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A radio show this morning was asking people to call in with hotel/motel horror stories.
What are yours?
I have had a few. Not as bad as the guy who called in having once found his hotel room soaked in blood, but pretty disturbing:
In the 1980s we used to go from the Detroit area to NYC every year for New Years eve in Times Square. We never had any money, so we slept in the car, or in Grand Central Station, or just met people who let us stay with them. One year none of those options were workable, so we put our money together and rented a cheap room in a hotel in Newark NJ. I think it was $12 per night, but maybe that was the hourly rate, it was a while ago, I do not remember for certain. They did have an hourly rate, which should have warned us away, but we just needed a heated place to put our sleeping bags. The hotel was pretty gross. We found beer cans and balls of human hair under the bed. The comforter on the bed had brownish stains on it and smelled bad. The shower floor was covered with black goop that did not wash off. When we closed the door to the room, we discovered someone had written “Social Decay” on the back of the door with what appeared to be mustard (now brown, dry, and hard, but one of my friends smelled it and declared it to be mustard). There was not much room in the room. Not all of us could sleep on the floor in our sleeping bags, so we drew straws to see who had to sleep in the bed. Winner got to sleep on the floor with the beer cans and balls of human hair. Losers got the more disgusting bed. I got lucky and got to sleep on the floor. In the morning when are went to shower, we put the bed spread on the floor of the shower, so we did not have to stand in the black goop. Yes, the bedspread was disgusting, but not as likely to transmit plantar warts.
After spending the evening at times square, we arrived back at our room the following year, exhausted and a little drunk, to discover there was a rave party going on in the room next door. Actually I do not think rave parties were a thing yet. This was maybe where the idea got started. We tried to sleep, tried banging on the walls, tried to sleep, considered asking to join the party (but we were too tired, it was 3 - 4 a.m. give or take). A while later, we heard policemen call out and smash through the door. The music stopped, there was lots of thudding, screaming, swearing, and police hollering “don’t move” and other things. More flashing lights appeared through the curtains, so we looked out. There were two swat vehicles, three or four police cars and a big military looking truck with the back doors open that they were loading handcuffed people into. Swat guys with armor and big guns were everywhere. One of our guys went out to talk to the police (not sure why) and they turned their guns on him and told him get back into the room. Eventually they all left and we managed a few hours’ sleep. When we checked out, the door to the room next door was broken to pieces. We asked the guy at the desk about the event, and he just shrugged and gave no reply. To my knowledge, no one in our group ended up with fleas, lice or warts, so it was not a disaster. We did manage to get almost 6 hours of sleep more or less before we went back into the city. It got warmer that day, so we decided to sleep in our car.
More recently when we lived in California, a group of guys was on a pre-trip to Mexico to contact a local church where we would later lead a youth mission work group. The church had no phone, so we had to go down and visit to find out what their current needs were. We got a late start and did not want to arrive at 2 a.m. since they did not know we were coming, so we decided to stop at a hotel in Ensanada. We found a promising looking place on the beach that advertised rooms for $32 US. Since we had little money, that sounded great. We had 7 guys, so it might be tight, but it could not be worse than the social decay room in New Jersey could it?
One of the guys with us was of Mexican descent and spoke a little Spanish. He said, “you all stay in the car, I will negotiate, I have good negotiation skills and you always have to negotiate prices here. These are my people, they will give me a good deal if they do not see a bunch of gringos.” Twenty minutes later, he came back out and asked for more money. He had “negotiated” a room for $95, but they told him it was their best room. It was a suite with a kitchen, and after he told them we had 7 people (dummy), they said that was the only room we could be allowed in, otherwise we would need to rent three regular rooms and they did not have that many available.
We got the key and the room number (167). We found room 166 and room 168, but no 167. In between rooms 266 and 268 was a solid wood door, but there was no room number and no windows. Eventually, we tried our key and it unlocked the wood door which opened to reveal a janitors closet. After haranguing our friend about his great negotiations skills and discussing the fact there was not enough room in our “suite” for 7 guys, we went back to the front desk. Turned out our “suite” was a really nice, huge apartment like suite. Three bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. It was on the first floor in a part of the hotel that jutted out onto the beach. There were no other rooms on either side or we had a wall of glass doors looking out onto the beach. We were only a few feet from the surf - awesome! We left the sliding glass doors open so we could go to sleep to the sound of crashing surf (and because the rooms smelled a bit funny).
I was sharing a room with the ‘negotiator.” Not wanting to share a bed, we discussed who would sleep on the sofa or floor. He said he had to have a night stand to put his contacts in their cleaning machine and still have them accessible in case he had to get up during the night. Remembering how gross the bed was in New Jersey years earlier, I gladly took the floor. Mr. Negotiator was bragging on about how awesome the suite was after we had given him such a hard time about his poor negotiation for a higher price to get a janitor closet. He was pointing out the nightstand next to the bed was perfect, it even had a drawer in it where he could put his wallet and keys to keep them safe . . . . “ergh!”. . . . . . . then he got very quiet. There was a used condom in the drawer.
