My best friend had a really, really gross hotel room experience recently. She's going to write a review here about it so I won't give it away.

What is the worst hotel room experience you have ever had? Just the room.

We've been lucky enough not to find any dentures or other nasty things. If I had to pick a worst one, I guess it would be the Quality Inn North Lima Ohio. We had to stay in a smoking room because of overbooking, and there was no shower curtain and a dirty toilet. We also had to wait in line for nearly an hour to get the room. Ultimately, we did get the room free.

Anyone have any traumatic hotel room stories to share?

Michelle

Several gross hotel room stories. The most recent one that Michelle refers to was the Best Western Meander Inn in Youngstown, Ohio - beds full of hair!!! Totally gross.

Also, after partying at my first alumni weekend in college and getting in a fight with my boyfriend when all the hotels in town were booked, I ened up in a very gross Comfort Inn in Lancaster, PA. Cigarette burns on the bedding, dirty bathroom, bugs - very very sketch. Thank goodness I'd had a bit too much to drink or else I would have been totally grossed out. And a friend that drove me there and guarded the door - let's just say it wasn't a very great neighborhood.

Last but not least, a cabin a.k.a. garage in Muskegon, MI when I was a kid and we were traveling to the U.P. on 4th of July weekend and my parents had failed to make a reservation for the lay over. Again - bugs and dirt.

Thankfully, all my gross hotel stay were on one night lay overs and never for a vacation - perhaps because I invest my time and money in investigating those!

This is one of those times you don't want to have the best story..........but..........
We were moving back from California to Illinois as my dad have become seriously ill and needed to be with his original doctors/hospitals.
We had made it to Gallup, NM after driving (mom 1 car/me the van) for almost 18 hours (van broke down in the desert, sighhhhh). By the time we made it to Gallup we all needed to rest, dad especially. We stopped at the first hotel we saw and checked in. What a mistake.
The first thing I noticed was animal hair all over the chairs. Yuck! You know those signs on the back of the door that say when check in/out times are? Well, nope, the first rule was "no prostitution in this room", the 2nd one was "No drugs are to be sold in this room." I quit reading after that. I called to mom who was in the 2nd bedroom to get out here, we needed to talk. I wanted OUT of this room. It was too late, she had already gotten dad into bed and he was asleep. Ok, so maybe, a hot shower will be the thing. Nope, turned on the water and it was ORANGE. Ok, let it run for a while to get the rust out of the water. One hour later and the water's still orange. Fine, I'll just go to bed. OH YUCK......... stains on the sheets! Trudge out to the car and get a blanket to lay across the bed and another to wrap up in. While doing that I notice a large group of men arguing in the parking lot. Hustle back to the room and lock the door. I had just laid down when I heard that same large group of men fighting outside my room door. BANG...they were IN THE ROOM! 2 of the men fighting had busted the door open when they fell against it. I got up and started throwing everything I could get my hands on at them while screaming bloody murder. Well, it really got their attention when mom came out packing a pistol. (gee mom, when did you turn all dirty harry on me?) The men apologized and left real fast. Mom is now in tears she's scared, tired and worried about dad. I sent her back to bed, but she said she wouldn't sleep unless I kept the pistol with me, since I was in the outer room. I ended up staying awake the whole night with that pistol for company, as the men were still out there, now acting like great buddies and drinking beer. Dad, thankfully, never knew about any of it as he was out of it for most of the trip. The good news is he recieved his kidney transplant and got his health back.

...although cmaw63s room sounds pretty awful.

In Oil City, PA, I also piled my furniture against the door of my room. The parking lot (inches from my door) was filled with motorcycles, hoodlums, and coarse, drunken screeching throughout the night. When I went to check out, there was police tape around my end of the parking lot and I had to walk around the building the other way so as not to disturb the criminal investigation.

At a Red Roof Inn in Ipsilanti, MI I had a very awful, stained, smelly room. But it was made complete when the room next door was taken over by hirsute ruffians who filled it with several loads of photographic equipment --movie cameras, lights, lighting umbrellas,etc.-- and brought several of the sleaziest young women I have ever seen in and made a lot of noise all night long while smoking so much PCP that I had to stuff a towel under the adjoining room door to keep it from filling up my room. PCP and porn: thank you Red Roof Inn.

Also, in some sordid outskirt of San Diego, I stayed at a Holiday Inn, I think, that was swathed entirely in barbed wire. The room they gave me had no working lights and smelled of decaying meat. I changed rooms and suggested they check under the mattress of that one.

As far as finding little things left behind, no. But I just remember the Fairfield in Carlsbad that we stayed in when we visited Legoland. It was next to 101 and all night long I heard trucks zooming by. I had to go the next day and buy earplugs. It was just awful. I now always go and look on Google maps to see exactly where a hotel/motel is in relation to the freeway.

