This isn’t a real post. It’s just me stuck in a hotel room that doesn’t offer housekeeping and has bbq tongs to change the dodgy thermostat. It’s fantastic and I couldn’t stop tweeting about it. Then everyone else on twitter gave me perspective by tweeting about their own #WorstHotelEver and then it immediately started trending worldwide. Which was awesome. And then we all noticed that the sponsored tweet for the trend? Was from Hilton. Which was fucking hysterical and probably not exactly what they had in mind when they signed up to pay twitter for advertising.
And that’s how chaos begins. Not with a bang, but with a beautiful PRFail. Much as it should be.
I love you people.
I was once stuck in a hotel room in Palm Springs that had no hot water and when I pulled the sheets down on the bed, cockroaches scattered. But hey, at least I got a free continental breakfast!
Bwwaaaa!
That would be a Twitter Fail my friend.
Oh hilarious and so typical ……utter fail
I stayed at a hotel up in MI’s UP once where the shower got stuck on…and the lady was yelling at my mom to “tell your daughter to get out of the shower, she’s flooding the dining room!” …it was pretty much the swankiest place ever.
I went to a room in Texas that had brown recluse spiders. Like, ten of them. They had WEBS in the room. It was obvious the room hadn’t been cleaned in ages. I found crumbs in my bed and trash under. We decided to go elsewhere. -gag-
howard johnson – back in the day. hypodermic needle waiting right outside our door. ladies of the night waiting in the parking lot. shower broken. wish it had just been a nightmare.
We were in a hotel in Abilene, Texas that had a piece of thick rubber acting as the deadbolt lock.
Absolutely. Freakin’. Awesome! 🙂
I hate that I missed this but I love that it happened! (Sleep with the tongs nearby, just in case you get attacked and need a weapon. Or it gets hot. Either or.)
Bwahahaha nice! EAT AND LIKE IT, Twitter ads! I friggin’ hate those things, anyway.
BTW, my worst hotel ever was one in San Antonio that double-booked our room. We were all asleep and this drunk couple came barging in LOUDLY and hit my son sleeping in the rollaway that was by the door. OCCUPIED, ASSHOLES!
I have stayed at a hotel before that, upon waking up and walking into the bathroom, I thought better and decided to wait until we got to McDonald’s. Hovering wasn’t even going to be good enough.
Brilliant fail. Just brilliant.
My worst hotel was a supposedly upscale on in downtown Dallas. Don’t remember the name, but it is the one in the shopping mall that has an ice skating rink in the center. The bathroom door stuck and I couldn’t get out after my morning shower. Happily, there was a phone in bathroom (!) so I could call the front desk for help. They sent a maintenance guy to open the door (I had my robe with me), but when I got back to the room that night THEY HADN’T FIXED THE DOOR. If I weren’t as clever as I am (stop laughing) the same thing would have happened the next morning. And the next. How many time did they have to rescue stranded bathroom dwellers before they fixed the door?
And then there was the motel/motor hotel on the far reaches of Dallas that had dead 2″ roaches under the bed. At least they were dead.
I am sooo glad I don’t have to travel to Dallas for business any more.
That is awesome! Worst motel exerpience was when we broke down in the small one street road of Umatilla, OR. It was a weekend, so we had no choice to be there a few days. The only room in town was right in front of a murder scene, with the evidence still in the alley behind the room. But of course no police anywhere to be seen.
My flight got canceled in Orlando last year and we got put in some crappy motel. We deemed the pool, the pool of tears, because all it seemed like occurred in that pool was crying over the crappiness of the lives of those who must be visiting it. Plus, it was kind of salty.
Ahahaha. I’m sure someone at Double Tree Hilton is FREAKING. OUT. about this right now.
My worst hotel experience was near my own hometown in Texas. We took my mom’s best friend from LA (think: Jimmy Choo shoes, has never seen a cow in real life) to a dude ranch. When we pulled back the sheets that night, there were scorpions in our bed. I’m used to them in my shoes/boots but not keeping my pillow warm.
Worst huh? There was the one in Morro Bay that reeked of Indian food. One in Idyllwild that when we turned down a bed was full of dry dog food.
We love you too. You know, in case you couldn’t tell.
I’m pretty sure the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at was an impressive/swank resort. At least, I’m told it was impressive. The only thing which impressed me was that there are people in this world that will pay $45 a plate for bacon, eggs and a piece of French toast that tasted like it dated back to the Revolution.
Why is it that the posts that start with “this isn’t a real post” are in fact the best ones?
My worst hotel ever was a motel eight where I was woken up at 2am because some high ass lady was looking for her drug dealer but was to high to remember which one was his room. So she decided that she would knock on every door while yelling his name. I had to hand it her though, she was working for that crack.
I spent one night in Paris, it was filmed. Pretty sure it was a Hilton.
Ironically, my worst hotel ever was the Hilton Embassy in Washington, D.C. However, that doesn’t even come close to the place in the Bahamas that my mother stayed at where when she pulled down the sheets (and thank goodness she did), there was feces in the bed.
And Twitter finally reveals its hidden usefulness. Incredible.
Really, I think it was service ‘above and beyond’ that you were afforded both tongs for the A/C and a dishwasher for your clothes.
I’m realizing more and more that while I have a twitter account and do tweet, I do not understand it.
Am old.
(My worst hotel/motel experience was when I went to Sarasota for spring break with a friend. We stopped somewhere in Georgia – Macon, maybe? – at the only place we could find. The desk clerk let us smell the room before we officially checked in. The window air conditioner was out of the window and on the floor. Also there were red stains on the bathtub that we both hoped weren’t blood. There was no phone. I’m not entirely sure why we weren’t murdered, because it seemed like the place where that routinely happened.)
I have never understood how promoted tweets work and what they “stick” to. I still don’t. But this is hysterical.
(Clearly Hilton doesn’t understand either.)
That is some power. I love when Bloggess-induced mayhem takes over Twitter, instead of, say Happy Birthday Katniss.
That should read #HappyBirthdayKatniss
My worst hotel story involves my honeymoon, a quick shower before heading out for dinner and raw sewage from the room a floor above ours raining down upon me as I was drying off.
The hotel did not understand what our beef was with that situation. LOL. Probably the grossest thing that has ever happened to me. Bleh.
We once stayed at a hotel in downtown Gatlinburg TN where, in the hall outside our room, was a large turd. We’re not talking a mouse turd here – it had to have belonged to either a German Shepherd or a human. We called the front desk and were told that, since it was after 10 on a Saturday that no one would be able to clean it up. Some people from a nearby room placed a towel over top of it, so at least you didn’t have to look at it. Needless to say, that particular hotel is not on our list of places to stay in Gatlinburg…
After reading Monica’s story about her mom and the feces, as well as a number of stories on Twitter involving used condoms in the sheets, I’m never going to just slide under the covers again. Full-on sheet inspections will be occurring from now on!
I liked the motel we pulled into during a blizzard that had the hotel name written on the sheets in Sharpie. I’m thinking if I was going to steal sheets from a dodgy motel, I might not be the person who cared if they weren’t great-looking sheets…
Sometimes…things just happen.
I don’t have a worst hotel story, but I do have a “dubious vacation happening”…..we’d rented a houseboat to tool around the Florida bay in for a couple of days (I’m not really sure why this happened. For fishing? For a space launch that didn’t happen?) and our first evening out was fine. In the morning? Out of propane. Apparently the ship’s fuel and the ship’s stove ran off the same power supply. AND the radio signal to call the shore for help was too weak to get there. Totally awesome.
Thanks, I may very well never stay in a hotel or motel again. Ever. I have absolutely nothing that comes close to comparing to these stories, and I am very, very thankful.
I just sat down and saw this! Too funny, and now a not-post about it. Nice.
When my husband was graduating from the Police Academy (yes, a cop CAN marry a witch), we went up to see his ceremony. Not only was he the oldest rookie in the group (it happens to the best of ’em, life changes and all that) the kids and I only had ONE hotel in the area to choose from (as in: that’s all the town had). (We couldn’t have been picky anyway, broke doesn’t even come close to our state of monetary affliction.) The room had a sink. The sink was full of ants. They sometimes wandered over to the shower for a change of scenery. I made my babies stay on the bed, on a blanket we brought with us.
(It’s nice being all caught up, now I can read these in a timely manner!)
Snicker. That’s what you get for promoted tweets, twitter.
