Hotel Blacklist

[coasterman1234]

Hotel Name: Howard Johnson Express
Location: 30 mins from Six Flags Great Adventure
Date of Visit: May 2005

Comments: omg... this hotel was exceptionally unclean. We only stayed here because it was just about a week after Kingda Ka's opening day, so naturally all the hotels were packed. But anyways, we went into our room and immediately saw the bed's head board laying on the floor with old rusty nails sticking out of it. Not to mention, in all seriousness, there was a red liquid substance stain (whether it was Kool-Aid or something else) all over the wall beside the bed. Then the next morning we went to their continental breakfast (which is never much I know) but everything wasn't properly kept (hot milk, cold coffee, individual cereal boxes out-of-date, etc). Thankfully, it was only a two night stay. But I loved SFGrAdv, so that made up for hotel during that trip.

[SkierGirl77]

Hotel: Econo Lodge
Location : Orlando , Florida
Nearby Park : Walt Disney World
Date of Visit : December 2005
Comments: I DID NOT like this hotel! The only thing they had for breakfast there was Quaker oatmeal fruit bars and lemonade. The bus that picked you of every morning was always late and extremely crowded. This hotel was one of the last stops for the bus too. The hotel wasn't extremely clean either. The best thing about it was probably the heated pool.

[Coaster_holic24]

Travelodge in Ashland, Va near Kings Dominion. The room was so nasty, a line of ants along the baseboard in the bathroom. A horrible smell of mildew throughought the whole room. When my dad sat on the foot of the bed the whole mattress flipped up off the bed- literally no lie. I will never stay there again. Days inn and super 8 on that same road are much much cleaner and nicer.

[Wes]

There's a Microtel at Ashland that is OK. But I try to avoid them now because of the paper-thin walls.

[raser]

Quality inn creekside in Gatlinburg was an ok place to stay cheap, but if you have an extra 2 hours and want to stay in 5 star accomodations find someone who owns a timeshare at westgate as you can get 3 nights for $99 1 bed 1 sofabed 1 bath and admittance to the waterpark...

[Steven]

Can we try to stick with the format established in the first post (http://www.thrillnetwork.com/boards/showpost.php?p=486635&postcount=1)?

Also, let me remind everyone that this is a blacklist of places to avoid... not places that were just OK. Comments are fine, but if you're going to add a new hotel to the list along with a comment on a previous post, the format should be the same.

Future reports of hotels that don't follow the format will be deleted.

[epijlh]

Hotel Name: Econo Lodge Inn & Suites Cedar Point South
Location: 3309 Milan Road, Sandusky Ohio
Date of Visit: Aug1-3 2007
Nearest Park to Hotel: Cedar Point

Reason why the hotel was unsatisfactory: Extremely messy and untidy. When we first checked in, the beds were poorly made. The head board to one of the beds in one of our rooms was broken in half, and was quickly mended with brown duct tape by the hotel. The air conditioner in one of our rooms was not working. The blinds were broken in my room, and would not shut. In all three rooms, the wall paper was peeling. the TV in one room would not work. Rugs were stained. There was a whole in the wall in my bathroom. The lock in one of the doors did not function properly, and my door had a hole where a looker-glass was supposed to be.

Additional Comments: Cheap, and it showed. Beds were comfortable though. I can't believe my mom chose this place over Breakers Express. I will NEVER go to another Econo Lodge EVER after this experience. Basically, this hotel was complete and utter crap.

[tofattoride]

SLEEP INN at SFOG. I won't get into the whole story but with out a doubt our credit card was stolen out of the room 2 weeks ago and before we found it was gone "we" spent $573 around the atlanta area. I of coarse contacted the front desk and the police. The front desk said very nicely "prove it". The police said it happens at those hotels by SFOG all the time. The investigator told me that it is a very high crime area and he thought us lucky not to have been shot in during our 4 day stay. He told me that a lot of the people at the hotel are in on the crime at those hotels. When you are at the park they will look thru your stuff find what they can and sell any credit cards to others that then go out and use them. You are at the park so you won't know it is gone and report it stolen fast enough to prevent them from having there fun. He said that is almost impossible to catch the person who did it because they don't use the cards. The investigator told me a lot of stuff about that area and said that the crime is so bad that they have many complaints every weekend. He said that SFOG has all the security but they are trying to just not get robed and they try to make sure that people don't get hurt by the roaming group of thugs that walk around the park (his words). From what he said weekends are a lot worse in that area than during the week. I will not stay at any of those hotels around that area again. I have read other stories online about that hotel as well. I would say more about the situation but I won't so I won't be deemed as being a racist.

[coasterlove]

Super 8
5410 Milan Sandusky, Ohio
Cedar Point
Aug 6-9, 2007

Let me start out by saying that I've stayed in many hotels and motels over the last seven years of traveling, I'd guess at least 30-40 nights at various rooms. And while I might find a small problem here or there, never really anything worth complaining about. I'm not very picky about things, so I've never had anything negative to say....until now!

I have so many things to complain about, it ridiculous. We first walked in and noticed an odor, maybe bad body odor from the previous guests? Then we saw a large stain on the carpet next to the room door. We were on the first floor so maybe it was flood/rain damage?

