Typically when I read reviews and see several bad ratings, I think, "These folks are probably just extremely picky, and the vocal minority, most people are only going to leave reviews when they have bad experiences, thus ratings will be unfairly biased, etc." I stand corrected on this one.
I see that someone posted about new management in December of 2006. If what they said was true, this place must have been a cave before the new management took over.
Against my better judgment, we booked our room online as my wife had stayed here when she was younger and had many fond memories of her stays here. I noticed the reviews weren't great, but as mentioned above, and my wife's description I figured it couldn't be that bad.
First Impressions:
Check in went smoothly, staff was courteous. However when we got to our FIRST room, it went downhill. We opened the door and the smell of hot, wet dog smacked me in the face. I immediately went to turn the AC on and found the knobs and control panel to be broken off..... yeah.....
We went back up to the front desk and reported the problem and requested another room. One of the staff members said it would be difficult due to all of the events here this weekend, however the other staff member came over and instructed her to try, and what do you know, they had a room available!!
So on to room number two. We walk in and get the wet dog smell, but the AC is a least blowing a bit. I crank it to the coldest setting on the thermostat and hi cool, and, nothing happens....air doesn't cool down, air doesn't blow harder on Hi cool vs. Lo Cool..... at this point my wife is ready to leave, cut our losses and find another hotel. I told her that maybe it just needed to "warm up" and to give it a little while. So we unload the car and get things into the room.
The grease stains on the wall over the bed were a bit disconcerting, as were the ant and what appeared to be pubic hairs on the washcloths in the bathroom. I wasn't too bothered by this as I'm sure this occurs elsewhere, it was just found by my wife who was going over everything with a fine-toothed comb due to our other issues. The bed has some obvious spring wear as you can feel the springs in some areas of the bed but not in others. The little touch ups that could be made would be cheap and easy to give a sense of pride of ownership from hotel management. Right now it appears that the very bare minimum is being done to keep these rooms in working condition.
Other "minor" things:
Wasp nest and wasps camping out on the upper left corner of our door.....maybe some type of new wake up call??
Hole in the wall in the bathroom.
Cobwebs on the ceiling.
Ice bucket had mildew growing in it.
Paint peeling above the shower head in the bathroom.
Stained sheets....yikes!!
We decided to stay the night as we had already paid $80+ on Orbitz for the room and could not get a refund according to their terms of use. The aforementioned mildew bucket, cobwebs and hole in the wall were found last night and this morning. I will say the indoor pool and arcade would be nice for kids, but I don't know if I could justify that to stay in a room with the same issues we had. I think we can safely say that unless there is a complete, from the ground up renovation of this hotel, we will not be staying here again.