Ah twitter. Causing chaos and hilarity across the board.
That is why keyword matching in computer programs simply doesn’t work. LOL Major PR fail.
More than 23 years ago, my husband and I were traveling to visit his family. We had to stay in a Motel 6 somewhere in CT. It was late, we were tired, there was nowhere else to stay. We’d only been married about a year. I vividly recall the guy walking to the front desk from the back room with his fly unzipped and white fabric hanging out of it (underwear or shirt, I do not know). When we said we were married, the guy looked at my husband and said, “Yeah, right.”
When we got into the bedroom, the mattress was awfully stained, the place smelled like urine and the rooms were active all night. My husband said, “Yeah, Motel 6, ‘we leave the light on’…and the door open to anyone and everyone.” Every hour, neighboring doors were opened and closed. I didn’t want to know why.
We left bright and early, almost running.
My mother was notoriously cheap with hotels and when I was about 20, I went to a family reunion with her and my father and had to stay in a crappy hotel with them. It was prom night so there were a gazillion high schoolers all around us. We walked into our room and I started complaining that I didn’t really want to sleep on those beds. My mother pulled back the sheets to look at the mattress and there was a big blood stain on the mattress. Calm as anything, she just said, “looks like someone got a virgin!”
Days Inn, Arlington, TX., 1996. Dallas/Ft.Worth airport closed due to weather and we got the short straw, being, as we were, at the end of the long line of passengers looking for accomodation. Horrors too numerous to mention but my husband and I actually put a chair under the doorknob as a security measure.
In this situation Hilton comes off as this fat dude in a trucker hat whom we shall call Charlie.
“You know what?” he says one day. “You’re right. I AM fat. I am a fat fuck. But I am the fattest fuck in this town. In the world, even. At least I’ll have won SOMETHING. At least I’ll die knowing I did something with my life.”
You own your fat, Tubby Hilton.
You know that there is probably a top secret Hilton meeting that was just pulled together last minute to discuss this catastrophe.
And in my mind, there is the one guy in the back of the room who’s all “I TOLD YOU WE NEEDED MORE LLAMAS!!”
The the CEO is all “Damn It, Bob!!! Enough with the fucking Llamas!! We need strategies!!! NOT. FUCKING. LLAMAS!!!”
I love it when a plan comes together…
Hugs!
Valerie
My worst hotel experience was when flying through Miami. I called for the shuttle to pick me up at the airport and went outside to wait for it. 15 minutes later found a couple waiting for the same hotel shuttle. 40 minutes after that got picked up by a different hotel’s shuttle driver who took pity us and said his hotel was right across the street. Arrived at the hotel to see the shuttle driver coming out with his cup of coffee and a donut. The shower water had 2 settings: North Pole or Hades, and the sink dripped whether it was turned off or on full force.
Moldy hallways with damp carpet, all the ice machines were broken, the greenest swimming pool I think I have ever seen, and the “free continental breakfast” consisted of 2 loaves of bread (white or wheat!), a toaster, and some pats of butter. Oh, and some instant coffee, but no sugar or creamer in sight.
We stayed at a Super 8 in Topeka that sent us to a room already occupied, and when we went to get another room they called those poor sleeping people to wake them up to “prove” the room was occupied. Our room had nasty carpets, a dirty toilet, and frayed, exposed wiring underneath a dripping air conditioner. The only channel the TV got was Cinemax which was showing a deliberately funny western-themed porno. Anyway, the guy next door chased his entire family out, wife and three small kids, into the hallway so he could watch the porno alone. Much howling and, er, other noises ensued. Sleep was not had. Complaints were ignored. Super 8’s now avoided forever.
Worst hotel ever? Many years ago, traveling about with a boyfriend, we went to Toronto spontaneously, without a reservation. Thought it would be easy to just get a room, but there were a million conventions in town and the city was booked up solid. Ended up at a residence-type hotel on the outskirts of town called the “St. Leonard” which we poetically dubbed the “Saint Leonard Cohen Suicide Hotel” because it was the perfect place to have sleazy affair, or commit suicide, or both. (And he is Canadian.)
The bathroom was in the hall and ran out of hot water in the middle of your shower. The furniture was from the 1950s and not pretty, vintage-type but old, having been in continuous hard use since then-type. The bed was a rickety iron one and VERY squeaky when you moved on it at all, which being that he was my BOYFRIEND, we were wanting to do.
The TV was, of course, B&W. And there were ladies of a certain age who wore too much makeup and spent all day in hot pink chenille robes, lounging in the common room / lobby downstairs. Possibly they were drag queens, I was never quite sure.
Actually I am wrong… reflecting back I’ve changed my mind and I now think that this was actually the BEST hotel ever. Never mind.
I’m sitting in a comfy bed in a posh hotel reading these. Sad stories, and nightmare precursors. Carry on with the tongs.
Bedbugs. The worst has to be the bedbugs.
The NY bedbug-ridden hotel had a number of other issues – hornets nesting between the panes of glass in some rooms’ windows, so you opened your room to admit them. Swapped hot and cold water in the bathrooms, which caused the toilets to run on hot. Good for steaming your cheeks.
But then there was the CT hotel with mildew covering the entire bathroom ceiling… the FL hotel with a bathroom floor so sticky that I carpeted it in towels and refused to step off the towels… the NV hotel where they came in and stole my toilet paper because “the hotel was out”… the MA hotel where there was a police raid adjacent to my room… should I go on?
We don’t stay in motels or hotels after our horrible experience in a really nice Best Western
in Mississippi. It looked so nice. We got to our room. There were stains on the carpeting. No strip on the toilet seat showing it had been sanitized. And some (we don’t want to know( stain on the bedspreads) It had two queen beds. We felt itchy immediately. We kept our suitcases up high on a shelf. We slept in the chairs. Have never stayed in a hotel since. Brrr…. Oh, and the best thing.
Going to check at the office that night (about 10 pm) on the continental breakfast there was a woman who looked like a hooker who stopped in office to say she would be out for the night and next morning but put a sign on her door, no cleaning please. Brrrr…
Just wanted to say, I haven’t stopped giggling and snorting since the title of this post. Well done my lady, well done.
That’s fucking hysterical…Hilton sponsoring the #WorstHotelEver trend. Love it!
My worst hotel experience involved being stranded in Minneapolis on the way home from a conference. The hotel was actually very nice .. the bad part was being stranded with 3 guys from school, one of whom snored louder than should be legal. We all stayed in the same room, unsure whether we’d be reimbursed. No one but Keith slept that night .. thankfully we were in the air early the next day. I made a point of not traveling with Keith again, just in case the same thing happened.
I stayed in a hotel in Charleston that had the biggest roaches I’ve ever seen. They were about 6″ long and fierce looking. I was going up the stairs because the elevator shook like it was on its last thread of cable, and one of those monsters was watching me from the landing above. I went back down and risked my life on the elevator. At least it would have been a quicker death.
OT. Congratulations on a great WaPo review of your autobiography. Well-deserved. Keep on being you but even more so.
My husband has testicular cancer and the good news is it’s very treatable, fyi. On the other hand, I’m suuuper sick right now being twelve weeks pregnant with our first kid and he’s all, “Quit your bitching, I have cancer.” Asshole.
my worst hotel story involves getting a hotel/flight deal on expedia … then getting there and it turns out I paid a few hundred dollars to spend the weekend above a cafe in a room with a tiny window, no tv, no A/C (in the middle of a Montreal summer), and no bathroom in the room… it was basically like an overpriced youth hostel.
never again Expedia.
Oops. Meant that for your other post.
All these stories are freaking me out… I’m going on vacation in a few weeks and because of this I’ll be paranoid about the bedsheets every night! Scorpions, roaches, feces and brown recluse spiders, GAH!
My worst hotel was a train.
Took Amtrak from California to Chicago because I was afraid to fly (right after 9/11). I was on the trip with my new finance, to meet my parents, and thought the train trip would be romantic. We were in a sleeping car. There was mold covering the sleeping car, and the car seemed to be dated from the late 70s – perhaps had been in storage since then, which would explain the mildew – which set off my allergies. Everyone complained and they said there were no other cars. The train kept getting delayed because other trains were stuck on the track in front of us, so we would sit in place for hours for no reason and with no explanation (btw, after a couple days you don’t give a crap about the scenery).
They ran out of food. We arrived in Chicago 12 hours late. On Christmas. I am over Amtrak.