I wanted to watch a little TV, the remote didn't work or the batteries were dead.so while I asked about a new remote, I also had to get hand towels which we weren't provided with. Then when it was time to go to sleep, we noticed we didn't have the proper size sheets for the king size bed we had. Anytime we moved, we had to pull the sheets to stretch them over the bed. They kept coming off, exposing the bare mattress.

So the next morning, we went to the park. When we came back, our room card keys were not working. A worker replaced them for us. When we got in, we immediately saw that the smoke detector was on the floor along with what looked like some pieces of plaster. Since the worker was still near, we asked about that. He told us that the fire marshall was in and doing an inspection. Maybe that was true, but a fire marshall would leave the fire detector on the floor? Also, wouldn't the staff clean that up, had they noticed it? So does that mean someone was in our room, unsupervised with all our belongings?

We were to stay there for four nights and had even originally thought about extending our stay oe night. The smell was always there as well as that stain on the carpet. We would've gotten a room somewhere else but with us actually trying to have a vacation, spending our time at Cedar Point and doing other activities, we didn't have much time to look for another room, not to mention cancel the rest of our stay which we reserved at that tis horrible hotel.

The last straw came on what would've been our last full day at the hotel. We left the room and headed to the car. We then realized we frgot something and went back to the room. The card keys again would not work. Also, the red light that would indicate denied, never lit up. We once again got new keys and those didn't work either. We went back to the desk and the woman at the counter told us it must be broken or need a new battery for the device. She looked for the master key to allow us into our room but another worker had taken it accidentally and would have to head back to the hotel. So we were locked out of our room. We decided to go eat and then come back when it would hopefully be resolved.

While we ate breakfast, we decided we had enough and would check out no matter what and find a new hotel despite our busy schedule.

When we get the chance, we will call Super 8 about some sort of refund or credit. We'll see what happens.

So if you're going to Cedar Point or in Sandusky, Ohio for any reason, DO NOT STAY AT THE SUPER 8 LOCATED AT 5410 MILAN. Trust me on this. Not only will you find roos that are better and nicer, they'll even be cheaper. The only reason we reserved this room which was actually more expensive ($89.99 for weeknights) than others in the area was because we thought it would be nicer. We were so wrong.

[titancoaster]

just a warning
Stay Away from ANY hotel on Division St. in Arlington (Six Flags over Texas)
It is the ghetto in Arlington, half of the restaurants and hotels on the street are bordered up, the hotels are falling apart, and warn you as you pull in to lock your car and never leave anything visible or it will be gone when you come back. At the Best Western we stayed at, there was mold in the room, the tub was rusted and gross, and there was old coffee in the coffee maker when we walked in. The Breakfast was one egg in a huge pot of grease. Just stay at the La Quinta next to Six Flags, ignore the better prices of the Division St hotels

[Wes]

Microtel Kings Island
Across I-71 from Kings Island
May 1-2, 2009

I think I've learned a lesson, check in early and actually check out your room before you head into the park.

I got back to my room (I had checked in earlier that day, but never went to the room)... there were HAIRS in my bed.

The only thing I could figure is that the cleaning person sheds a lot, and doesn't have the sense to look down at what they are doing.

Well it was too late and I was tired so I just wiped them off with a towel or something and went to bed figuring it was a fluke.

The next evening when I got back from the park, the same thing happened again.

I complained on exiting and checking out, but the guy blew me off. Strangely though, when I got back home they never charged me for the room! Even though he blew me off, he must have felt bad later or something and reversed the charge on my card.

Still though, I would not recommend the place. Microtel's have in general gone down hill in a lot of ways, and my biggest complaint is the paper-thin walls in those place and the fact that it must be a law that every youth group stays only at Microtel and run up and down the hall all night long. When I was 16, I liked my sleep!

[House]

Agreed Micro tell is pretty bad. We stayed in one by Cedar Point last year, and had some kids running up and down the halls above us late into the nite. Then once he was in the room he was stomping on the ground non stop right above our room. We complained muliple times, but they claimed they did not hear anything.

I even went up by there room and could hear the little brat screaming at his parents. Still they claimed to not hear anything, we invited the staff into our room so they could hear but they declined. I think we finally got to sleep at like 3 or 4 am.

[nitro4ever]

Hotel Name - Days Inn @ SixFlags
Location - GA
Date of Visit - July 23rd - 25th
Nearest Park to Hotel - SFOG
Reason why the hotel was unsatisfactory - Website said it was next to SFOG.. it was really about 10min walk... food they gave was very bad... the bathroom doors didnt lock or even have locks on them... everynight when a thunderstorm rolled in the TV went out... Umm oh yeah! The cleaners were very slow... I left my room at 8.30am and when i went back for my mid-day drop off of stuff around 4-5pm the room still had not been cleaned.... but the worst thing EVER about this hotel.... after my first trip to SFOG and all the fun i had had... i walked into the bathroom to use the sink.. and when i went to grab the towel... it had CRAP ON IT! and i mean like someone had pooped on it... it was just the sickst thing i had ever seen in a hotel room ever! its like they didnt even try and clean the room...
also the AC dripped alot of water... but i didnt know till i got up and put my wet shoes on...
Additional Comments SFOG has maybe 2 other hotels 'next' to it.. use one of them....

Thanks for the heads up, if I ever go to SFOG, I know where not to stay!

[Rick B]

Are there many out there like us who are RVers and don't stay at hotels? Is is appropriate to post campground info here, too? We're always looking for good campgrounds in and around amusement parks.