April 05, 2009

The Bad, The Nasty, and The Ugly

First I'm starting off my weekend review by clearing the air, because it's gross and maybe if I get it out of my system I will feel relieved enough to share all the great things that happened on my girls getaway.

For anyone that didn't know or guess we went to Orlando. We stayed in our previously favorite hotel the Double Tree Castle. Why previously favorite you ask? Well it started with the big screen TV. Looks like a nice beautiful innocent tv, right? WRONG! That tv replaced our in room fridge. My sister and I love a bit of juice in the morning and we had one bag packed full of juice awaiting the fridge that wasn't there. "I'm sorry mam, the room was upgraded and now the fridge is $15 per day," Now when we booked the room that mini fridge was listed as an amenity...

Think I'm over reacting? Well just wait. Now that is a high def tv. But of course it doesn't have a high definition feed running to it (except possibly for pay-per-view) so we had a lovely tv and the picture was garbage.

You know the little courtesy bottles of shampoo, conditioner, ect... The Shampoo bottle had been USED, sitting there next to the other bottles as if it was new! I bet Neatrogenia would love to hear about how gross that was.

Next there was no luggage rack. Maybe there never was a luggage rack, I don't rightly recall from past visits, but it's really hard for me, a handicapped woman, to function in a hotel room without a luggage rack. Not to mention my suitcase was down on the dirty carpet.

Dirty carpet you say? Oh yes I say. It had huge stains on it. Ironic for an "upgraded room", but whatever I never expected the place to be "new". Don't worry I have more to back up the dirty carpet. Nearly as soon as we arrived my three year old began bringing me candy. Candy I didn't buy her that she found on the floor. Most children I know would have simply eaten the candy. Luckily, not my daughter. The first piece I can forgive though now I’m not certain why... Then she found two more... By the next morning she had found 6 pieces of candy. I couldn't take it anymore it was to gross for me, so I called the front desk.

"So sorry mam, that's not up to our standard here, can I buy you breakfast tomorrow?" No I don't really want your nasty breakfast that was rated one out of five stars, but I understand throwing the dog a bone when I see it. Fine. "We'll send someone up right away to clean the room for you mam". After about forty five minutes we left, no one had come to the room.

Upon returning to the room we can see right away that the cleaning was still only half heartedly cleaned. Complete with little bits of stuff missed by the vacuum here and there. Even the strange "sticky" thing that had stuck to my sister's foot that she had picked off had been missed...

Before to long my daughter shows up with another piece of candy. This was after they had come in to "clean" and after I left a $5 tip for housekeeping. Yeah, uh hu. Would you believe by the time we left my daughter and I had collected THIRTEEN PIECES OF candy out of that dirty hotel room... Here is the photo I took before the last one was found.
Later that evening while getting ready for bed my daughter finds something else in the doorway leading to the bathroom. She offers it to me. I'm so grossed out I could vomit, it looks like a old nasty muffin. But she's my darling girl and I have to take it from her. When I discover it is not a nasty old muffin. Merely a USED coffee disk thing. You know there is a HUGE problem when someone’s old nasty single serving coffee disk gives you relief.

Other general complaints were that you could hear the family in the next room talking, yelling, watching tv, and in general doing things you don't want to hear while you’re trying to sleep. Furthermore every time anything happened in the hallway the vibrations would conduct into the walls where the headboards were mounted so your head was shaken with every door slam, and while I could hear people above me seeming to boot stomp all over the room above us, I perhaps could have forgiven that too...

The ceiling had odd mismatched painted spots that while you couldn't see them part of the time - they became very clear at night, and there was something spilled on the bed skirt on one of the beds. Generally a very gross couple of nights in a hotel I dearly hope never to spend a night in again.

So now it's after midnight and not having gotten much sleep the past couple of days, the good bits of my review will have to wait until tomorrow. I have submitted the 2000 character version of this to the Hilton, perhaps they will have something to say for themselves.

2 comments:

Shelly said...

I'm sorry your girls weekend was spoiled by a gross room. Good for you letting corporate know about it. I would also post on TripAdvisor.com. I posted a bad hotel review and another chain offered me a free night. To bad I'll never be in Knoxville, TN again!

Heather Landry said...

Oh my God how gross!!! I am SO glad that Jessica had the sense not to eat the candy. Oh eww. I'm sorry! Thanks for posting about this because that was one of the hotels we were considering for a future trip!

Eww!!!