You ain’t seen nothing yet until you have stayed in a cheap hotel in Earl’s Court London, 30 years ago! Bedbugs, men’s unsanitary bathroom habits (shared bathrooms, no ensuites), NYLON sheets so you could create your own power station and breakfast = 2 x toast, one fried egg, one strip of bacon and cold milky tea!
Lol, hilarious about Twitter! I’m sorry I was asleep and missed it!
My worst experience would have been in a small hotel in Delhi. The scariest place on earth – a little piece of hell that was red and glowing (I kid you not – they had a thing for red lights and carpets) – the glass window panes where cracked and taped up etc. However, we were slow to notice and my mom had already handed over the passports (we must have been in some sort of travel stupor which clouded our vision – it’s the only excuse I can think of) when I started freaking out. So we tried to get the passports back so that we could leave and find another place – but they wouldn’t give them up. SCARY! Eventually they gave in and we found a very nice hotel to stay at… but Hell Hotel was definitely one of the worst travel moments for me ever!
Lol, a couple of years ago, the Husbandly One and I took our kids to Rockport for a week, and THO had found this lovely, quaint little hotel not far from the beach. And when I say “quaint” I mean “decrepit.” The main office didn’t seem so bad, and it looked nice from the OUTSIDE, but when we opened the door to the room, the smell of mold floated out.
Did I mention I have asthma, and I’m extremely allergic to mold?
Everything in the room was damp. The carpet was damp. The beds were damp. The furniture was damp. Even the TV was damp. Seriously, your first thought on walking into a hotel room shouldn’t be, “I’d better check the closet and make sure there isn’t a body in there, oh, and under the bed, too.”
No, there were no bodies in the closet or under the bed, though I’m not convinced there wasn’t one lying on the chaise lounge ten minutes before we got there, because there was a very… suspicious… stain on it. It might as well have had a chalk outline around it!
Then there was the bathroom. TINY. You know a bathroom is tiny when there’s only one person in it… and it’s too crowded!! Plus, no bathtub, and you had to take one GIANT step up INTO the shower, and then coming out, if you forgot, it was a very nasty fall!!
The kids spent the short time we were there huddled together in the middle of one of the damp beds, and considering that they get along like oil and water, that’s saying something! Mostly, they sat there watching me wheeze, which was ALL KINDS OF FUN. Not.
THO was optimistic that turning on the A/C would get rid of the dampness. However, while it did kinda sorta in a very vague sort of way freshen the room… it did nothing to cool it. He finally decided it would be less expensive to move to another hotel than it would be to go to the emergency room to treat me for anaphylactic shock, so we packed up, went to the office, got a refund, and went to the Holiday Inn, which was not damp, not moldy, and most definitely had no dead bodies anywhere in sight or imagination. Or wheezing moms. Definitely a win all around.
Hotel in Memphis called The Admiral Benbow Inn (worst hotel with the best name), $29/night. Should have been great, right? Trash can said “Holiday Inn”, soap wrapper said “Days Inn”, and the toilet flushed during the night. Pretty posh for under $30 bucks!
Poop in the hot tub. I know what you’re thinking, “but it had a hot tub?”…poop negates the hot tub experience, even if it’s poop in a hot tub at a Four Seasons (it wasn’t). I must stress, poop negates all the stars in a hotel rating.
Worst hotel ever? Has to be the Comfort Inn in La Crosse, Wisconsin. THEY TURN THE HOT WATER OFF at 10 pm and don’t turn it back on UNTIL 9 a.m.
Then there was The Quarry Inn on Cape Ann in Massachusetts. New mold species were discovered in that shower. The bed was a metal frame with a sleeper sofa type mattress on it. I checked. it doesn’t even exist any more. Thank G-d.
Hilarious! I also find it funny that it was Hilton that came up. In my experience, I have LOVED all of the Hilton brand hotels and they are our first choice. Now, I have stayed in some Best Western and Holiday Inn’s that definitely leave something to be desired.
I also wonder who actually stays in those creepy strip motels at the outskirts of towns and cities? No matter how cheap they are or regardless of their signs that promote free HBO, air conditioning and internet. There is NO way I would set foot in there. I would definitely rather sleep in my car!
I recently wrote a blog entitled “Cluster Chuck” about my daughters b’day party and how Chuck E. Cheese was the seventh circle of hell and that I had to take a Silkwood shower when I left there. Guess who’s ad showed up on the sidebar of that blog? effing CHUCK E. CHEESE! Ha!
These stories are crazy! I don’t have anything worse than having to sleep in a room that smelled like cigarettes. But my sister’s husband once had to carry her from the car to the hotel door because of the throng of apocalyptic frogs that were blocking the way and refused to move no matter what they did.
Opryland Hotel. Worst hotel ever. It may be better since it flooded and got rebuilt, but when we were there she was like an aging dowager still trying to get by on her looks.
Twitter is indeed an awesome place. I once saw something about twitter being an acronym for Troubled Witty Individuals Trying To Escape Reality. I kinda like it.
My worst hotel room ever was about the size of the cupboard under the stairs that Harry Potter had as a room. Seriously. The full sized bed was against the wall on one side of the room and you barely had space to walk on the other side. One person at a time, of course. My luggage was on the floor at the foot of the bed, and I could have access to it by lying on top of the bed. The bathroom was worse, though, and I hated every second I spent in that hotel. Thankfully it was just for one night.
I haven’t had a bad hotel experience *crossing fingers & knocking on wood*, but the ones on here are making me cry laughing.
Worst hotel ever? Hotel Alicante in Lisbon, Portugal. Nobody appreciates finding pubes in their bed, y’all.
I was having coffee on a bench by the river in a WV hotel. I heard a woman screaming and I saw her on an upper outside balcony. Thinking there was a medical emergency, I yelled at her to call 911 and I hobbled over as quickly as my bum knee would allow. I got to the room and found the woman talking hysterically to the 911 operator….saying that her ex had stolen $500.. On the table in front of her was a cross bow and a chicken foot. Then a woman in the other bed got up to talk to the police since the hysterical woman was incoherent Woman # 2 was a body and make-up double for Mimi Bobeck…..and she was wearing a thong. I got the hell out of Dodge. You cannot make this s*** up.
I’m not much for roughing it, which includes things like camping, spelunking, playing in the mud, etc. Despite the fact that I went to a posh middle/high school, they somehow managed to find the worst places for us to stay during class trips. The one that comes to mind was my 8th grade trip to Jekyll Island, GA, where we, as a class, stayed at the 4-H Center. Six people per room, with fortunately, three pairs of bunk beds per room. And by bunk beds, I mean rickety metal structures supporting plastic mattresses (I have this sneaking suspicion we had to bring sleeping bags or our own bed linens as well). The floors of the rooms were linoleum, which in retrospect was probably good planning, as aside from caving the previous year, this was the muddiest I’d ever been in my life.
The real prize was the bathroom. It had a fancy floor compared to the room, which meant tile. It wasn’t particularly well planned out though. The floor sloped in towards the center, which would have made perfect sense had there been a drain there. There was not. The shower curtain was more decoration than anything, as it did nothing to keep water in the tub area. Instead, water from both the shower and the sink ended up on the floor, pooling in the center, and given the size of the bathroom, there was no where else to stand but the center. So, if you wanted to run your electric razor (yes, that’s what I used at the time) or your hairdryer, you had to stand in a puddle of water to do so. Normally, I’m an excellent packer, but of all things, I’d forgotten my flip-flops. I had no protection from electrocution or germs and was despondent to say the least.
I’m also relatively sure there were instances of bugs in some of the rooms, no air conditioning in any of them, and the most hilarious Venetian blinds I’ve ever seen in my room. Why they even bothered to keep these blinds in the room is quite beyond me. There was a meal plan, and the food was beyond terrible; the food I had in college, which was awful (ARA serves food on a scale from 1 to 5, where 5 is the White House and 1 is prison; my college food was ranked a 2), was better than the 4-H. I love nature, but Jekyll Island was a friendly reminder that marshlands smell like methane and that a four walls do not a building make.
Hmmm, worst hotel ever would be a toss up between the absolute portal to Hell my husband booked us into last week and the bed and breakfast that made me break out into hives.
