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I stayed at a serviced apartment in my first trip to London two weeks ago. I checked in at 11pm, and they gave me a key to a room on the first floor. Surprise! People were already in bed in that room. They were surprisingly cool about the intrusion. I walked back to the front desk and told the clerk what happened. His response "Oh wow, that's like the worst mistake I could make." No harm done for me anyway. A few years back, I stayed at a motel in Daytona Beach for a hockey tournament. Daytona Beach should immediately have been an indicator that something is about to be very wrong. I booked a Days Inn, which somehow escapes me and my buddy that this is a motel and not a hotel. The front office smells like death died again. The room had a single airline sized travel pillow on each bed. The tub had a softball sized hole in, covered with duck tape. The room just felt so dirty that I left after a single night.
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Jun 23, 2015 06:37
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Romes128 posted:Was sleeping in the car not an option? Hey, as long as no sex is involved, it seems fine. Every time I've split a room with someone, the worst part is sharing the bathroom, which is why this goon doesn't do hostels.
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Jun 23, 2015 07:01
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PT6A posted:Hey, as long as no sex is involved, it seems fine. Every time I've split a room with someone, the worst part is sharing the bathroom, which is why this goon doesn't do hostels.
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Jun 23, 2015 07:33
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I think the worst part of sharing hotel rooms is dealing with late sleepers. There is nothing more uncomfortable than waking up at 6-7 all ready to get up and go and have to silently entertain yourself in bed for 3 hours until the other people wake up.
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Jun 23, 2015 08:32
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Romes128 posted:I can't think of anything weirder and more uncomfortable than sharing a room with a stranger. Why? You share a room, you go to sleep. Eventually you wake up, and go about your business. Also, you save some dollars in the process.
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Jun 23, 2015 14:16
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My most uncomfortable hotel experience: Probably not shockingly as an American, my most uncomfortable hotel experience happened in Europe. When my wife and I were married in 2003 we decided to spend 2 months backpacking in Europe. When you're traveling like this you have a lot of weird experiences. This particular experience happens to have taken place in Munich. On our train ride to Munich from the gods know where (I don't remember) my wife and I sat next to, and made friends with, a Greek guy. When we got into town we exchanged email addresses and briefly talks about finding a hotel, to which our new friend piped up and said "oh, I always stay at this great place! It's nice, downtown and cheap!" So we followed him over to his hotel and checked in. Our first warning sign should have been our thought "this building looks like it's going to fall down, but it's Germany right? They must be on top of this poo poo if something is dangerous." Luckily we survived, but over the course of our stay we noticed that we'd actually checked into a residential hotel. Complete with prostitutes, pimps, and IV drug use. On the second day my wife found someone's junky kit under a lamp she knocked over... All in all a good 5/10 on my imagined horrible scale.
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Jun 23, 2015 14:18
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The General posted:Why? You share a room, you go to sleep. Eventually you wake up,
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Jun 23, 2015 14:44
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Working on productions you generally end up with a Russian roulette of rooms, namely because the production tries to cater for the crew within the small budget and keeping to union regs of three star minimum. Which can end up for amusing room combos when they're short on rooms but are happy to have a large booking, so you have a bit of room envy if you score a proper double bed, not two singles pushed together, or when you end up with the spa suite which hadn't been touched since the 80's, pastel pink and lined with mirrors. One production involved towing an ancient caravan across three states (made fun by it constantly blowing the fuses for the indicators in the rental car). The owner had completely lied to us when we asked if we could get into his carpark - he failed to mention the too low entrance and got very angry when we argued this point. It'd been a four hour drive - we just wanted to curl up somewhere. Cut to the crew stuck in the middle of Artarmon, Sydney at 8pm trying to find a hotel or somewhere that had 24 hour parking that could fit this bloody caravan while raging against the dying light of our mobile phones. Thankfully the Ibis stowed this in the coach bay and we bee-lined to the nearest bottle-o and drank ourselves to sleep. Rural hotels/motels get fun. "Oh don't worry about which key, they're all the same!" You try not to impulsively call the woman behind the desk in floral prints with the bouffant hair "Sybil". The fake wood mini fridge and decor almost works in a "rural charm" kind of way accented by the assorted holes in the door where the chain has been screwed back in several times along with the cheap fluro lights that make the room darker when turned on. A recent room I stayed in resulted in my getting no sleep owing to the curtain that was an inch too short for the railing, allowing the outside light to glow merrily into my room all night. I wasn't the only one to have had been pissed off by that and it turns out that this curtain had managed to defeat glue and staples from staying closed. Fortunately I had gaffer tape. Though it didn't help with the place having all of the walkways made of slate paving, so anyone checking out at an ungodly hour woke up everyone they passed with the sound of their dragging luggage banging across the tiles and down the stairs - we thought furniture was being tossed. Backpacker lodges anyone? (Always get a security locker if you're there.) I picked one in Sydney that was of the novelty of being located in a former train station, so you slept in converted rail carriages. This turned out to be alongside a functioning line so you were woken up at 3am by a horn and train rattling by. Bonus points for the place having a keycard that was the same colour as your bank card, so guess what you grab by mistake in the wee hours of the morning as you nip off hungover to the loo and have to pester the poor chap at the front desk for a key as you stand there in your shirt and jocks hoping you don't get a photo of yourself added to the wall of shame. But on the flipside you tend to meet all sorts of interesting people in these kind of places.
