Vacation is supposed to be a wonderful time and staying at a hotel is a big part of it. We all remember the feeling of arriving at a beautiful lobby, so excited to climb into big bed, watch some cable TV and live it up. But, some hotels are not like this. Some are truly terrible experiences. These Redditors saw the absolute worst of hotels and have shared their stories. Some have been edited for clarity.
Well, That’s A Nightmare
“Planned a trip once and looked into motels/hotels about 30 minutes outside the city. I can’t remember the name of the hotel because it wasn’t a national chain, plus it was 7 years ago (and I think my mind’s done its best to shut out the experience as best it can).
Anyway, the pictures on the website all looked nice. Rooms looked good for what I needed and with a free breakfast, what could go wrong? It was $100 a night, seemed reasonable.
So I get there and in the large hotel parking lot, there are only about 2-3 cars outside.
I go in, and it takes roughly 15 minutes for someone to meet me at the front desk. I check in, and start off to my room. The elevator door opens and boom, dark hall way, no lights.
I was like ‘Wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut.’ It was being renovated or something, and you had to walk through the renovation to get to your room.
I get to my room, and it’s roughly about half the size I thought it was. I go to the bathroom because I want to shower after a long roadtrip. I turn on the water and the cold water doesn’t work. I turn on the hot water, and it never gets hot, it just stays cold.
At this point I’m getting really frustrated cause I’m paying $100 for this experience. I’m so tired that I say eff it and try to take a nap. I go to sit on the bed and something moves. I don’t know what it is at this point, but I know I saw something small move.
I lift the pillow and………..spider nest. NO
I immediately pack my stuff back up and again walk through the renovation to the elevator. I press the lobby button, the doors shut, and……you guessed it, elevator gets stuck. Now I’m trapped, and after about 3 minutes in there, the lights also go out.
I pull my cellphone out and try calling the main desk. It takes 4 calls before they pick up. They say they’ll send someone. After 2 hours, finally someone gets the elevator working and I’m let out.
After I get to the front desk and get my refund, I storm out of the place and toward my car. On the way, I trip on one of those long concrete barriers at the front of parking spots, and promptly break my wrist.”
I Have No Words
“There was a couple that stayed in one of our rooms for a week, they would just ask if we would put fresh linens and towels by the door and that they would take any trash to the dumpster. So after their week of being there, and none of our housekeepers had been in that room for a week, one of them opened the door…
The first thing was the smell, it made our head housekeeper puke and she had to run away, they had poop all over the walls and rubbed it in. They pooped on the floor, television, beds, air conditioning system, and even clogged up the shower with poop. We’re thinking they must have had a party of people just pooping in this room. It was so bad that we had to evacuate the hotel (ask everyone to leave and pay for them to go to another hotel), call the cops, call a hazmat cleanup crew and it took a week and a half to clean this room. Cops never did find those filthy animals.”
That’s One Way To Do It
“Driving cross-country from Wisconsin to Florida. Three o’clock in the morning, we’ve been on the road for hours, and neither of us can keep our eyes open anymore. We agree we have to stop at the next hotel, motel, Holiday Inn…anything.
Shortly we come upon an exit with a hotel. It’s easy to tell this, because its name is just ‘Hotel.’
We go in, and it looks pretty shady, but it’s late and we’re exhausted, so we get a room from the nice Pakistani fellow behind the desk. We only need a few hours sleep, so we request a wakeup call.
Opening the door to our room, we see that it’s definitely shady, as everything in the room has been bolted and/or chained to the walls or floor.
At least, everything had been, because it’s all gone now. The television, the mirror, the fridge, the end tables, the phone…they’ve all been stolen, and judging by the conditions left behind, usually a good amount of force was employed.
We pile our bags between the two beds and both sleep with knives under our pillows.
As I drift off to sleep, my exhaustion-fogged brain catches onto an important detail I had missed earlier…how are they going to leave a wakeup call when we don’t have a phone?
7:00 am – KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK ‘HELLO IN THERE! IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO BEING AWAKE NOW! HELLO! YOU MUST BE GETTING WITH THE WAKING UP!'”
Australia Vs Britain Apparently
“I was backpacking through Australia, staying in the most budget hostels around. After sharing a room with 23 other people for a week, I decided to splurge on a motel. I really just wanted my own room for one night.