First one – my husband booked us into a place in Wyoming and there was no other options for over 500 miles. Within a minute of walking into the cesspool that smelled like stale beer & a gross frat boy dorm room, I texted my mother that I would rather sleep in my car. We couldn’t let the kids take their socks off in the room. We lasted about 4 hours, around midnight we loaded the kids into the car and left. We ended up taking turns sleeping while waiting out a rainstorm at a roadside rest stop. The bathrooms were cleaner at the rest stop too.
Second one – husband booked us into a bed and breakfast for a special night away. The building was a historical landmark and was so dusty and decaying that I broke out into hives within minutes of entering the building. I ended up spending the night doped p on Benadryl. Isn’t that romantic?
I’m noticing a pattern here, my husband has chosen these places. Obviously his vacation planning days are numbered.
I got a job offer in Rochester, MN and needed to find an apartment there. I went down a week early and stayed at the Motel 6…drug deals all night every night, no internet, no clean towels or any cleaning done the whole week I was there (but daily paper fliers about how the lack of cleaning was to “conserve natural resources”).
The worst ever though was staying at a Motel in St. Paul, MN in high school. I was a sophomore, got stuck in a room with seniors who tried to make me sleep OUTSIDE and then, when the teachers put the kibosh on that, they made me sleep in the tub in the bathroom with no blankets and no pillow (and threatened to beat the crap out of me if I told the chaperones). The worst part about it was that I was less than 5 miles from home and couldn’t go home to spend the night and come back the next morning. So, it wasn’t the motel’s fault that I had the worst couple of nights ever, but it did put me off going on any other school trips.
A motel in Williamsburg, VA: my husband went to the front desk to complain the toilet wasn’t working. They tried to hand him a plunger. Hotel in Sydney, Australia: the floor squished. In the room. It SQUISHED.
My worst experience was the Waldorf Astoria in NY. Tiniest hotel room I have ever slept in, faulty taps in the bathroom and the key to the safe was lost , we almost missed our flight. The lobby was stunning though.
My worst hotel isn’t actually worst, it was just weird. It was a hotel in New Orleans near Bourbon St, maybe a Holiday Inn. Our room had no windows at all. It faced an indoor courtyard that also had no windows. You had no idea what time f day it was or what the weather was without going all The way outside. It was just weird.
AWESOME!
Thunderbird Motor Inn, Pocatello Idaho, about 25 years ago. Someone parked their car in front of our room, turned the headlights on (flooding the room with light–NOT A GREAT THING ) and started doing some engine repair at 2am. The guy at the desk just said “Yeah, that’s Carl.”
Worst hotel ever? On a family trip to Disneyworld when I was little we stayed out in some little hole in er…Kissimee? I think that was the name of it. Black mold -everywhere-, including on the “duvets” and in the corners of the flooring (yes, carpet and tile) and everywhere there wasn’t mold were little green lizards. Fortunately, I outweigh my big sister and fight dirty, so while she had to sleep on that nasty, rancid bed, I simply slept on her.
My parents used to take us traipsing around the countryside on vacation (you know, the “educational” kind that you hate as a kid and only appreciate as an adult) and my dad had a knack for picking the cheapest, cheeziest, sleaziest, nastiest one-off hotels. We lived in Mississippi for four years and those were some epically bad motels in the south (which we nicknamed the “Indian motels” since they all seemed to be run by India indians…er…no offense…it was the 80s, what can I say?). Rooms not cleaned since the Nixon administration (I don’t even want to think about what was on some of those linens). Having the privilege of dodging the broken glass and tacks embedded in the dingy carpets. And bugs. OMFG the bugs. Roaches were pretty much a given at these places. One spectacularly bad motel in MS got nicknamed the “Fleur de Flea”…I bet you can guess why. I’m pretty sure I can trace my insectophobia directly to these experiences. {{{SHUDDER}}}}
I have actually stayed at one of the motels they used in Supernatural. You know they’ve got the ambiance right when you turn to your niece in the middle of the episode with “hey, I’ve stayed there! That was the one with the dodgy shower, backed up toilet and broken bed!”.
My (Jewish) girlfriend once booked us in a dump of a hotel in Cape May, New Jersey, that was owned by an insane neocon who was the head of a Christian cult. He used to take his boat outside the 3-mile (or whatever) limit and broadcast a wacky super-religious pirate radio show. I had told my friend who owned the hotel when we were outside of it, and when we went in to register, the first thing she said was, “You guys don’t mind if a Jewish person rents a room, do you?” I vaguely remember head-desking right there. The Stepford Wife manning the front desk had her frozen smile in place as she registered us into a room with mold and a family of mice. We debated calling the front desk to tell them that the mold looked like the Madonna smiling down at us from the ceiling, but in the end we opted to get the hell out of that ghastly hotel and find another one.
There’s a motel about five miles from here that’s right next to a “No Prostitution” road sign, spells ‘night’ n-i-t-e, and advertises such features as “clean sheets,” “color TV,” and “towels.” I feel like it should just call itself the “There’s Definitely No Crime Here” Motel and have a “days since the coroner was last here” counter outside the front office.
I dunno; this made me laugh like a real post.
While I’ve stayed in some less than swanky places, fortunately, I think I bailed on the worst ever when we pulled up in front of our pre-chosen place only to find it was in an isolated and creepy looking area of Dallas and was decorated with bars on all the windows. We promptly turned around and found someplace else.
My worst hotel experienced was we are actually going to sleep that time after a long day trip and shocking out to see blood at the corner of the sheets. YUCKS!!!!!!
Genius! I love it! Especially because sponsored tweets annoy me. Serves ’em right!
My worst hotel? It wasn’t exactly the hotel’s fault but I was in Palm Springs and a wind storm blew down an electrical pylon. Seriously, it was blocking the road and seriously dangerous.
I had no power to my hotel for the next 48 hours which resulted in cold showers and a lot of stumbling around and stubbing my toes in the night.
Helicopter cat: http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/13861471/the-orville-copter-takes-flight/
And the winner is … Traditional African Mud Hut self catering cottages we stopped at for one night on a road trip holiday. You wouldn’t put food down in there, let alone cater for yourself. But it was late, on the road with a toddler, dark, all very tired. The full extent of the horror became apparent in the cold light of morning when we all woke up covered in insect bites. My face was so swollen, I spent the rest of the holiday closely resembling a Klingon.
Okay, I never should have read everyone’s hotel horror stories. Now I’m afraid to go on vacation in a couple of weeks…
My worst “hotel” experience was when I was in the USAF – we arrived at a base very late, I got the “last” available bed – except that when I got in the room, it was already occupied (double-booking) – and, since I was the lowest rank there, I ended up sleeping in the lounge, where I had to keep telling the security dude that yes, I was legitimately a guest (he made hourly rounds.) That was the Worst. Night. Ever.
~EdT.
My parents booked themselves into a hotel in a small town. They were barely booked in when things started looking suspicious. Eventually they realised they were booked into the local house of ill repute. I told them the name of the hotel “The figtree” should have sent out warning signals.
The tripadvisor.com website also does a list of worst hotels in case you all want more horror stories.
Fortunately, we haven’t had any really bad hotel catastrophes. There was this Marriott on the west side of Hartford, CT that had the fire alarm go off in the middle of the night. There was also the Days Inn in Bordentown, NJ, that was rapidly becoming run down. We happened to be there the morning of 9/11 and saw on TV in the lobby the second plane hitting the World Trade Center.
But with an upcoming vacation, I, too, second the notion of doing a bed inspection before sleeping there.
Let’s be positive with a BEST hotel: Salish Lodge, Snoqualmie, WA. I won a six-night stay there with a $150/day meal allowance. The place was the total lap of luxury. Beautiful view of a waterfall. They gave us a bottle of wine as a gift. Wonderful terry cloth bathrobes and towels. Enormous whirlpool tub. Food was outstanding. Definitely the place to stay if someone else is paying for it.
IM GOING TO TACKLE THIS SHIT MONSTER AND IM NOT GOING TO LOOOK BACK
I can’t remember the actual name of the hotel, but we called it the Barton Fink. It was in Chicago and it was about 10 stories high. Every time someone flushed a toilet anywhere in the hotel, everyone in the hotel heard it. It banged and clanged for about 10 minutes after every flush. We didn’t sleep all night.
Well, thank you everyone, for assuring that I never take a vacation in anything other than a tent in the middle of the woods.
According to all of these experiences, I have less chance of encountering a random shit in the forest than in a motel/hotel.