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Jun 23, 2015 15:36
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ZombieLenin posted:
So what was the problem in the end? Why was it a bad experience? Did the other people bother you?
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Jun 23, 2015 18:30
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Well, if it was a person of the same gender, it was serendipitous circumstances like that, and that person didn't give off weird vibes, it wouldn't bug me. But yea, I'd sleep with a knife.
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Jun 24, 2015 07:28
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The General posted:Why? You share a room, you go to sleep. Eventually you wake up, and go about your business. Also, you save some dollars in the process. Why risk potential bodily harm or property loss just to save a few dollars? I can understand if you have to share a room with a friend or coworker on a trip, but a complete stranger? Nope. I've seen way too much theft from strangers in hotels to even think about that. And one fight, but it wasn't anything serious.
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Jun 25, 2015 06:34
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Around 1993 I was driving across the country with my brother and his car crapped out near Green River, Utah. The timing was especially bad because the Musk Melon Festival was underway and only one room was left in town, at the Sleepy Hollow Motel. In '93 the place had not changed since the above photo was taken other than that everything had grown shabbier. It wasn't a hellhole or anything like that, but it was the first motel I stayed in where the walls were so thin I could hear the person next door fart.
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Jun 25, 2015 17:20
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Romes128 posted:Why risk potential bodily harm or property loss just to save a few dollars? Most people are pretty chill and not psycho murderers or thieves? It totally depends on where you are and what kind of company the hotel keeps. I've shared plenty of hostel rooms with minimal theft and zero bodily harm (honestly, I've lost more money from theft by hotel staff and that is still not enough to worry about). Why not just chill with chill people in a chill place, while saving some money? Maybe you make a friend. Maybe you just sleep. It's not that deep.
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Jun 26, 2015 01:18
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Shbobdb posted:Most people are pretty chill and not psycho murderers or thieves? It totally depends on where you are and what kind of company the hotel keeps. I've shared plenty of hostel rooms with minimal theft and zero bodily harm (honestly, I've lost more money from theft by hotel staff and that is still not enough to worry about). Just goons being goons. The chance of being "bodily harmed" by a stranger is vanishingly small. Theft is always a small risk, but it's not hard to look after your belongings. News flash: hostels exist and tens if not hundreds of millions of people use them them every year! You can sleep in a room with 15 strangers, even more! It's fine! Sometimes you even go out and have fun with them. Crazy poo poo, I tell you.
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Jun 26, 2015 11:58
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Romes128 posted:Why risk potential bodily harm or property loss just to save a few dollars? I get that you don't want to sleep with strangers yourself, but ever heard about this thing called "hostels"? It's exactly that, sleeping with strangers.
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Jun 26, 2015 12:03
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There's kind of a huge difference between a hostel, where you have a place to secure your valuables, and sharing a motel/hotel room with just you and one stranger. Usually hostel rooms are 4-16 people in the same room, so you have a kind of safety in numbers thing going on in terms of your personal safety. I think it's being deliberately obtuse to say you can't understand how people would be uncomfortable with sharing a standard hotel room just because hostels exist. Just think about it - if you rolled up to a holiday inn or some other non-hostel hotel looking for a room, and there was some guy you never met in the lobby asking if you want to split the cost of a room, would you do it? Even if you ignore the safety issue, that situation is enough to make most people uncomfortable, especially if it's a man asking and you're a woman.
