Ever stay at a place where it just seemed like everything was just plain bad? We had that experience at the Yankee Clipper. We reserved two rooms for two nights starting on Thanksgiving. We flew all day from the west coast and arrived at the Clipper just prior to midnight on 11-23. Check-in was smooth and quick. After presenting our Starwood Preferred Guest card we were told yes they did have a room upgrade available and yes we would have an ocean view. That was the last positive experience of our stay. We made our way up to our rooms and upon opening the doors we found both rooms smelled of mold. We quickly located the mold in the closet ceiling (both rooms.) Being extremely tried we decided to deal with it in the morning. After using the restroom we found toilet did not work correctly and all during the night the water in the tank ran. I made several attempts to fix this and finally called the front desk. They told me they’d have someone up first thing in the morning to resolve the issue, gee thanks! At 7:30 the next morning we awoke to the sound of construction, opened the curtains and saw our ocean view was actually a view the building site next door (to be fair you could see the ocean if you pressed your face to the window and looked left.) We woke up and went down for breakfast. A quick view of the $20 buffet told us we should find something else. Wow! Scrambled eggs and cold toast for a mere $20 ea., what a deal! (To be fair I think there was a serving dish for potatoes, it just happened to be empty when we looked in.) When we got back from breakfast we found our toilet did work, but the room safe did not. In both rooms the safe was locked but the codes we entered would not open them. We called and after 30mins or so someone from maintenance arrived and opened the doors. Nothing was missing, but certainly seemed odd that both would fail at the same time. The only thing I could think of was perhaps a power surge. After all the problems I decided not to request any room change, figured with two bad rooms the odds of getting anything better were slim and none. Friday evening we decided to go ahead and have diner at the hotel. Bad idea, really bad idea. Diner for four, no cocktails…just under $200…only took an hour and twenty mins to get served cold food. Actually that’s only half true, my fish was warm but my potatoes were cold. My wife’s rice was warm but her fish was stone cold. I’m not even sure how the cook managed to do that. By this time we were just laughing and decided to stop by the lounge for a quick drink before turning in for the evening. After sitting in the lounge for ten mins and watching the waitress talk to the only other two customers we decided to call it a night.
I was very surprised to have these problems at a Sheraton. I could write off several of our problems as being due to short staffing on the holiday. But the poor room conditions and maintenance would be an issue regardless of available staff. For the price I’d look elsewhere.
