PAY for it, and not just 100 dollars. Next time, do a bit of research...you are unlikely to find slave-service culture in Europe...unless you pay for it out of your nose.
If it's too much of a hassle for you...stay put in your village (which is probably right for you).
Also, I would tend to agree with Gary. How is it the bloody hotel's fault if some restaurant chooses to close early? It seems you people are idiots of the highest order. The whole world doesn't revolve around you just because you booked a vacation.
And keep visiting Italy. You semi-literate fools will learn more about culture here than you will in your entire lives living in America.
You sound English, not Italian. I'm Canadian, and I think you don't get it. This is a bitch forum, not an "we hate Italy" forum. I have found Americans (Yanks) are at least as polite as any one else, maybe more so.
Way to go to advert visiting Italy.
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