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Jun 26, 2015 12:38
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Murphy Brownback posted:There's kind of a huge difference between a hostel, where you have a place to secure your valuables, and sharing a motel/hotel room with just you and one stranger. Usually hostel rooms are 4-16 people in the same room, so you have a kind of safety in numbers thing going on in terms of your personal safety. I think it's being deliberately obtuse to say you can't understand how people would be uncomfortable with sharing a standard hotel room just because hostels exist. Probably not, because I wouldn't walk into a hotel without the cash to pay for a room. But if I walked into a hotel nearly broke, and met a person in the exact same situation, but we could afford a room by pooling our cash - I'd do it. Unless there were some clear signals that it would be a bad idea. Hotels usually have provision, often better than hostels, for looking after your valuables too. The point isn't whether sharing a room is somehow preferable to having a room to your self, it's not. But like I say, personal safety issues are really unlikely. It's different if you're a girl travelling alone, sure. I would say that unless you are staying the shadiest loving hotel where there is some kind of plot against you, a random offer to share a room is made almost always in good faith. Because there isn't a stupider way to commit a crime than doing it in a hotel room, unless they are using a fake name, paying cash only, and loitering around the lobby waiting for a mark.
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Jun 26, 2015 13:13
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All this talk of sharing hotel rooms. All I can think is:
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Jun 26, 2015 13:21
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Jeza posted:Just goons being goons. The chance of being "bodily harmed" by a stranger is vanishingly small. Theft is always a small risk, but it's not hard to look after your belongings. News flash: hostels exist and tens if not hundreds of millions of people use them them every year! You can sleep in a room with 15 strangers, even more! It's fine! Sometimes you even go out and have fun with them. This is such a goony thing to say. "Pfft, people with different comfort levels? loving autists, I tell you."
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Jun 26, 2015 13:47
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My personal space extends to 45' in all directions.
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Jun 26, 2015 14:09
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Blue Footed Booby posted:This is such a goony thing to say. "Pfft, people with different comfort levels? loving autists, I tell you." Autists have better reading comprehension
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Jun 26, 2015 14:37
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Blue Footed Booby posted:This is such a goony thing to say. "Pfft, people with different comfort levels? loving autists, I tell you." He was more saying the opposite, that sleeping in a room with a stranger isn't a wildly dangerous endeavor and if people want to do it it's fine to have that different comfort level. I don't want to share a room with anyone else because I hate finding out the disgusting private habits of people, but not out of any physical fear. This doesn't count as a hotel experience, really, but I was just in a hotel bar waiting for a train. I had my luggage with me. A guy at the bar saw me come in with my luggage and shouted at the bartender, "Hey gently caress here's another one of those luggage people!" And then he stared at me. Later he tried to convince me to lend him $400, telling me that it would be like I was making money. Then another person walked in with luggage and he shouted "Another luggage person! Holy poo poo!" I hope he's a regular and in there every day having the same freakout.
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Jun 26, 2015 14:41
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Dick Trauma posted:My personal space extends to 45' in all directions. Assuming you look like your avatar I can see why.
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Jun 27, 2015 00:49
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Jeza posted:Because there isn't a stupider way to commit a crime than doing it in a hotel room, unless they are using a fake name, paying cash only, and loitering around the lobby waiting for a mark. I'm not going to continue the whole discussion about sharing a room with a stranger, because people have different levels of comfort when it comes to other people. But as far as crimes go in hotels, it happens more frequently than you think. In full view of cameras and everything. The NYPD even has a small division that sends out notices and wanted posters via email to hotels about incidences that occur in area hotels look out for. Just by having 1000+ people staying in your hotel every night you expect poo poo to happen. The most frequent I've come across is luggage theft or personal items stolen from room by people that guests invite to the room.
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Jun 28, 2015 09:23
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This didn't happen to me, thank god. There was a hotel where I grew up that we called Murder Motel simply because people always were killed there, mainly drug addicts and prostitutes. My mom worked at a corner store that attracted that crowd and befriended some the the prostitutes (which were super nice people who would give me money despite my mother's protest and insane amount of hand sanitizer). She had one regular who stopped coming. Not soon after police came into the store asking about her. Turns out some guests checked into this hotel and the room was covered in blood. The man had taken the woman my mother knew to this motel and killed her, checked out with her body in tow, and the people never even attempted to clean the room. I was shocked they remained open after that. They ended up finding her body in the river. A few more incidents happened at this place where guests came in to bodies stuffed under the mattress rotting or put in the wall. This place is still open after like 20 years of being a nasty murder motel.
