I have stayed her though the years though 3 managers. It was a great location and value for the work I did. I always stayed in the Jacuzzi room and this used to be one of my favorite hotels but it has been just run down into dirtiness. They were never much on clean sheets but would gladly change the sheets and then they were remodeled anyway so was all new. However bad housekeeping has overwhelmed their remodel in just a few years.
I checked into the Jacuzzi room and having my prior experiences, called and asked if they would change the mattress pad as well as the sheets before I got there. The Jacuzzi room gets a lot of wear if you know what I mean. I was told that the pad was attached to the sheets like the Hamptons so it would be clean. I wish. I got there, that was not true, and there were red spots and other assorted stuff on the sheets so I called the front desk and they nicely sent someone down. I happened to sit on the mattress as I was waiting and noticed that it bard hard because it was a pillow top that that had been flipped over and a padded pad placed atop the hard bottom side. So I asked housekeeping why the pillow top was downside. She flipped it over and there was the mattress in the pictures, huge yellow stains, blood and gore. I thought no way but I had prepaid my reservation. So they went and got a rag and a bottle of bleach cleaner. Are you kidding me? Sleep face down in bleach fumes while my sheets wick up the bio fluids. No way. So they said they would trade it for a mattress from another room so I imagine it is now in one of rooms around #109. There were also someone’s prescription glasses clearly under the bed. So let us recap. Not only did someone not clean the mattress by and by, as it got dirty, they went to greater efforts to hide than to clean or replace it. Also, they can’t even - as they’re playing “hide the mattress” - bother to pull out the prescription glasses someone has probably been frantically calling for and had to pay $$$ to replace.
Thy were very sweet about it but seriously its bad enough you have to stay inspect sheets but this “catch me if you can” housekeeping it too much. Also, there were bits of bio all over the room, little brown spots on the wall beside the toilet paper holder, spots on the curtains, carpet; now way was I making a grab for those glasses. I would not have turned on the jets in the Jacuzzi for 1,000 dollars. All the sheets had rough pills all over them but I hope that means they’re washing them.
I’ve traveled 13 years, 40-42 weeks a year and I loved it. However, I’m quitting because I just can’t deal with these hotels anymore. They just get dirtier and dirtier. This hotel was the straw the broke my camel back. Because now it’s not enough to look just at the sheets/mattress pad, to see what they missed from just laziness, and look for bedbugs, now you have to launch a full inspection to see what they went to great lengths to hide. And it seems to be the Holiday Inn chain properties that are particularly the worse at trying to hide stuff so my next (last) stays are at other chains. Being self employed I’m tired of spending 30K annually of my hard earned money on hotels that expect me to either supervise their housekeeping or risk sleeping in filth.
Know that the pictures on the website- the beautiful beach (which is beautiful), Chrystal Cove is about 7 miles away by toll road, Disneyland, 18 miles, the pier (cool little area) pictured is about 3 miles. The location is probably no worse than it looks, no walking at night but frankly not really anywhere to walk to anyway. S. CA pretty much requires a car.
However as I told the manager, I got up at 3 am to take the early flight so I could go to the beach NOT spend substantial time supervising mattress removal and sheet changing.
I called the manager three times, no response. They said she was in training. I hope its training about cleanliness.
Update
I took this review off because my card was refunded even though the manager never called me back. Then I called when I saw little charges from them again on my credit card statements. I called again and got the owner who was a ridiculous dodger who every time I tried to say something she would talk over me to interrupt and say, “let me talk” and then she would lie. About everything; the mattress, the credit card and she finished by hanging up and telling me that she didn’t care and she “was done” with me. She said mattresses are just like that. Especially in the Jacuzzi suite and that, yes they just turn them over. That it “won’t hurt you”. In 13 years the only time I saw a mattress that was even close to this was when it was a FEMA hotel from Katrina and even it was not nearly as bad. I had thought some of these reviews about this hotel were over the top and certainly I thought could not be true from my past experiences but no, those people were probably sincere and truthful. This place really has turned into a dump. Apparently, the mattress in the picture is status quos for them. She told me I should have just left even though my credit card had already been charged. She kept behaving as if she had been there in the room and I had not when the reverse was true. She also told me that they had a credit card problem but I think they recharged my card because I had called the Health Dept. about blood on the mattress and they thought this review (which I had removed) was still up on the web.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
