I got this room for a great deal off of Hotwire.com. Having stayed in ESA's in the past and liked them, I was initially pleased. However, when checking this location out on Tripadvisor I was instantly worried by the very low reviews. I decided to brave it out and see if the reviewers were just being dramatic, or if what they wrote was true.
My initial reaction to the place was that it was maybe just tired, and in need of some refreshing. The exterior of the building was plain, but neat and clean. Once inside, however, there is no front desk - instead there is a tiny office where an employee sits behind an extremely beat up and damaged wooden desk with dirty, bent miniblinds on the windows and papers everywhere.
As if this wasn't eyebrow raising enough, the further inside the building you went, the worse it got. Awful, cheap fluorescent lights in the hallways and the pungent odor of a sickenly sweet cleaning fluid throughout. The lobby furniture was shabby, and dangled precariously on the edge of being outdated.
The room at first seemed OK, but then as you stayed and looked around you saw problem after problem. The walls were scraped, gouged and chipped at the corners. The bed was lumpy and the bed linens were so thin you could practically see through them. The bathroom was just awful. A large dark crack in the grout ran along the edge of the tub and the wall. The shower curtain rod had been ripped from the wall at one point, was reattached on the wall, and the torn wallpaper was left in full view. The wallpaper also had tears and stains all over it, especially around the sink. The toilet seat appeared to be made out of a laminate over pressboard which was cracking and bubbling all over the lid and the seat. The medicine cabinet was a tiny, flimsy thing that held another fluorescent bulb - and that was the only light for the whole room. The sink cabinet looked like it had been the victim of a flood, the bottom edges of the laminate doors had popped and were curling. But the worst was the floor. I like to wear socks with my pajamas and after walking on the carpet and tile for a couple of hours, the bottoms of my white socks were as dark and dingy as though I had taken a stroll through the parking lot. Now that's really bad. I was terrified to use the kitchen after that and didnt touch anything in there.
There were literally only two good things in this whole experience. The people who worked there were very nice. They let us check in early which was a godsend since we were exhausted. And the air conditioner. That room could have doubled as a meat locker it worked so well. Other than that, this Extended StayAmerica needs a serious, major overhaul to keep it from descending into the seedy world of flophouses.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