After falling asleep in a blissful haze, I was woken up at 3 in the morning by someone banging on my door. I opened it to find an extremely hammered British chick. She pushed past me, walked into the room, crouched down, and took a pee right in the middle of the floor. Then she passed out in the now-formed small puddle of her own urine. That was a weird night.”
Movie Set Kinda
“We needed a place to stay just one night after attending a concert an hour or so away from home. It only needed to be a simple place to stay, but I found a cheap little place with a spa in the room and thought it would be fun to use the opportunity for a bit of romantic night away. We arrived before the gig and found the place painted a cheesy shade of pink, and the layout of the room was like a shady drive in motel, stained carpet and plastic furniture. The toilet broke two seconds after arriving and we had to call maintenance to fix it. We left for the gig, laughing at what a dodgy place we’d found ourselves in.
Later in the night, we arrived back at the hotel a little sloshed, and ready for some fun in the spa. As soon as we entered the bathroom, we were hit with the unmistakable sound of loud, obnoxious love making thumping through the walls. It pounded through the room and we giggled at the raunchiness of it, and when it stopped suddenly, we panicked a little that they’d heard us. But we just heard chatting coming from the room next door; smoke break. Five seconds later, moaning and screaming. Suddenly, regular conversation. These guys were going from all out, crazy monkey banging to polite conversation in seconds. Eventually we realized; adult movies. They were making adult movies. This ebb and flow of screaming and climaxes and chit chat continued for HOURS, constantly, until they finally packed up all their equipment in a van at about 4am and went home, after 7 hours of ‘hard’ work.
I better recognize that room one day.”
Why Would Anyone Do That?
“Undoubtedly the mini-fridge incident.
My family had gone to Florida for vacation and were staying in a cheap but relatively nice hotel. After the first three days, we noticed they had a mini-fridge in the room, so naturally my brother looks inside. Some sick person before us had opened two of the soda cans in the fridge and half drank both of them, then placed them back in the fridge upside down. After a few days, what seemed like the hotel’s entire ant population had swarmed inside the fridge through god knows where. When my brother opened it, so many came pouring out that it may have looked like a minuscule interpretation of the Killer Ant scene from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The fridge was promptly shut, and after my brother’s quick shower, we decided we didn’t want to stay in the hotel after that night.”
Poor Dad
“A coffee plantation and spa in Indonesia. This place was extremely expensive, but in the end it was a disaster. My entire family went to the spa for a few days (we had never spent so much in our lives) and experienced the full terror of this Indonesian Resort.
There were personal baths in each room. Nice right? Think again. The baths were unhygienic, and eventually my father got a bladder infection. Then, we ate their food, and their ‘fresh’ prawns. My father then got food poisoning. After all this, we decided to leave for Jakarta. So we let the hotel bus drive us to the airport, which is a couple of hours away.
My father was already very sick. He had a high fever, a bladder infection, and food poisoning. We were planning to bring him to a doctor as soon as we arrived in Jakarta. But something happened, of course. The driver misheard the hotel’s directions (which were correct, we confirmed this later) and brought us to effing Surabaya. Wanna guess where Surabaya is? Well, it’s definitely not Jakarta.
So we return to the resort, and tell them of our woes. They give us an awful room and allow us to stay another day, but they’ve already done their worst. We’re forty hours behind schedule and have missed two connection flights. Now, however, the driver is told that he will get fired so my father tries to help him. They allow the driver to stay, and give him a few warnings.
When my father got back to Jakarta, he was peeing blood and in a terrible state. We had to stay there for a few days, in order to help him. That was a terrible hotel experience.”
What A Weird Toilet
“The time I pooped in the sink.
I was 11, and it was my first time overseas with my family. We’d just landed and I really had to take a dump, but I held it all the way to the hotel.
We arrive, check into our room and I run to the washroom. Now, this was literally a wash room – it just had a sink and faucets. Now I’d heard that bathrooms in France were different, that they had ‘bidets,’ but I wasn’t sure exactly what a bidet was or what it looked like. I was desperate, I really needed to poop and I figured the sink was the ‘bidet’ so I hopped up onto it and took a huge dump.
After I was done, I looked down and the reality of the situation hit me. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a large, long unbroken log of your own poop in a sink – but it’s pretty terrifying. Especially with your whole family in the next room. I try to ‘flush’ it by turning the water on, but that just makes a soup. The drain had that built in cap that you can use to fill it, so it wouldn’t drain.