I just saw your interview on Canada AM! You’re such a cutie hon! I’m a 54 year old mom of two and I think you’re just as sweet as pecan pie! You certainly piqued my interest and I’ll be spending the better part of my day getting introduced to your blog! Good luck on continued success….you have a beautiful grace and sense of humility…..that’s soooo refreshing to see!
A New Fan from London, Ontario Canada
Diana P
I’ve never commented before, I’m just a website voyeur. But just this week, I stayed at a hotel where they had very few outlets so they placed a powerstrip between the mattresses. I don’t mean between the two beds. But BETWEEN THE MATTRESSES.
This blog post is the perfect note to end a weekend on 😀
The second worst experience I had at a hotel was staying in an AC-free surely-former-crime-scene motel just outside of Houston. I was stuck there for twelve hours having been bumped from a flight. Trying to shake both the ghosts and the ennui I ventured to their “work out room” which was in reality a broken standing bicycle propped up against the concierge desk. Failing at exercise, I returned to my room and spent the remaining 11.5 hours watching law and order re-runs and main-lining Domino’s lava cakes.
The second time was entirely my fault. I decided to live the hotel dream and fetch a Kit Kat and a bucket of ice. I tottled back to my room and spent thirty minutes trying to get the key to work. When that failed I began slamming my full weight against the door…until I was stopped by hotel security.
Turns out I was at the wrong door. Doubtlessly terrified folks inside room 211, I humbly beg your pardon.
Before I moved to the USA I thought dodgy motels were the stuff of legends – that low-down seediness in the hospitality industry didn’t exist outside of films/TV/books.
This changed when I joined a hiking group that went on winter trips to upstate New York. It was too cold to camp or stay in mountain huts, so after the Saturday hike we would hit the road and look for a cheap & convenient motel to stay in for the night. My experiences haven’t matched the other readers – however the skeeviest thing I ever came across were cigarrette burns on the bedsheet. Then in the morning we went in search of a greasy 24h diner for 5.30am pancakes & endless filter coffee refills.
For me, this trashy motel sojourn counted as a first-rate experience of True American Culture. I was ever so excited about it all!
It was fun to see the whole thing unfold – like a semen and blood covered fitted sheet.
I’m glad I could alert you to the hilarity of that tweet, which has now apparently been replaced by a promoted tweet from Lufthansa.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tommywes/half-cat-half-machine-and-totally-insane
This….
http://now.msn.com/now/0604-helicopter-cat.aspx
A stuffed helicopter kitty!!! I really thought you’d enjoy this one if you haven’t seen it already!!!
While traveling with a group in Italy – one hotel had the worst room – smelled like a sewer problem. Moved to another room – same issue. It was then that my roommate noticed they had packed away their sneakers from the previous day, with dog poop on them. Laughed so hard because I don’t think it was the room as much as it was the shoes causing the vile odor!
Whenever we stay at a hotel, we check out all the drawers first thing, checking for treasures & surprises. I particularly love snagging the notepads & pens from the desk. Is it a crime? I don’t know. At any rate, one time we pulled a Bible out of one of the dressers, & from the pages fell a condom packet! *awesome* Then when we fell on the bed laughing, it broke beneath us & we tumbled to the ground. Catching our breath, we struggled to see if it could be fixed, & while pulling the bed away from the wall, we found stuffed into the area where the mattress met the headboard, a nice beanie cap embellished with a playboy bunny. Best worst-experience EVER! We not only switched rooms, but were sent several vouchers for future free stays. 🙂 In the spirit of honesty & so as not to hurt business or feelings or whatnot, I should add that the staff was most friendly & apologetic. If you’re going to have a messed up room, it should be this joint: The Peoria Red Roof Inn.
Social News headlines – that made me think of your zombie arguments….
Zombie Apocalypse: Federal Government Denies Existence of Flesh-Eating Monsters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/01/cdc-denies-zombies-existence_n_1562141.html?ref=mostpopular
A week of cannibalism: Five Bizarre Acts of Human flesh eating
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/01/cannibals-in-the-news-fiv_n_1563482.html?ref=mostpopular
I want a Free Range Cookie.
This makes me want to have a twitter account just so I can add my story. I made a reservation at an Econo lodge in VA Beach for my best friend’s grandpa’s funeral. (The reservation was for me…to sleep. Not for the funeral.) Anyway, when I checked in, I noticed it was a little grubby. I am not picky, and it was only $50 a night, so I figured I could make do for one night. Also, I was running really late for calling hours, and I needed to jump in the shower and change before I could leave. During the next 15 minutes, I was accosted in the shower by a wet, dirty washcloth on top the shower curtain in my room while forced to listen to doors slamming and people scream as my “neighbor” told his wife/girlfriend/ho “bitch, get yo ass back in here ‘fore I bring it back.” I tried to let the towels touch as little of my body as possible while still getting dry enough to put on some panythose, and as soon as I was dressed, I ran back downstairs to check out. Alas, the hotel policy was that if you were in the room for more than 20 minutes (it had been 22 since I checked in), they could not refund my money. Because they are soulless assholes, apparently. Also, they asked what room the apparent domestic violence was occurring in. I told them it hadn’t occurred to me to open the door since I was still trying to get ready in time to make it to a funeral, but they could probably find out if they just went upstairs to clean the hepatitis shower in my room and listened for the yelling and pounding.
In another experience, when we were in Las Vegas for my sister’s wedding, we found a tin can of pot in the elevator of my Aunt’s hotel room. Best wedding ever.
I stayed in a hotel room in a smaller, out of the way city in Japan where the pillows were full of plastic beads (very uncomfortable), the carpet was three-season green flooring, and the TV had more porn stations than regular stations. To top it off, I was not only the only non-Japanese staying there and probably had ever stayed there, but I was literally the only woman in the building. And don’t even get me started about the creeper who worked the front desk at night…
Stayed in a motel in Eugene, OR once. Bedding had clearly not been changed, and the mini-fridge was empty save for half a cucumber, wrapped in plastic. We slept fully dressed.
worst hotel ever? For me it *was* a hilton. I was at a book conference thing and ended up sicker than I’ve ever been in my life… they were renovating and it had my asthma so bad, I was on steroids forever afterwards. I left a cup of water sitting out one day and a day afterward, it had SEDIMENT floating in it…yet they tried to convince me the air quality of the hotel was just fine and surely something else must have aggravated my very well controlled asthma.
Just returned from a work-related trip to a city in Washington known as “The Topless Espresso Cart Capital of the World”, I shit you not. Whilst on said trip I witnessed a domestic “incident” over the Continental breakfast (waffles may or may not have been thrown), a three-year-old child wandering the hall in nothing but a diaper and Barney T-shirt at 4:00am, and was greeted by a phalanx of police officers at checkout as a young man had apparently been stabbed in the parking lot the previous evening. . .by a hooker. . .named Bob. I love my job.
One of my favourite Twitter moments! 🙂
Best Western – mouse droppings in bathroom sink, beds (two doubles) had not been changed from previous guests – absolutely disgusting. Will never stay in Best Western again!!
Jesus, I think I’m never travelling to Texas – or if I do I’m sleeping in my car.
I’m cheap, so bad hotels are just life for me. Like non-smoking rooms that smell like cigar bars and little dogs that yap 24/7. But when I travel for work and they pay big bucks for a place like the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Philly, I don’t expect a mouse to run across my floor. But I expect the front desk to answer the phone so I don’t have to go downstairs and announce in the presence of others said mouse. I don’t expect that they’ll just send up a guy with two mousetraps that they never check for the rest of the trip. I mean, I’m not picky, but they’re awfully lucky I work in housing and have seen worse at work.
For me, the worst hotel was an Omni I stayed in for a wedding in Virginia. The bride and groom had paid for my hotel as I was singing in the wedding for free, so the state of the hotel was a real upset. They didn’t find out about it for a few years afterward. By then we were all able to laugh about it.
The first night I checked in there was hair all over the pillows and the sheets were stained with what looked like blood. I stripped the sheets and found a replacement, clean, pillow in the closet and crashed on the bed on top of the comforter and slept clothed. The next morning, after I had demanded, nicely, that the entire bed be stripped, not just the sheets but also the comforter, etc. I came back to my room to discover that the genius housekeeping people had not only left my door unlocked, they’d left it open. I called down and demanded, again nicely, security, and then went through my things. Nothing was missing, but it was a near thing. I got ready for the rehearsal dinner and while doing so noticed what looked like a bleached blood stain on the carpet. Ew.