That night, we discovered the part of the hotel that jutted out onto the beach was home to a popular night club – right above our room. In addition to the music and talking/laughter, the dancefloor was immediately above our bedroom and someone we determined to be a peglegged pirate was dancing up a storm “tap whack!; tap Whack! tap Whack” on the dance floor all night long. Peg leg had amazing stamina, he never seemed to stop dancing. Luckily the nightclub was not 24 hours and eventually closed, pegleg stopped dancing, the music and laughing faded away and we got to sleep. Sleep was fleeting however because at the first light of dawn, seagulls began greeting the sun. Thousands of them. The cacophony through our open sliding glass doors was deafening. Wearily we stumbled out to the beach and watched the sun rise. Finally the gulls quieted and we went back to bed. Then we discovered there was a three wheeled ATV rental place just outside our room. You know all those three wheeled ATVs that disappeared from the USA shortly after they were found to be very unsafe? They are all for rent on a beach in Ensenada – except the mufflers have fallen off most of them.
Last edited by Coldjensens; 09-18-2017 at 08:34 AM..
Cold Jensen, I would have stayed home for ALL of those Times Square trips. Sleeping in cars? Sleeping in Grand Central Station? The hotel might have been the best of the deal. Ugh.
You're experience in Ensenada reaffirms my long time decision to avoid churches.
One of my earlier jobs (late 70's) was as a travelling auditor for state government and the per diem reimbursement rate for a hotel was about $11. There were motels in the rural parts of the state where you could find a place with a government rate of $11 but most were awful hell holes. Most of the audits took several days so we would be stuck in these places for at least two nights. These were mostly county seat towns with a sheriff that eyeballed every stranger in town. Over time the motel rooms have sort of congealed into one horrific image of a smoke-stained place with a perpetually running shower, plastic covered mattresses, 2nd floor walkways leaning away from the building, paper thin walls and tubercular neighbors in the next room.
Cold Jensen, I would have stayed home for ALL of those Times Square trips. Sleeping in cars? Sleeping in Grand Central Station? The hotel might have been the best of the deal. Ugh.
You're experience in Ensenada reaffirms my long time decision to avoid churches.
Funny. I do not get the church reference, this was a hotel, we were on our way to a church (where we slept in the sanctuary, or when they had a minister who thought it was disrespectful to sleep in the sanctuary, we slept on the ground under an awning). Both were better than the hotel IMO except that we had to build a shower before we could take a shower.
Taking trips with no money create the more memorable adventures in life. Well planned trips with people to take care of everything for you, are pleasant, but boring/not memorable.
I think depending on the state of mind and the age group, these trips may vary from person to person when it comes to finding any fun in such "vacation" trips to "Time square".
Taking trips with no money create the more memorable adventures in life. Well planned trips with people to take care of everything for you, are pleasant, but boring/not memorable.
clearly, that's a matter of opinion. I consider safety to be the first priority when I travel. I think it's quite obvious that most people are not traveling the way that you prefer.
As far as "people to take care of everything for you," our most frequent way to travel is home exchange. Nobody does anything for us - we cook, clean, do the laundry, etc. During the vacation AND when we leave. Home exchange gives ua a safe, warm (or air conditioned), comfortable (sometimes luxurious) place to stay. For zero cost. Sounds like a better deal than sleeping on the floor, in one of the motel rooms you've described, or in GCS.
Taking trips with no money create the more memorable adventures in life. Well planned trips with people to take care of everything for you, are pleasant, but boring/not memorable.
Those are not the kind of memories I want to have. Basic safety, comfort, and cleanliness are a MUST for me.
And yet, all my well planned trips have been both pleasant and memorable. There's more to the memories of a trip than just the quality of the accomodations.
i went out for the day and took the 'service please' sign off of the door to have the bed made. when i came back the covers were all on the chair (not where i placed them) and there was a stack of holiday-inn notepad stickies on the night stand (not where i put them). i used a pencil to get a negative image of what was written on the sticky on top of it (that wouldve been removed). it said: "i love you (smiley-face)".
i went out for the day and took the 'service please' sign off of the door to have the bed made. when i came back the covers were all on the chair (not where i placed them) and there was a stack of holiday-inn notepad stickies on the night stand (not where i put them). i used a pencil to get a negative image of what was written on the sticky on top of it (that wouldve been removed). it said: "i love you (smiley-face)".
Eeew. Did you get the room cleaned and new linens before you went to sleep?
I have a coworker who seems to be a sex addict. He has a Thai or ? facetime hooker on the phone at most times during the day. I had to go on a short trip and they put me right next to his room. The walls were thin and I could hear him talking to her "Are you sure you want to watch me do that?" AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
I put in earplugs, turned on the TV full volume to a foreign channel so I couldn't be distracted by story lines, covered the TV to darken the room and fell asleep. Gross gross gross
Then there was the room that smelled like cat pee and had fleas. We switched rooms before we even brought the first bag in from the car.
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