I searched the small room for anything to help, and my eyes landed on the decorative plant. I broke off a plastic branch, and used it as a poking stick to try and break up the poo so it would slide through the small opening. I didn’t do much good.
So, being 11…I called my mom. She was pretty good about it – but it was horrifically awkward.”
So Itchy
“After driving for 10 hours, my husband and I stopped for the night at a Days Inn in South Carolina (dump called “South of the Border”). The hotel door wouldn’t close unless you slammed it with all of your strength. The water coming out of the faucets was brown. The towels and washcloths were frayed and had blood stains on them. We went to bed anyway because we were exhausted and just needed to sleep, but we started itching like crazy in the bed. Bugs. We tried to report it to the front desk, but they didn’t care, so we gathered our things and left in the middle of the night.
I tried contacting the management and the head office, but they just e-mailed us back and told us, basically, that it was our loss and not to expect any compensation or even an apology.”
How Did He Know
“I distinctly remember being around 7-8 and visiting a really beautiful part of Northern Australia with my family, I think somewhere near Kakadu National Park.
Me, my parents, and two siblings were staying in a little cabin, it looked pretty standard, whatever.
As we were initially walking up to the cabin, after picking up the keys and stuff, this little boy around my age walks past me and said to his mum, ‘They’re staying in the one with the bugs.’ I remember thinking he was a weirdo, little did I know…
Fast forward a few hours, the sun is gone (it gets particularly dark in the outback), so we switch on the lights in the cabin and hang out. After about 5 minutes of having the lights on, our ENTIRE CABIN is full of bugs! They were EVERYWHERE! They weren’t even those annoying little fly-type bugs that hang around lights, they were like every kind of bug I’ve ever seen/heard of, and massive ones too.
They were on our food, in our hair, in our bags, in the shower, all over the floor and in our beds.
We spent the whole night trying to swat them away, spraying them with mozzie repellant, and being just generally grossed out and miserable. The next morning there were no bugs anywhere, not even little bug corpses from us killing them. Needless to say, we switched cabins the next night, and had a much better time.”
Those Are Called Windows
“Myself and my wife recently went to a fancy hotel on the beach for her birthday. We got sloshed, watched the psychic channel for half an hour, next thing you know, we’re going at it on the couch. In our inebriated state, we failed to realize the giant glass walls in the apartment and the adjacent two hotels. There were children. And mothers. And other couples. All watching. Needless to say, the hotel manager was called and after having some stern words with us, I don’t think we’re allowed back. Not exactly WORST, per se, but definitely coolest.”
A Secret Room
“I moved to Australia in 2011 and was living in a former-motel gone rental rooms situation (more permanents than over-nighters). After the first week of staying there, I discovered that there was a door that was locked in my room, I was puzzled, but wanted to open it regardless. The next day, a few friends of mine from the high school I was going to had come over to play some video games. My friend Josh saw the door and wanted to know what it was, I didn’t know, So he suggested we should open it, I obliged and told him to try for himself. He walked up to the door, slid his library card through the gap and pop it clicked open…
‘OH MY GOD,’ he said.
I got up from the couch walked over to him and could not believe it…
Weed.
So much weed.
Plants, bags and lights all meticulously laid out in this tiny room that was the empty space between the ‘newly’ restored bathroom and the original wall (so basically inside the wall) and these lights were all on and these plants were healthy and growing perfectly.
We stayed in the room a little while unable to believe what we had found… Given that weed is illegal in Australia, we didn’t know whether or not to inform the police or not. We walked to the end of the small, cramped room only to find there was another door, similar shaped and size to the one that was in my room, which, after doing some calculations, we realized would open up into the owners’ residence.
Well, after we realized what we found, we locked the door, went back to our normal routine and waited a few days until we heard the owner in there. Then we called the police and they arrested him for possession, selling and one other charge.”
Not Sure How You Recover From That
“I was in Aspen at a lodge about 12 years ago. I was 12 at the time. Great place, super scenic, they had an outdoor heated pool surrounded by snow which was beyond cool.
I went to take a shower after a day of skiing, and halfway through the shower, the water turns brown. I freak out and jump out of the shower, grab a towel and tell my mom. She goes into the bathroom and all I hear is, ‘OH MY GOD, IT’S POOP! IT’S POOP! THERE IS POOP EVERYWHERE!’
