Our Race Hotel. Hmmmm… Where to start…. Let’s just say that
Ryan told me I wasn’t allowed to book hotels any more. And anywhere that we do
stay the staff must be wearing nice polo’s with the hotels name embroidered on it
or in suit jacket.
Well, when we pulled up and checked in, both Ryan and I
thought, this seems to be better than the last one (see the post
here about the
hotel I booked us for my last Disneyland Half Marathon). At least they didn’t
have to give us the TV remote out of a drawer at check in. But… I guess all of
the clichés are true… You get what you pay for. Looks can be deceiving.
The hotel called us earlier in the day asking us how many
beds we actually needed. The room that we originally booked was for 2 doubles
(since that was the cheapest room type). I guess they had run out of double
rooms and were wondering if we could take one with just a single bed and give a
larger group the room with 2 beds. Of course we offered the room up and said we
only needed one bed.
When we checked in we were given a key for room 333. The
strange thing was that we only saw 2 floors. We saw a stairwell in the corner
of the building, so we thought we’d check it out. We went up and it said
PRIVATE (maybe the owners live on site…). I went looking further, but Ryan
decided to go to the front desk to ask. I found another stairwell (even more
sketchy than the first) and decided to venture up.
The stairwell was dark and at the top of the stairs was a
laundry basket that had clothes and other personal items in it. I had to
chuckle (especially since Ryan wasn’t with me at the moment) and say “I know
this will be just another one of our ‘adventures’, but WHAT did I get us
into?!’. At least this hall way had some doors in it, so I walked a little
further. A door that said 331 – hey we are getting closer. Then a BUNCH of
stuff... like a razor scooter, a box of diapers, a dirty microwave, clothes in
boxes, a gallon of milk, laundry detergent, etc… OH NO! Is this an episode of Hotel Hallway Hoarders?!
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| This is NOT an actual picture... I was scared to take a picture because I didn't want to be horrifyed later of what I allowed us to stay in... |
I found our room and went in. The room wasn’t too bad –
other than all of the little dead gnats stuck to the screen. I whistled out the
window to Ryan (who was on his way back from the front desk, looks less than
pleased with me) waving that I had found our abode for the evening. (I was just
waiting for him to come down the cluttered hallway and tell me we were leaving
– thankfully he was up for the adventure – or at least didn’t want to start a
disagreement…).
We went over to Downtown Disney, to the race Expo, and then
went to dinner, so didn’t have to deal much with the hotel. Since my alarm was
set for 3:15am, I wanted to hit the sack early. We got back to the hotel around
7pm or so got ready for bed. We were lying in the bed when we heard a knock on
the door around 8pm. A KNOCK?! Someone would have to know where he or she were
going to come up and find us… We got slightly nervous and of course I made Ryan
answer the door (mind you – there is no peep hole and the ‘security lock’ was a
little lock that you would use to lock a bathroom stall). A lady was at our
door… smoking… Ryan looked at her a little funny and she asked if Jessica lived
here. [AH, now it makes sense. Maybe they used this floor for ‘residents’ that
live there for longer than say 3 months. We are assuming that Jessica lived in
the room we were in, but was either asked to leave or left and her stuff was
all in the hallway. ] Back to the story… She was smoking in the hall, so much
so that when Ryan opened the door our room smelt like smoke for a good 20
minutes after she left. Well, of course, he said, “No, we are hotel guests, we
don’t live here, nor does a Jessica.”
Hopefully this isn’t too offensive, but I asked Ryan is he
thought she was a prostitute. I mean we were in a pretty sketchy area of the
hotel (mind you, we were like a stones throw from Downtown Disney, so we
weren’t in a rough neighborhood, just a questionable section of a questionable
hotel). He thought that maybe it was Jessica’s friend that was coming to pick see
her.
Later that evening (I would say around 12 midnight) we heard
a bunch of racket in the hallway. The same smoker lady’s voice was out in the
hallway. It sounded like they came back for all the ‘goodies’ that Jessica had
left in the hall. All the goodies BUT THE MILK. We found the milk on the bottom
stair of the sketchy stairwell when we went down for the race around 3:45am.
Thankfully we were only staying in the hotel the one night.
Ryan said that if we were staying in the hotel any longer than a night and
needed to shower (we showered Saturday morning before heading up to Disney and
then were back home by around 9am Sunday and showered again at our place) he
suggested we would have bought a bar of soap and then gone on some of the water
rides in Disneyland and California Adventure to get clean. (I didn’t look in
the shower, but he said it was pretty nasty)
I do have to say I think if we were on floor 1 or 2 of the
hotel, we would have been fine. I think the hidden room up in the back corner
of the hotel and the hallway chalked full of personal items threw us for a
loop. But hey, at least I had my best friend along for the ride, right?! And
hey, better us than someone else, right?!
Wowser. Quite an adventure... It is easier to laugh about
now that we do not have to walk around the hotel room with our sandals on
because we are nervous about what may be on the floor. [We were telling a
friend about it and she just laughed at me. She said, you know you can afford
something better, right? And I DO know that we CAN afford it, it is just hard
for me to justify spending more than $60 on a bed when we can drive there in 45
minutes]
Thankfully for the Disneyland Half Marathon in September I
am already working with a friend on hotel reservations [it will be our 5 year
wedding anniversary August 16th, our 10 year dating anniversary
September 1st, my 29th birthday September 10th,
Ryan’s 30th birthday September 13th, and Ryan’s FIRST
HALF MARATHON on September 1st [more on that later] – so I figured
with all of that celebrating we can splurge a little on a nicer hotel room –
not to mention Ryan might never let me book anything again if it is less than
perfect this time J]
– we are even thinking of staying on Disney Property.