Peggy

Lafayette Louisiana, went with my husband for a week of training he had to do. THE WORST 4 NIGHTS OF MY LIFE! What a nightmare. I thhink we got houskeeping service one time.. i had to go to the desk to ask for more towels and the lady says can you come back and get them in a few minutes, I have to go get them. OK, So why can't I just wait??! I sat down in the lobby as she locked doors and drawers and what ever, then went odwn the hall, and returned with some towels. I let hr know that we hadn't had any housekeeping service, adn she said well do you have a DND on your door? I said what is that, she says a do not disturb, like I'm an idiot.I said NO... I sure didn't. she was like ok, we'll make sure it gets cleaned tomorrow. I stayed in the room all day, and no housekeeper knocked on my door. I could even hear them talking and laughing and hollering in the halls. These people are rude- the rooms are supposed to be like apartments, but imagine renting an apartment that has been used 100 times and never had a deep clean. same furniture, couches.. how can you even trust the silver ware is clean?? Not to mention, I opened up the curtains in the room to find that we had a beautiful view of a GRAVEYARD.
Did I mention I was in room 113?

Its nothing that it shows on the web site - there are much better places to stay, with better service, and cleanliness standards.

I've stayed in rooms that were average, except that there were other "guests" who let their kids shout and race in the hallways at 2AM. Two hotels I stayed at had fire alarms go off in the wee hours of the morning... that wasn't fun. (One was a false alarm and one was the real thing... but very minor.) In three or four hotel rooms (including one last week), someone had set the clock radio to go off at maximum volume at 3-4AM in the morning. The first one woke me from a dead sleep but I check the alarm religiously now.

However, the most interesting thing along these lines was at a Hilton in Colorado Springs. The room was small but the bath was positively miniscule. Although the room was otherwise in good shape, there was no toilet seat. When I called the front desk, the clerk thought I was joking and wouldn't take the report. I had to go down in person and convince the clerk that there was no toilet seat. A mechanic came to my room to confirm the lack of a toilet seat and promptly fetched one. He said, "I was wondering why we had this toilet seat hanging up in the shop. Now I know where it came from."

Other than being small and not having a toilet seat, that room had a to-die-for view of Pike's Peak.

--Bob

Being the manly kinda man Bob is, I'm surprised he NEEDED a toilet seat.

My lousy experiences are nothing compared to some of the others posted here, but if I had to say, I'd go with a Days Inn in Orlando, FL; the Ayres Inn in Orange, CA; and the Travelodge Covent Garden in London, all of which I reviewed. I thought I was being quite generous in my ratings of the first couple for reasons mentioned in the review.

I guess I've been quite fortunate, considering how bad the problems other guests have had.

Adrienne

Motel 6 in Porterville, California. No chair, no table, no drawers for your clothes, no night stand, and no air conditioning after 8:00. You heard me right, no air conditioning after 8:00. The temperature in every room is controlled by management from a roof thermostat. Every evening, the air conditioning is cut off to conserve energy. When we complained it was so hot at night, we were offered a fan. I said I didn't want a fan, I paid for air conditioning. The lady said sorry, there is nothing she could do. Try to beat that one.

My wife and I made the mistake of staying at the RED ROOF INN in BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS. We were trying to enjoy our first wedding anniversary together and there was a loud disruptive party in the room next door. About 12:30 AM I called the front desk guy, Jacob. He called back about 1 AM after the volume on the trashy music had been briefly reduced and he said that he would move the trouble makers to another room. We went to sleep for a short time and woke up to a loud conversation outside our door. We looked through the peephole and the security guard was spewing profanities along with the jerks in the room next door. My wife called the front desk again at 2:45 AM. Jacob paged the security guy on his walkie-talkie and everyone around heard (including us from inside our room)that the complaint came from our room number. The people next door stayed and the party continued. At 3 AM I called again and asked to speak to the manager, who of course would not be in until the next day. The disruption continued and got worse until I called Jacob again and threatened to call the police. So he finally took the initiative to call the police and they finally came to remove the trouble-makers so that by 4 AM it was quiet. My wife and I were already tired after a five hour drive and this was the last thing we wanted to ruin our anniversary trip. At a previous RED ROOF INN stay in CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS, our room was not ready when we arrived at the designated time and it took the front desk nearly an hour to get us a room. We thought we would give RRI another chance in Brownsville- big mistake. Now we know that they hire unprofessional incompetents who don't know even the basics of customer service. Let this be a warning to anyone considering a stay at a Red Roof Inn: IF YOU VALUE YOUR TIME AND YOUR SLEEP YOU REALLY SHOULD STAY ELSEWHERE. This is the last time we will make the mistake or making reservations at a Red Roof Inn ANYWHERE.

years ago during our hippy dippy days, our whole family was on a road trip vacation in North Carolina and we met a couple while we were at a theme park called Land Of OZ anyone ever hear of that place? It was near Grandfather mountain or on top of it....anyway, this couple told us about a hotel nearby that was owned by a commune so we thought we would give it try, it was called the "frog Pond" I think, my brain is fuzzy about those days...:) So we thought we would give it a try. We drove our old Volkswagon Camper on over there and oh my, the room they showed us looked like a frog pond and the frogs still lived there...

We got out of there as fast as that old wagon could take us..

I'm choosing to ignore the spam on this one. Carry on!

Michelle

The service sucks. The place is loud. Partiers would like it. The band plays almost all night. Forget about sleeping! I'm not kidding.