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Jun 30, 2015 01:56
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I’ve really enjoyed reading this thread, thank you all for sharing your stories and also those working in the industry with their own tales. Two years ago I went from coast to coast across the United States, starting in Atlanta (not the coast, I realise) over to San Francisco. I spent months prepping the trip, using Greyhound, Amtrak and domestic flights to get from city to city. It was honestly the best month of my life and I really do have nothing but fond memories, but there was the odd minor hick up. I had decided to budget and stay in hostels more than hotels. I realise that this is a whole different ball game to hotels and you really should expect to get what you pay for, but I felt that this would added to my experience and had no qualms about ignoring the odd negative review if it meant a good time overall. Memphis had to be a hotel, though, due to the lack of hostels available but at about $60 a night at a Motel 6 downtown I had no problems breaking the bank for that one. I flew into Atlanta from Manchester, England on a Friday, landing in the early afternoon local time. My body was thinking it was late evening and wanted to settle down and relax. I had booked two nights at the Atlanta International Hostel on Ponce De Leon (why do I remember that after two years? Oh yeah, this is why). During those months of planning I had meticulously worked out how to get from airports to hostels and hostels to Greyhound stations et cetera. So, I get on the MARTA and head towards the station nearest the hostel (North Avenue). I walk down Ponce De Leon, forgetting just how vast and epic streets are in the United States in late-spring sunshine lugging my suitcase behind me. Remember – everything is a budget, be frugal, no money on expensive taxi cabs. I get to the hostel to find…well, nothing. There is a building on the address, and the building has lights on inside. I knock repeatedly on the door but to no avail with no one answering. I fish out my iPhone and try to contact the telephone number I have on my print out order, and I even work out how to dial the number correctly considering my phone is British and Lord knows how expensive the call would be. The line, according to the nice recorded voice at AT&T, is disconnected. Deciding panic is probably not a good idea, I casually head across the road to Mary Mac’s, the fried chicken restaurant quite popular and well known in the city. I have a nice afternoon meal, and enjoy the artwork adorning the walls of the restaurant depicting the city I have decided to start my countrywide trek in. After settling the bill, I ask the staff if they have any idea about why the hostel across the road appears closed? They tell me someone who had eaten at the restaurant earlier was in the same boat as me and ended up just getting a hotel downtown. Uh oh. I head back to the hostel and this time, after much door knocking, a security guard unlocks the door and comes out to inform me the hostel closed down weeks ago. He’s there, alone, monitoring the premises. That’s great. I had only put a few dollars down as a deposit for a bed in a shared room, so no real great financial loss was felt, but I panic. I leave the building and see a police officer across the road. I ask him about finding a hotel nearby. He tells me I am best heading downtown, and points me west back towards North Avenue but also informs me under no circumstances do I head east further down Ponce De Leon. Wonderful. Eventually, whilst wandering the streets of downtown Atlanta with a suitcase and looking lost (I literally had no back up plan, no one to ask, and nowhere to go), a homeless man pointed me in the direction of the Melia Hotel on Peachtree really near the North Avenue station. When he was walking me to the hotel, I genuinely thought he was going to mug me for the couple of hundred dollars I had in my wallet (stupid thing to have on me, really) but instead he took ten dollars off me for a coffee and his troubles. The room at the Melia was about $300 for two nights but, Christ, at that short notice and with my energy levels what they were, I was happy to stick it on my credit card at that point. Funnily enough, the Atlanta International Hostel is, two years on from this incident, still listed as closed. The Melia, where I ended up, has closed down as well. It appears I am nothing but a curse on the hotels of Atlanta.