I got home from the rehearsal dinner, checked the bed, and went to sleep, still fully clothed. The next morning I got up and got ready for the wedding and was gone all day. When I got home from the reception that night I was getting ready for bed when I leaned on the lone chair in the room and noticed that it, too, had a badly bleached blood stain on it. I looked around the room and realized that every single piece of furniture in the room and at least two places on the floor had large blood stains that someone had tried to bleach out, unsuccessfully. I called down and asked to speak to a supervisor and was told there was nobody on duty.
The next morning I called again and was offered, for my troubles, a free breakfast. Except the bride and groom had already arranged for the same thing for all of us in that very hotel. When I pointed that out I was promised the room would be taken off of their bill. In short, I think I stayed in a room where someone was murdered and they just hadn’t bothered to replace the furniture or the carpet that had been a part of the crime scene.
Read Nancy Mairs’ essay “On Becoming A Cripple.” I have my college students read it, and we talk about how (1) we can’t have any idea what having MS is like, and (2) everything Mairs says about MS is crucially helpful to those of us without it.
Because we all have the same fatal disease: life.
“On Being a Cripple.” My bad.
Falls under the category: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up
Once booked a hotel on cape cod that was supposed to be luxurious with ocean views. It was (a) on a main road nowhere near the ocean (b) had no air conditioning (c) the bathroom was filthy with brown stains all around the outside of the toilet & the last residents hygiene trash still in the overflowing trash can (d) the bedding was seriously stained (e) it smelled like funk (f) the entire ceiling and two walls were completely MIRRORED!!! Needless to say, we went elsewhere.
My worst hotel experience ever, was not a hotel, but a rented beach house. My MIL was staying in the same house, and her bedroom had a separate entrance to the bathroom, so she could come and go without using the hallway. Of course, she repeatedly locked us out of the bathroom by locking the hall door, then exiting through her bedroom door, and once she went to bed we were locked out through the entire night with 2 kids and a Mommy who had been partaking in the beer at that night’s BBQ. If, after we told her what she was doing, she would have stopped locking us out, things would’ve been laughable, but since she continued to do it until we went and got a suite somewhere at a hotel… it just made me furious. Don’t Bogart the toilet.
I love it! My worst hotel experience is when my husband and I ended up with an extra night on our honeymoon (missed our flight and had already spent WAAAYY too much money) – we need a cheap place close to the hotel. The only place with vacancy was a place that you drove up to a window to rent a room. “for the night” they asked – apparently shorter stays are quite the norm. We signed up for a full evening stay and when we got into our room were quite shocked that our bed was built up on glass blocks that had alternating disco lights flashing from inside the glass – the ceiling light (and only light in the room) was a multi-colored spinning disco ball/light. Pure class.
Next… #abortions sponsored by Trojan. #assistedsuicide sponsored by Prozac.
If you haven’t watched the movie four rooms, you should. I am pretty sure that is the WORST HOTEL EVER!
Seriously people a dead whore in the box springs of the mattress found by two annoying drinking smoking under 10 children while their parents are partying for new years?
Not to mention the witches, fighting married couple, and the crazy people in the penthouse who wanna chop fingers off. Thank you world for this awesome flick of hell!
Worst hotel (if you can call it that) ever? Sturgis, South Dakota. The office sign said to know on room #23. We knock on the door and a MASSIVE Harley dude with a beer and a cigarette in a wife-beater answers, WHAT?!? It kind of looked like we interrupted something and I don’t think he was very happy about that. Um, can we please get a room for the night? I was pretty sure we were going to check in, but the likelihood of checking OUT (EVER) was questionable. Did I mention it was the 5oth Harley Rally? Do you know how loud those damn bikes are? LOUD PIPES SAVE LIVES? Well, they did keep us awake most of the night which was good in case we needed to climb out the window to avoid being a crime scene. So I guess maybe loud pipes might save lives.
Someday, you need to do a collection of “This is not a real post” posts because they are some of your best.
I don’t have a worst hotel experience for you. But I have to say that I love this post. And I love you. But not in a creepy way. Well, mostly.
I always wonder when I’m going to end up in one of those motels with a body or something stuffed up in the mattress.
I had no clue how else to get this to you, but this is probably the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. And I figured you’d appreciate it as well.
Aaaand now I’m freaking out my co-workers. I’d call this day successful.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/dutch-artist-turns-dead-cat-remote-controlled-helicopter-dubbed-orvillecopter-article-1.1089478
Stayed at a hotel around Williamsburg, VA. Ended up bringing an abandoned kitten into the room until we could find a place to bring it the following day. (Dropped it off at a vet’s down the road) Not a bad room, but I never saw the train tracks directly behind the hotel-our window was facing said tracks. Wake up at about 3:00 to the sound of a train engine roaring past-I seriously thought I was going to die-I thought that it was a plane coming down to crash into the hotel!
The place was clearly rent by the hour, but it was literally the only room to be had in or around Pasadena. There were gold-veined, mirrored tiles both on the ceiling and in place of a headboard. There was one dishrag sized towel, no shower curtain and no door on the bathroom. The carpet and bedclothes looked as though Jackson Pollock had been paining in bodily fluids (thank god we had our own sleeping bags) . The door had clearly been kicked in before, to close it we jammed a knife in between the frame and the door (as more regular occupants obviously did, based on the scars around the jamb) and then locked it with a chair under the knob. There was no sign of roaches, but I assume it was only because roaches have more discerning taste.
When I attempted to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail this year I stayed at a hotel in Gatlinburg, TN. The floor was wet, so we kept our shoes on the whole time. The faucet in the tub wouldn’t turn off. The balcony door wouldn’t open (which, when you and your roommate haven’t showered for a week is a NECESSITY). And the laundry was not what we were promised: only the washing machine worked (not the dryer), so we had to hang our wet clothes on the pool railing and watch them dry. Luckily there was a liquor store nearby.
But for $35/night I would totally stay there again. The people were really nice.
Worst hotel?
Easy- The Three C’s.
5 people and 1 Golden Retreiver in a 1 room with 1 double bed that had shot springs. There was no phone (and this was before cell phones). One 13″ B&W TV that had rabbit ears that got 6 channels, no bathroom door, dirty shag carpet. It was storming and the Three C’s was literally the only place.
Took the baby on his first trip to meet relatives (he’s now eleven, so clearly this has stayed with me a while.) Our room had dust in the corners and, as soon as I put the baby down to have a good crawl we found a giant…stain…on the carpet. An indeterminately brownish-red stain. A big stain. A stain that made me wonder if it had once been outlined with chalk – except that one would assume a chalk-outlined stain would have been CLEANED or at least removed to the evidence room…which left only one other option that I’d prefer not to think about even eleven years later…
This has nothing to do with twitter or bad hotels, but it has everything to do with a taxidermy cat turned into a helicopter so naturally it made me think of you:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2154283/Cats-away-Artist-turns-dead-pet-flying-helicopter-killed-car.html?ITO=1490
NYC-The Pennsylvania (across from Penn Station). Exposed wiring, clumps of hair under the top sheet, some sort of film in the tub and sink, burns on the carpet, a window that wouldn’t close, a door that wouldn’t lock, roaches, and the smell…
Mom rode the elevator up with someone who was crying and because her room was so bad. She borrowed our phone book so she could try to find the phone number to the embassy in hope of getting their help finding someplace.
No wonder everyone was in the lobby. No one wanted to be in their room!
I was once in a nasty hotel room somewhere in the pits of NC that was so small…when you opened the door it hit the bed. You had to slide in the door and step onto the bed and roll across to get in the room. It was more of a close than a hotel room.
Oh man I DID NOT NEED to see these a month before my trip. Yuck yuck yuck!!
I have had some bad ones but nothing horrible.
For some reason, this reminds me of that time you sent that stupid company a picture of Wil Wheaton collating papers, and then that dude called you a bitch. Lulz.
ok, so i’m half way through your book and my abdomen hurts from laughing so hard. my family thought i was choking. i have no idea how to email you directly hence the comment form. this morning there were two articles on zombie silos on the news site (really, it’s all just gossip and made-up stuff). so please google search: zombie silo and zombie silo condominiums. i promise you won’t regret it.
