The one and only thing that i did like was the location it was one black away from attractions and beach. Parking can get expensive so I specifically looked for a place with in walking distance, however I would have likely stayed somewhere else a little nicer if i had known parking was free when we went. The hotel even wanted to charge $10 just to park an extra hour after check out in an empty parking lot. The front desk service seemed to be hospitable although I did get the impression that they did not like the price i paid through price-line.

Now for the negatives

1)It was the only hotel I have ever stayed at with out air conditioning and instead there was a small loud box fan in the room plugged in by the window.

2) The mini fridge did not work and smelt revolting.

3) The bath tub would not drain.

4) There was mold on the walls and some other mysterious substance.

5) The lamp lighting was falling apart or missing parts.

Don't even know where to start... Guy at check-in told me to come back again later, because he isn't working there?! Handed me over the keycards though. Room door was broken and needed to be kicked hard to get open. As the big wide gap between door and lock suggested this door got kicked at often. We decided to leave our valuables in the trunk of our car. The room itself was dirty looking with a strange smell. Walls, carpet, curtains, sofa: everything was dirty, had holes.

We booked the room for two nights and ended up leaving after one, horrible, night. The guy at the front desk said we could cancel the next night...but no refunds. Unacceptable. He told us he would have the hotel manager contact us...which never happened. I immediately called my credit card company and disputed the charges. The room was aweful: garbage in the parking lot, no air/fan (didn't work), the tub is disgusting, there was something in the sink drain that was clogging the sink, the carpet was stained and seemed coated with something, horrible bed, two very flat pillows, drapes look liked they were from a different hotel as they didn't fit the windows, noisey. Probably the worst room I have ever stayed in and it was $150 a night. We discovered that if you can drive about 1 mile to Mission street there are many choices that are much nicer and equal to or lesser than the boardwalk area.

I'm trying to think of where I should even begin.

I traveled to Santa Cruz with my mother by bus. We were told that our room would be ready by three. When we arrived at the Santa Cruz bus station, we called the hotel to let them know that we would be there soon. They wouldn't call a cab for us (we asked, and even waited). My mom and I ended up walking to the hotel.. not exactly the shortest distance from down town Santa Cruz, most especially when you are carrying luggage. I'm just glad that we weren't walking at night.

We arrived at the hotel PAST 3 and our room STILL wasn't ready. The man at the front desk was not only rude, but was unprofessional and had a bit of a staring problem as well (creepy). My mom and I let him know that we were tired after walking from the bus station to the hotel, so he said that we could sit in our room while the maid cleaned it. Already annoyed at this point, we took our stuff to our room and found that it was completely outdated and disgusting upon opening the door. The beds were unmade, there were pizza scraps and pepper all over the side table, no alarm clock, a horribly stained lamp shade, urine stains and cigarette butts on the toilet seat, wet wash rags and hair in the tub. On top of it all, there wasn't even a screen on the bathroom window (way to make two women feel safe). We could see the dirty fenced off area behind the hotel. The maid showed up soon afterward, and was simply using a small caddy of regular house hold chemicals to disinfect the room. He disappeared to go get what he SAID would be clean sheets, and left the mop and bucket in the bathroom. My mom noticed that the water in the bucket was completely black. Knowing that we would likely be denied a refund, my mom and I let the guy at the desk know how disgusting the room was anyway, and that we didn't want to stay there. To our surprise, he gave us a different room (which also had yet to be cleaned and was not ready for use. Big surprise). Fortunately for us, the second room was a bit cleaner, but it was still stained and musty smelling. My mom had packed a can of Lysol prior to the trip to bring to the hotel, which the maid somehow managed to steal. To top it all off, there was a pubic hair found in the bedsheets later that night.

Given that the distance from the boardwalk to the hotel was so short, my mom and I did our best to make light of the situation and headed out toward the beach that morning. On our way out, we noticed that the same maid was there, and then realized that we hadn't seen anyone else on the premises cleaning rooms. He wound up being there at practically all hours as we would periodically return to the room, which lead us to believe that perhaps he had been illegally employed. My mom and I ALSO noticed an open door (found on the 2nd level of the hotel, not far from our room) that had a stair case leading to the ground floor behind the building.. and on the ACTUAL ground, in the DIRT, were all the filthy mattresses, bed spreads, sheets, pillows and pillow cases. At this point the two of us were so disgusted, we were seriously bummed at the fact that we hadn't packed any sleeping bags to use as blankets instead. That's not even to mention the fact that we were extremely apprehensive about using the beds for the next two nights. To add to all of the ridiculousness, my mom had to get a new key for the room multiple times, as the ones we had on hand at the moment eventually stopped working (and within that same day). Our favorite, of course, was when we made it back to the room around 10:30 pm and found that neither of our key cards worked. We stood outside of the lobby at NIGHT for about 30 minutes until someone finally showed up at the window to give us a new key.

Although my family and I are very much a fan of Santa Cruz, we were relieved to get out of our dump of a hotel room and go home. It was also pretty upsetting that we had paid nearly $400 for our stay. Even though that is about the going rate for hotels in Santa Cruz, this place was not at ALL worth the price, and made it very difficult for us to enjoy our trip to the fullest. I would not recommend this place to anyone. Frankly, I fail to see what keeps these guys from going out of business. Oh, did I mention that the Paradise Inn is located by a shady looking alley (that obvious drug activity takes place in, aside from the parking lot)? The pool was also nothing more than a glorified hot tub and it looked filthy.