My experience at the Best Western Bradbury started out very well. I had just gone to the competing hotel next door where I was quoted an outrageous price of $129 for a suite that really wasn't a suite....a king size bed with a fold out couch that had a divider like a restroom stall. Looking down the hill I spied the Bradbury Inn & Suites which looked brand new. I went in and the lady behind the desk, who was very nice with a welcoming personality, quoted me $89 for a real suite...two rooms with two Queen size beds and a pullout....we have a family of five and really need the suite.

It was about 9pm and the pool was scheduled to close at 10pm. My family was still at the cracker barrel up the road and so I ask the lady if the pool could be kept opened til about 10:30 so our children could swim. We'd just left Florida because of foul weather and had not gotten in the water much at all. She assured me that she would keep it open and that we could stay in there as long as we liked.

Well the family arrived at about 9:30 and off to the indoor pool and hot tub we went. That's when things took a turn for the worst. She said we could swim but what she didn't tell us was that the automatic chlorination system had apparently just kicked in. It was awful. It took a few minutes to feel the effects but when you did it knocked you to your knees. My 7-year old son almost had an asthma attack and we had to break out his inhalator. My 15 year old daughter, who loves to swim, also had to leave because the air and mist was burning the eyes right out of their sockets. I'm telling you it felt like a World War 1 battlefield and we had just emerged from the trenches and were gassed...except of course we had no gas masks.

We ran to our rooms to find some fresh air and wash the chemicals off of ourselves. I didn't complain at the time but I don't understand why they would first of all chlorinate the pool so heavily BEFORE the regular 10pm closing time and second why they would let us go in knowing they were going to be making the pool temporarily unusable!!?!

The indoor pool experience was to have made up for, at least a little, the bust of a vacation down in Florida. It did not. In fact it just made it worse. But the worse was yet to come... at least for me.

You see I put my family in the two queen size beds and I took the pullout. It felt as if I had been gassed and the captured by the enemy and tortured. That pullout was misery. I mean I know its just a pullout but don't put them in there if they can't be used. First of all it had curled up on the edges like a top down seashell... not to mention it sloped severely from foot to head. I'm telling you it was like trying to sleep on the point of a highly pitched roof. One move and into the middle of the gutter you go where the steel bar was waiting to slap you around. I wound up having to lay on it sideways just to stay on it. I didn't sleep at all.

Add to this the lady who came on at 10:00 shift had the personality of a...well...bucket of chlorine. I asked her several questions and somehow she managed to answer them all without a single spoken word. Head bobs, hand gestures, and eye points. Of course she did have her nose stuck in her personal computer the three times my wife or I needed her, so I guess you can't blame her. As I lay in bed and let the pullout torture me for daring to sleep on it I realized that I had made a terrible hotel choice.

I guess sometimes you get what you pay for. Needless to say regardless of the good deal at a fairly new hotel that had an indoor pool and hot tub... I would have much rather paid more and been able to both breath and sleep. I surrender and officially admit to having lost the battle of Bradbury. But, that's a battle I do not intend to ever fight again...at least not in a Best Western Bradbury Inn & Suites.

Sincerely disappointed, Gregg (Conf #22020)