Worst hotel experience – we took a family vacation to glacier national park in Montana. We had booked a room in their new “luxury” teepee – advertised lamps, tv, firepit in the center…. When we arrived it was all wet, even the beds and bedding, and no lighting or fire due to new safety regulations. When we complained that it was not what we had booked they attempted to say we should have rechecked their website! We insisted we couldn’t keep our young daughter in that environment and the desk clerk suggested we place her bed in the neighboring bathroom which had heat and electricity! Needless to say we did not stay in the teepee!
Toss up – I was about 9, my family was moving to a new town, so we all had to stay in a Motor Inn. Only motel in town…I think. Found poop in the bed…and my mother didn’t believe me. So I ended up sleeping at the foot of the bed of my twin brother and sister. They wouldn’t move over and let me in bed with them.
The other…a bed and breakfast my parents booked for me and my ex. They had a houseful of people, so they asked if we minded driving a few miles to stay one night in the little B&B on the river. Sounded like fun. There were cats EVERYWHERE! Smelled like cat piss. I love cats, don’t get me wrong…but ewwww. How could mom have missed that when she went by the place…
And here’s my best worst hotel story ever: http://nancyrapoport.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-i-wish-i-had-taken-pictures-of-palm.html.
Did they provide you with the tongs and instructions on how to use them to adjust the A/C or did you just get crafty?
I’m SO looking forward to seeing you Friday in Brookline!
When I was traveling across country to relocate to L.A. from D.C., I was staying in…dumps to save money. The worst was a @#$%hole located around Memphis. It looked like a broken down crack den and I barely got any sleep worrying that the flimsy motel door lock wouldn’t keep out the colorful assortment of fellow tenants, etc.
It was pretty skeevy.
The next night I landed in Albuquerque and decided to “splurge” for a known chain rather than the sketchy no-names I’d stayed in previously and ended up at a Howard Johnsons. For only $10 more for the night, I got a CLEAN room complete with useless strip of paper across the toilet. It was like staying at the Ritz Carlton in comparison to my prior lodging.
Please rest…
Dear Jenny,
Of all the things I love about you.
The thing that I love most of all.
Is that you are ridding the world of dumb PR people.
Look!
Splat!
Another one just leaped out of the hotel window!
Is this a great trend or what?!
So – this isn’t really related to this particular post. But I’ve been away for the weekend so this is the first time I’ve been able to comment. . .
I’ve been reading your book out loud to my partner (she calls you my ‘other wife’ and is a little jealous by how much I love you (I’m not a stalker, honest. . .although that’s exactly what a stalker would say isn’t it, so ignore that part of my comment) but she got me your book anyway cause she knew it would make me happy, so now I’m trying to make her realise how awesome you are and OMG, I just realised this is in parentheses, which makes this a really long segway! – I love Segway’s did you know in Prague you can do a Segway tour of the city? There is a really funny episode of Doctor Who with David Tennant as the doctor, it’s The Bride one, and they see segway’s under London and jump on them, it’s AWESOME! Ok, closing the brackets now!). . .what on earth was I talking about? Oh yeah – your book!
Anyway, there were a couple of things we wanted to say to you – first off, when my partner proposed to me (although same sex “marriage” is not legal in NZ, we have this thing called a ‘civil union’ which is kinda like a marriage but with a lot less legal rights. But that doesn’t matter to us cause to us a ‘wedding’ was about declaring our love for each other in front of our friends and family) so, when my partner proposed to me, she almost chopped off her finger and had to have tetanus shot! So when you said about proposal’s not being romantic and stuff unless they had a tetanus shot, we felt we had to share. . .
The other thing we wanted to say, have just read your dinner party ‘issues’ and we SERIOUSLY want to have you over for dinner! (fancy a trip to New Zealand?) In case you can’t tell from my rambling in parantheses (or is the plural of that paranthesis? Parathese? Paranthesi? Am I even using the right word for inside brackets???) I too have a delayed censor. Normally with emails I would edit; but I’m leaving this as is so that you know you are not alone in this. . .your random segway’s, ramblings and strange stories would fit right in with me and my friends as we all do the same thing. . .(my sister once randomly blurted out to her then-boyfriend, during the middle of a semi-business meeting, “That’s right you need a new G-String!” In her head she meant his guitar, but didn’t say that!). . .You are an inspiration. Please keep up the amazing work you do! (and please come have dinner with us, New Zealand is a beautiful country! Victor can come and be ‘normal’ somewhere and we love children so Hailey is totally welcome too!)
When I was about 14, I was on a trip with my church youth group and we pulled up to a hotel in Baton Rouge, LA and there was a dead body that had just been pulled out of the pool and was still laying beside it (there were cops and crime scene tape all around, so it was safe to assume he wasn’t just sleeping). We stayed there anyway, and the rooms were filthy. There were random stains on everything from the wall paper to the sheets. And to top it all off, there were drunk people yelling below our balcony all night long.
I don’t know how else to contact you – I don’t normally read or post on blogs, however, i found something you will most likely love: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2154283/Cats-away-Artist-turns-dead-pet-flying-helicopter-killed-car.html
in your words: you’re welcome
Ugh. My worst smelled like dead people and had a dog house out back made of old mattresses. I refused to lay under the covers. Though the ghetto one with a midnight fire alarm and water stains everywhere was a close second.
Orlando, Florida. Business trip. Cheap ass client. Astro turf. Cockroaches. Ran out of toilet paper. And 7 months pregnant.
I never got in on the twitter fun that time but my worst hotel experience was when my toddler and I were leaving our room and the housekeeper ran over my 2 year old son with her houskeeping cart. AND KEPT GOING! Her response when questioned? “I thought he was a pizza box.”
Seriously?!
Maybe they figure that by comparison a Hilton has to be better?
That’s great. That’s like having #alcoholics on Twitter looking for support and having a Maker’s Mark ad pop up. Ok, it’s not exactly like it, because it looks bad for Hilton and in this case Maker’s Mark might actually re-enlist some former clientele. Still…
The RB
And this is why I like to stay in my own house. At home. Blergh.
My husband and I stayed at a hotel in Washington State that had carpet laid right over the cold concrete floor, a very loud window unit air conditioner, and daily housekeeping service by a lady who was approximately 100 years old.
My not-necessarily-worst-but-more-like-most-memorable hotel experience was during a high school trip. I was in the shower and the fire alarm went off. I couldn’t really hear it well – at first I thought it was a squeaky pipe – but as it went on I realized it was a fire alarm. Might I mention at this point, there are 4 to a room – so where were my 3 roommates? Well, after the fire alarm was deemed a false alarm, I could hear them outside the room, pounding on the door and yelling my name to be let in. And they stayed outside the room pounding on the door and yelling to be let in while I finished my shower, dried off, got dressed, and fixed my hair. That’ll teach them not to leave someone behind during a fire alarm. 🙂
Oh my God. I read this at work, and I just started laughing so hard the entire office is still giving me shady looks….
I would just like to say that you have inspired me as a blogger just starting. Your snarky remarks, and great personality shine through your blog!
DOH! Tongs to change the thermostat? Sounds like some of the places I’ve stayed while on tour with my band. Motel 6 Hell. I picture you finding rodents to taxidermy. 😉 (Hope it’s not that bad!)
I once drove cross-country and was forced to stop in some little town in Texas in the middle of the night. It was on the Mexican border. I had to pay for the room at the convenience store down the road, then go to the motel. The sheets were yellow and had burns in them, the bed leaned to one side and the room felt sweaty. The television didn’t have cable and the only stations I could pick up were from Mexico. No American stations at all. Since I don’t speak Spanish, I read a book by the light of my car flashlight because the overhead light didn’t work.
Hilarious! Reminds me of when I made my kid watch a Titanic documentary via Hulu, and the sponsored ad was from Royal Caribbean. D’oh!
Classic stuff there.
I’m sure Hilton is crapping.
Literally.
Paris Hilton is about to be undone by The Bloggess. It’s amazing.
I stay at the Bethesda Doubletree all the time. Uh oh
Okay, I realize this is totally random since this post doesn’t even mention Juanita Weasel, but I’ve just spent the past three hours reading your blog for the first time (after buying and loving your book) while simultaneously listening to Misery play in the background on Netflix Instant, and hear me out…you should totally do a scene-by-scene remake, or at least hit the highlights, using Juanita as Annie Wilkes. I think that Ron Weasely would make a great Paul/James Caan. He has the perfect look of stoic cynism/pain to pull it off. Maybe one of the crocodiles could be the old sheriff that gets shot in the back? I don’t know. Give it some thought. Either way, love your stuff!
