Drive Past This Place
Although there was no mention of it at the time I made my reservation, I wasn’t surprised to see that some of the rooms were being refreshed/remodeled to some degree as we were travelling the week after Spring Break. My first impression as I pulled into the parking lot and walked up to the office was that it was going to be a good value since it looked rather clean and the lobby was well appointed. My very first clue should have been when the clerk apologized as he handed me the key card saying they were out of sleeves for the keys. He had wrapped a ‘post it’ note around the key cards. He told me the room was on the second floor, breakfast was served from 6:30 to 9:30, and mentioned elevators at each end of the building; nothing more. No information on which side of the building my room was located or placement of the ice machines.
Upon finding our room, the first thing I noticed was that the door ‘stop’ molding was broken near the bottom. As we entered, my wife caught a faint whiff of cigarette smoke. When I found an ashtray in the bathroom, I immediately called the front desk, asking for another room. They upgraded me to a room with a refrigerator without charging the normal five dollar daily fee for it. While quite a bit better, our new room was rather small and still not one of the remodeled ones. The refrigerator was located under the clothes hanging rack. Inside, the plastic coating was flaking off the wire shelves, allowing them to rust. The carpet was showing signs of wear, particularly in doorways. The mattresses were nothing to brag about, although we did get a pretty good night’s sleep. The Polaroid flat screen television had NO HDMI connection for use with our computer to stream Netflix or Hulu. As we went to dinner, I noticed that there was a lot of small trash strewn about the parking lot and several trash cans were in need of being emptied.
After the first night, we left early the next morning for sightseeing and other activities. Upon our return around 4:30 for a brief rest prior to going out to dinner, our room smelled as if someone had been smoking pot. I called the front desk to complain. The clerk offered to let us change rooms, but we had already spread out and had only one night left, so we refused. They sent two maintenance men who were armed with a can of Lysol. Their explanation was that perhaps someone in an adjacent room had been smoking it and it permeated the wall. The other explanation offered was that someone was smoking it out on the walkway in front of our room and it came into the room between the door facing and the unsealed door, denying any possibility that a maid or other staff would do it.
As a place to rest my head at the end of a busy day of sightseeing, whale watching and other excursions, it was more than sufficient, but due to the smoking issue and a slew of minor things wrong with our room, I won’t return to this property.