I stayed here for 2 nights before flying to Hawaii. I booked last minute while at the airport and for $79 a night it worked. The shuttle came within 20 min.They put me in the south tower which i was happy about based on the reviews. I had no issue with noise there. It was outdated but the bedding and bathroom seemed newer and everything was clean. There's a grocery store across the street, perfect for snacks, as well as a Starbucks. I'd stay here again if I just needed a place to crash for a short amount of time.

we have stayed at this place coming and going to and from LAX. We have stayed in one of the day rooms which we liked. However we had to get a regular room this time and were disappointed.It was in the south builiding- Stay away from this building! You can't open the little jail cell window door for air because of all the noise- the dumpsters are right there, the back bulding access doors and parking- etc etc......had we not been so tired from traveling, we would have changed our room. The room also had these two small pillows......what?! We paid 80 bucks for this- cetainly there is better room than this to be had- perhaps somewhere else....................

The pictures they have posted at hotels.com make the hotel look amazing. I booked. I get there and it looks pretty nice inside the lobby; all the faux Mexican accents and the fountain bubbling away and the courtyard with lots of plants are all very attractive. But, when you start down the long and winding corridor to the "South Tower", things start to deteriorate. Ultimately it made me think of when I stayed in 1991 post-communist Prague in one of the Stalin era block apartments.

I'm a proletarian but I also know there should be a huge difference between staying in a communist era concrete high rise suburb of Prague for free and staying in a real hotel in the good old land of the free after slapping down some hard earned free enterprise greenbacks on the counter.

There are some characteristics of this hotel that should make it one to avoid except perhaps for a burned out traveler or someone who wants to get a wee glimpse of the Stalin era here in the US. I cancelled my remaining 2 nights after the first night.

After surveying the lobby surroundings I checked in and got directions to the room, which is in the "South Tower". It's a pretty long walk to the South Tower and as I walked through the courtyard approaching it, I began to notice that the niceness of the lobby area was deteriorating into something much more pedestrian. The strangeness of the patio doors of the rooms in the tower in front of me caught my eye. They look like they were removed from an aging cruise ship or something, with their oblong port hole style windows.

Warning signs continue to appear; in the "South Tower" there are 4 elevators but only one works and it looks like it's been this way for a while. When the elevator finally arrives and I stepped inside, I noticed that some of the floor numbers are written on the push buttons in Sharpie pen. It looks like the original numbers had worn off the buttons.

The "South Tower" only has 8 floors but they start with a 2, so if you are on 6 you are actually on 26.

If you decide to stay, you step out of the elevator, that is, if it goes in the right direction when you push the button, and you will be whisked back to the 70s with the wackily patterned carpet. Flashback time, dude. Scents of mold and stale food greet your olfactory senses.

I head down the long hallway to the room. The key card opens on the 5th try. Maybe it was just my technique. The room is not cleaned yet. I see the cleaning cart and look around for one of the senoras to get an idea of when they will be cleaning it, but can't find one so I retreat. I wait for the elevator again and lug my stuff back through the long corridors to the lobby. The very nice woman at the counter gives me a different room. I schlep all my stuff back to the tower, wait for the elevator, and enter the new room on the first try of the card. Things are looking up, I think, and I'm ready to relax after a long day of travel.

It's clean and has only a mild funk in the air. It's got the requisite stack of pillows on the bed and a little birdie made out of a towel on the bathroom counter, and it's as hot as the gates of hell inside. I turn on the cooler and it blows warm. Any illusion I may have had has now evaporated but I'm tired so I caved in and hit the sack.

The next morning:
I slept badly, had strange dreams of crossing the Sahara desert on camelback with Lawrence of Arabia. It's still way too hot and my nose is stuffed up from something. I exit the room. Some kind of spot cleaning powder has been applied to the carpets in the hallway in various places but not yet vacuumed up. It must be a lot of work to maintain these vintage carpets instead of just replacing them, so I have to give them some credit for trying to preserve elements of a past era.

I head back down the long corridors to the lobby and explained to the very friendly woman at the counter about the problem with the heat. She explained to me that it is winter time here in southern California so the heat is on, and besides, it is an old building. Makes sense, and I'm thinking I'm pretty sharp because I had already figured out that part on my own.

So, I said I need a cooler room or I'm checking out. She says she has an upgrade room for me and hands me a key to another room (#3 in less than 24 hours) in the South Tower. I take the hike back again, this time down to the dungeon, floor 22 in this surreal world, which is below the entry level. I didn't stay down there long enough to see if there was a torture chamber, but the air was heavy with the smell of mold and mildew, much more noticeable than the upper floors.

I looked at the room anyway since I was there. It was on the same side of the building as the previous room, was also hot, and to my eyes was exactly the same layout as the previous room so I don't know what the upgrade actually was. Maybe there was an extra pillow or something but I didn't stay long enough to count them.

So again I returned to the desk to ask if there was something not on the sunny side of the building or even better, in a different wing. She kindly replied that the room she just offered me was the "Executive Suite" and it was the best they had.

The proprietors have spent some time and money making the lobby and courtyard area look really nice and it creates the illusion that the rest of the hotel is also going to be nice. Some rooms might be, but the three that I was in weren't. If you are thinking about staying here, don't be hypnotized by the photos in their hotels.com listing.

I stayed here overnight between flights and the shuttle was fine, check in and the check in clerk were fine, but when I attempted to use the luggage cart to my room in the West Tower, there were stairs just outside the elevator which prevented use of the cart further down the cart (to my room). The room was older and dated (some wall paper was peeling from the bathroom and the air exchange was of the older style and the cleanliness was not the best (there appeared to be something on the rug I had stepped on, there was an old potato chip bag behind the night stand, someone else's hair in the tub when I took a bath) but the bed was warm and comfy and the room adequate for what I paid ($55 + taxes on Priceline). Also, the restaurant food is not that great, but the service was excellent. There are a multitude of other restaurants and a grocery store in the area, however.