I can’t put this where it really goes just now, so I thought I might leave it here. Hope that’s okay.
So, one of the most horrible things about depression that I have found is the isolating quality of it. Depression can keep you from turning to your friends when you need them most. Really, keep telling me your funny Target story, don’t mind the crying. Sure I’d love to go shopping, as long as you don’t mind the 80 year old shuffle I have to do. Or the way I might pile everything into my cart but walk out without buying any of it. I get that it’s hard for you. There’s really no guide or phrase book for friends/ family of depressives. And telling me things will look better in the morning is NOT helpful. But what do you say to someone who’s being mind f**ked by their own mind? Depression is NOT normal. People are supposed to be sad and people are supposed to grieve, but comparing depression to sadness is akin to comparing cramps to labor. Similar physical area, totally different causes, severity and solutions. Sadness is a process people work though. Depression is a chemical imbalance depressives cannot control voluntarily. Telling a depressive to think happy thoughts or do something to take their mind off the depression is like telling a person to pray about a cavity. Stop it. Depressives ARE normal. Depression doesn’t make me stupid. Well, it does affect short term memory, but it doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. Or crazy I know it’s out of your scope of experience. I get you don’t have a solution for whatever crazy thought depression has manifested in my brain and that that sometimes makes you rely on platitudes or cliches. BUT- the worst thing you could do would be to treat me like the depression is really me. I am usually not even willing to think about discussing the crazy stuff depression makes me feel. I am horribly embarrassed by the mess that goes on in my low times because I KNOW I am strong awesome people that God has some serious faith in cause WTF, Dude? I know depression skews my responses and reactions. It would be so amazing to be reassured that you knew that too. So next time, try the phrase “That is not you. That is the depression. You are loved.” or better yet, ” Depression is a lying bastard. “
Oh, that poor advertising guy when he realized. Before that moment, he thought the guys in the hall saying “Nice work, Asshole” were doing that, insult you ’cause we like you, thing. Sad sigh.
One time at a high school debate tournament the room they ushered us into had half-eaten bowls of macaroni with cigarettes in them. The shower wasn’t so much a water spigot as a metal pig snout which sneezed warm mist into your face but accomplished little in terms of other hygiene. The beds were unmade, and when we asked them to clean the room, they handed me a bottle of Windex.
Windex makes things shiny, but I don’t think it’s anti-bacterial.
Where is everyone? Stephen Colbert, tonight, reports on the Zombie Apocalypse!!!! I swear, he did. He even had Fox News clips and a statement from the CDC, both on the Zombie Apocalypse!
I really don’t think I’m hallucinating and I’m pretty sure I’m awake and that’s what I saw. I have some good drugs in the house (Ativan — panic attacks) but I haven’t used any tonight. Really. I’m not in a panic about the Zombie Apocalypse, oddly.
I’m just excited for the Bloggess and everyone who loves her, because I know this will excite you all.
Epic Fail for Hilton…but in such a beautiful way!
Our worst hotel ever story took place at the same hotel over a number of weeks – I’m a performer at Renaissance Faires, so we have stayed in a lot of dodgy places. The most memorable one involved:
1) them being unable to fine our reservations for several weeks running, and the front desk clerk being unable to understand enough English to understand my explanation that they were made by fax, until I did a little pantomime dance pretending to send a fax and made the “eeeeeeeee” noise.
2) the ice machine being a little far away. Like in another hotel, across the parking lot.
3) One week we checked in to find that that one of the beds in the room was a bit rumpled.
me: “Someone’s been sleeping in myyyyy bed”
my guitarist: “I don’t think they were sleeping….”
4) a leaking AC unit had the carpet all wet and moldy – but there was added ventilation by way of a hole punched in the wall
5) When I pointed yet another issue out to the front desk, I was told “If you guys keep complaining, I’m going to cancel your reservation” – Really, you don’t want our business? I suspect that your corporate office might be interested in hearing about that…. (We ended up getting one of our weekends comped after that)
On a related note I was listening to RawDog Comedy station on XM and there was a commercial for another comedy XM station that is apparently the raunchiest of the raunchy, or so said the radio prostitute that was encouraging listeners to come get ear raped on this other channel. Anyways, this lovely advertisement ended with the radio prostitute saying to come on over to hear funny ear rapists and “Go Fuck Yourself!”. Next commercial is a sweet little Gecko voice asking if you would like to save money on car insurance. I have a strange feeling that the sweet wholesome image which has been carefully crafted by the advertising minions at Geico want Go Fuck Yourself associated with saving money on car insurance. Odd enough every time I hear that sweet little accent I think… “Go Fuck Yourself”
Reading about everyone else’s exciting hotel adventures makes me realize how sheltered I was. Why oh why did Daddy have to be so picky and have some cash to spare? So unfair.
Oh, but, maybe I can relate a little. Old boyfriend and I went to good hotel in Arizona in JULY because it is less expensive when heat stroke is a given. A freakin’ scorpion found it’s way into my shoe. And I found the bastard AFTER it stung me. I think it was a Westin Hotel. They sent up a fruit basket as a reward or something. Fruit? Were they fucking serious?
Ah the irony!
You’ve to to love the automated advertising systems. Someone mentioned us? Let’s retweet! Someone mentioned hotels? Hey, we’re a hotel! Let’s advertise under their hashtag! What do you mean they were talking about the worst hotels ever?! Ooops!
PRFail is right.
These are amazing. Here’s another!
Last summer my mom rented us a place to stay so we could go to my cousin’s out of town wedding, and who am I to turn down free lodging? My first words in the door were “If all we leave with is hepatitis, it will be a good trip.” The decor hadn’t been changed since 1963- the (shag?) carpet was so worn it was flat like tile. Everything was shades of copper and pea green, though not always intentionally. The sheets had been thoughtfully upgraded in the late 80’s, but clearly not cleaned since. I found a pile of toenails in the corner. What used to be a porch had been walled off with cheap wood paneling to make a second “bedroom.” There was almost no natural light except for what came in through the “windows” cut in the paneling. Everything felt greasy. The tv was on an old metal tv tray (is that why it’s called that!?) and didn’t get any channels. We slept on our jackets and beach towels. The “lobby” was a shack next door where a chihuahua sat in an old metal and canvas folding chair next to a drunk guy in a sleeveless shirt sitting on the curb. (You cannot make this stuff up.) It was our first trip with our infant son, and I didn’t let him come in contact with ANYTHING. I actually felt like a champ for making it through the weekend unscathed and unmurdered. It was fun.
@Beth – that sounds like the a hotel I found on TripAdvisor where the review says something like, “This place is perfect if you like blood, holes in the walls, and whores yelling at each other. STAY AWAY!!!!”
One of the downsides of living in Ireland and having a day job is I’m always asleep when the Bloggess takes over twitter with her awesome, zombie-related madness.
I went to St Louis with a friend, it was only supposed to be a day trip but we decided to stay the night. The only hotel we could find available in our price range had a note that stated they were doing construction during the day. We didn’t plan on being there during the day, so no big deal, right? When we checked in we had to sign a waiver warning that if we had more than 5 people in our room there was a chance the floor might collapse. No refunds available since the room was purchased online. When we made it up to our room, we opened the door to pure chaos. It looked like a group of high schoolers had spend the weekend “living it up”. There was a fold out bed, tons of fast food wrappers on the floor and in the beds, and the remnants of what appeared to be 4 30packs of beer. We got another room, 2 floors up and I’m pretty sure this floor was abandoned for construction. Half the ceiling tiles were missing and there was a circular saw and a tool belt laying in the hall. This room wasn’t quite as bad but there were no towels and there was a plate of half eaten food next to the bed. We decided it was a lost cause and left to troll around downtown. We didn’t get back till 4 in the morning and we both slept in our clothes. I think the car would have been better.
Late to the party here (reading backlogs), but I had to add: one time I was at a hotel in Patterson New Jersey (you know, the Patterson with a prison downtown where I saw someone savagely beating a light-up McDonald’s sign with a pipe at a busy intersection) and we found a spot of blood on our fitted sheet. So, my mother stripped back the sheet and found that the whole mattress was streaked in blood. Not only did they not change the sheet since the last guest, but someone may have murdered a hooker there. They moved us to a new room, which should not have satisfied my family.