Yes, indeed the shower I was just in filled with poop. The lodge moved us to another room, and didn’t even give us a discount.”
You Almost Admire Their Tenacity
“One of my favorite hotel stories (not a room, but the pool):
It’s late evening, and a woman comes angrily in to our lobby from the pool with three children and says, ‘You guys need to do something about what’s going on out there,’ and gestures to the pool area. I look at her inquisitively and she just says, ‘Go look, you’ll see.’
I walk outside and it’s pretty immediately clear the couple in the hot tub are ‘discreetly’ doing the deed.
I approach just enough to get their attention and say, ‘Hi guys, I know everyone’s here to have a good time tonight, but we got a complaint about some hot and heavy activity in the hot tub.’ They’re clearly hammered, but apologize and say it will stop.
A few minutes later, the phone rings. It’s the woman who complained before calling from her room which faces the pool. ‘They’re still at it. You need to do something. Children are staying in this hotel.’
I go back outside and sure enough, now that the spectators are gone, they’re back to it in the hot tub.
I go back out, tell them to get out. They start giving me the story: it’s their anniversary, they’re very sorry, we won’t have any more problems with them, etc etc. I foolishly let them stay in the hot tub.
10 minutes later: phone rings. ‘Seriously!!?’ Same lady. I look out the window, they’re both totally starkers. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I’ve warned them, I’m calling the police.’
Police arrive and head out to the pool. The officer handles it like a pro. He’s very nice, let’s them know that it’s inappropriate, but he doesn’t want to ruin what’s clearly a fun weekend for them both, but they need to go to their room and not come out for the rest of the night. They are to stay in their room until tomorrow morning. No excuses. The couple thanks him for his understanding and promises they’ll behave and stay in their room.
The officer and I wind up chatting and laughing about it all and he asks if he can grab a cup of coffee in our lobby while he fills out his report. Of course he can.
He’s sitting in the Lobby, I’m back to work, and I hear him say, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!!’ I’m shocked at the broken quietness as I see him jump up and exit the Lobby…
Right to the hot tub, where the same couple is back in the hot tub making out. (I can only assume they took the stairs at the end of the hall out to the parking lot and around to the pool.)
Arrested them both. They came back Monday afternoon (they were arrested on Friday night) to collect their property.”
I Honestly Wasn’t Trying
“I was staying in Bangkok at a decent hotel, one of those ones that is filled with westerners that completely shelters you from the city. It’s nice because you don’t have to deal with how gross the place, but it’s crazy to go halfway around the world just to hang out in the hotel so I went out to catch a cab. Zero English. I had to practically jump out of the car before he got onto the highway.
So I ask the guys at the front desk how I can get out to the city and actually enjoy the place. They ask me what I’m looking for. ‘Y’know, night life!’ The guy winks at me and brings out this book for the tourists, flips to the back, and shows me this page filled with women in bathtubs. ‘Very good! Great women, 5 stars!’
‘Uh…no thanks I’m more looking for something fun and easy like the theater.’
‘Ooooh the theater! Very good women, girls! 5-stars!’ He flips to another page with women on stage.
‘No, no! Not the theater, like cultural stuff I can go do.’ Again, a wink, a new page.
I swear it was like that Monty Python cheese shop sketch of not ladies of the night. This went on for way too long. I eventually just let him book me a cab for a bar-and-brothel and I just hung out in the bar.”
Italy Is Supposed To Be Nice
“I stayed in a bed and breakfast outside of Venice, Italy the night before I flew back stateside. When I woke up, I was a little itchy and noticed a few bites. By the time my flight landed in the States, I was in agony…I had to get up frequently to go to the lavatory to scratch all over my body to get some relief.
The dermatologist said she’d never seen such a bad instance of bed bug bites and asked if she could get a consult and take pictures. Cut to 6 doctors staring at me starkers and poking and commenting and then an iPhone being whipped out to take pics (my doctor/hospital is part of a teaching hospital/university) to use for courses. I have never been more mortified in my life. The scars took months to heal and go away.
It’s amazing that my current boyfriend (it’s now been almost two years) didn’t run for the hills when we first met and I had these disgusting welts all over my body.
Oh god, it was awful. Oh! It also triggered a severe immune response and caused me to have vertigo attacks for a month and a half, which were worse than the bites (needing to lay still on the floor of my apartment alone for hours because moving was too disorienting/painful/nauseating).”