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Jul 1, 2015 13:42
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Also on my pan-American travels, I had the most bizarre thing happen to me in New Orleans. I took the Amtrak in the early morning from Memphis right down the country to New Orleans. It was a great journey but as we approached Louisiana the storm clouds above in the sky really started to form. By the time I left the station and got a cab, the heavens had opened and it was coming down hard. I had paid a deposit to stay for three nights at the St Vincent Guesthouse in the Garden District. This was the biggest gamble of the entire holiday. It was dirt cheap and I was staying in a sixteen person dorm. Reviews were horrendous – people making serious complaints about the state of the beds, the dorms, the showers, the security, everything. Positive reviews for the place were pretty much “oh well, it was cheap and I didn’t die, cool staff though!” I remember using the free wifi on the Amtrak reading reviews on Google and Hostelworld and suddenly thinking this was a bad idea. I got to the Guesthouse and lugged my suitcase up the steps to reception. This was the fourth city on the trip so far; I had my small talk sharpened to showcase my startling British charm. However, nothing at all could have prepared me for the exchange that took place. After waiting a few minutes, I got to the front of the queue and to the desk. There were two people working behind the desk, one looking miserable as sin and the other looking mischevious. I said my name, what I had booked, and was promptly told “we’re fully booked up, sorry” by the miserable one. I was completely taken aback by this. This hadn’t come up so far during my checking in experiences. “Um, well, I’ve paid a deposit…” I responded only to be cut off. “Oh well, tough poo poo.” I froze. I couldn’t believe someone was speaking to me like this. I remember, to this day, the feeling of the back of my eyes welling up with water. After being awake from 4am to get my early morning train and queuing for an hour for my cab to the hostel in this tropical rain storm, I was now being denied an awful bunk bed in this old lunatic asylum. “Which site did you make the booking through?” She curtly asked. Unfolding the print out in my hands, I looked down and mumbled. “Hostelworld…” I got the name wrong, actually, I’d booked it through Hostelbookers.com. I corrected myself. “Oh, so you can’t read either, huh?” She added. My cheeks went warm, I felt absolutely drained but whipped up like a storm. I wanted to vandalise the reception area, like the second coming of Katrina but with red hair. I was being thrown out back onto the wet streets with nowhere to stay, and I was also being insulted and toyed with for literally no reason. I had used the emergency credit card on the aforementioned Atlanta hotel, and I had accidentally booked my three nights in New Orleans to coincide with the Jazz Festival. The chance of getting a decent hotel room, at this notice, was low. The silence was unbearable. My face was still warm from the blood rush, I felt so embarrassed. There was an awkward stare down with the awful receptionist. However, before I knew it, a lady appeared from around the back of reception grinning to herself. I forget the exact words, but she look at me and congratulated me on passing “the test”. Even the miserable receptionist started laughing. A further investigation of their reviews show that they have a habit of telling people their bed is unavailable and they have a reputation of being incredibly short and rude with customers. I was too tired to kick up a fuss, but everyone thought it was a hilarious prank played out on the tired, exhausted tourist. I paid for my three nights and was given my sheets for the bed. Bizarrely, they were nice as pie to me after this incident. The other receptionist, the quiet mischievous looking one, was more than happy to walk me to the room and show me around with an enthusiasm in her voice that was the exact opposite to her miserable looking colleague, who – again, bizarrely – was happy to help me with directions to supermarkets and laundrettes as well as taking the time to book me a taxi to the airport on the morning of my departure. The reviews for the place to this day still talk about the initiation ceremony for people turning up despite having paid deposits and making reservations. Read the reviews before you book.
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Jul 1, 2015 15:22
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I feel like trying that on with somebody possessed of a short fuse could be a real recipe for disaster. Brits will just curl up and take it nine times out of ten. I can totally see some Americans/Aussies getting real mad though. I guess that makes it a lot funnier for the staff when they all start laughing. Anyway I feel your pain. It's always kind of lovely to make a first impression like that, and that sort of thing is relatively common as a "sense of humour" test, even though tired as gently caress and meeting new people is not a great time to prove you're easygoing and can take a joke.
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Jul 1, 2015 15:39
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I just hope the video gets posted when someone when someone fails their little test.
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Jul 1, 2015 20:24
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I've had people flip the gently caress out cause a hotel I worked at didn't have glasses, only paper coffee cups available at 3AM. I can only imagine them doing that to the wrong person.
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Jul 2, 2015 06:32
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Jeza posted:I feel like trying that on with somebody possessed of a short fuse could be a real recipe for disaster. Brits will just curl up and take it nine times out of ten. I can totally see some Americans/Aussies getting real mad though. I guess that makes it a lot funnier for the staff when they all start laughing. Cancel the credit card before they can charge you for the room, as a funny joke
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Jul 2, 2015 17:10
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