Which was the WORST timeshare, hotel or rental you ever stayed at?

[Fredflintstone]

OMG, HAVE I GOT ONE FOR YOU.

It was a late flight into Lihue, HI and we forgot to book 2 of the 14 nights...and it so happens the nights missed were starting now.

Out comes the trusty phone and Hotwire.

Only one place showed up available in Kapaa. BOOKED.

OK, OUT COMES THE GOOGLE MAP TO FIND THIS PLACE.

It’s in some dark, dingy area. There is no lighting.

After driving around for 2 hours looking for the place, I get the keys from the security guard as the office is closed. My left foot goes thru the wooden sidewalk as I head towards the room. The stinch of cat piss hits me in the face. WTH...there are BIG cockroaches flying down in the hallway and landing on my face.

What is this? Bates Motel or perhaps a motel designed by Stephen King?

I open the rotting door to the room and the mould, mildew smell is just too much.

What did we do? We handed back the keys to the guard and slept that night in the rental car on a Lihue Walmart lot. Yup, that place got one star and a review from hell.

So what’s your worst one? No names need to be mentioned...just the experience.





Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[rboesl]

Ours was one within a 6 hour drive from home in the Poconos. The room was in dire need of upgrading. The box spring was covered with 3/4 inch sheet of plywood to provide support for the mattress that was so soft you felt the plywood. Carpet stained, furniture stained, and small tears in the vinyl flooring by the kitchenette. The only saving grace was the area is a great place to visit. Needless to say we spent as little time in the room as possible.

 

[jackio]

We were in a hotel in the NY Catskills that was supposedly once a nice resort. Everything was falling apart. I was scalded in the shower when the faucet broke and a jet of steam burst out. I couldn’t get out of that shower fast enough because the shower glass doors were off the track. And I was 5 months pregnant. The local hospital was not much better either! This was in 1983.

 

[artringwald]

My worst stay was in a two story cinder block type hotel in Miami on a hot, humid night. The air conditioner in the window made a racket, but was barely able to cool the air more than 1-2 degrees. I pushed the bed over so it was right under the A/C with the fan on high, but was still miserable. I should have slept in the rental car with the A/C on all night.

 

[Carta]

Our worst was our first..We were new to the game..We took a Getaway to Miami Beach..The cost was only $329 for the week..(WARNING)
It was a 1 bdrm with beach view..If I stand on one leg and stretched my neck, I could see the beach (with one eye only)..
Here's the topper.... We found a prophylactic and a joint in the bedroom..And this was not part of the amenities..LOL. Joint half smoked..Prophylactic unused..Thank Goodness

By far THE WORST timeshare

 

[klpca]

It was our first experience with VRBO back in 2001. We rented an oceanfront house on the water in Kailua-Kona. One of the selling features was the wall of glass windows that opened completely to the water. We arrived in mid afternoon. Parking was nearly impossible - one of those tiny driveways on Ali'i Drive (a busy road so getting in and getting out was interesting, to say the least). We walked in. The place had not been cleaned and smelled like rotting food. Luckily I had my giant Motorola phone so I called the property manager who told me that they could send someone to clean the place - the next day. So we started cleaning. The place was like an oven so we went to open those lovely glass doors. They were rusted shut. No AC, no windows. Then I started stripping beds to wash the sheets. That's when I found the sex toy packages (empty, but not in the mood to have to explain this to my kids) followed by used syringes. That was it, we were done. We called the local property manager (thank goodness there was a local person to contact) and at first she pushed back but relented and moved us to a condo after I asked her if she would stay at a place, with her kids, that had used syringes laying around. For us, timeshares have always been fine. Some of the VRBO/AirBnb's have had some unexpected surprises, but that one was the worst.

 

[Icc5]

Our worst was a timeshare in Tehachapi,California. We went there with our 2 young kids at the time. The resort said they had a mini golf course,swimming pool, bowling alley. Our first dat there we checked out the mini golf which was all torn up with weeds growing through torn up fake grass, and only ended up having 3 holes (certainly mini). The bowling alley was also mini and in need of large repairs. We walked up a steep incline to find the empty pool. Worst to come.
We went to check out two things. Where a train goes through a tunnel and crosses over itself and the Borox mine. Both very interesting and I reccomend everyone seeing these. In the 2bedroom unit itself you couldn't open the refrigerator door all the way because it hit on the cabinet which also meant you couldn't open the produce drawers. My wife made cookies and we had some beverages in the refrigerator. When we came back from seeing things we found almost all the cookies gone and the cleaning crew standing outside the unit with the door open and drinking some of the beverages. We packed up and left. This was an exchange and at the time they were a Gold Crown Resort.
Bart

 

[Ironwood]

Many years ago when you still thumbed through the RCI catalogue with a single picture of a resort, to book your vacation, we booked a resort at Loon mountain NH in the fall. When we first stepped into our unit, I had never seen such a disaster. Broken chairs and furniture, burn holes in the carpet, mismatched cutlery and dishes. broken fridge door handle....and it smelled. We quickly returned to the front desk to say this was unacceptable, and got the cold shoulder. The site manager, sitting in a glass front office would not leave his desk to talk to us. We immediately called RCI...the only time we've ever had to be rescued and they got us into Mountain Club on Loon, literally across the street where we had a wonderful time in an almost new unit. We discovered the resort we had checked into was in chapter 11, with literally no maintenance being done....I don't think it exists anymore!

 

[pittle]

We exchanged our 1-bedroom Hawaii unit for a beachfront studio in Acapulco for February 1999. The room had really old green vinyl furniture (basically the sofa was a daybed with sloped backs) and the bathroom had room deodorizers that caused me to have problems breathing. I literally slept with a wet washcloth on my face. The next morning my husband went down and told them we must change rooms. In the late afternoon on Monday, they moved us to another unit that was about the same – still smelled.

We had scheduled a City tour on Monday, so we were out while they were finding us a different unit. On Tuesday, we walked to the Walmart and were snagged by a timeshare guy. We agreed to go the next day – something to do to get out of our dump!

We went to the Mayan Palace and it was so beautiful and clean! We debated about buying, but when we assured that we could pay prorated MF and move over that day – we bought a 2-bedroom Sea Garden (resale) that would allow us to use a 1 bedroom Mayan Palace. We plopped down our CC, signed all of the papers and hopped in a taxi. We had the taxi driver wait while we ran upstairs and grabbed our stuff and dropped off the key. We checked into the Mayan Palace - paid about $150 for the remaining days and had a wonderful remainder of our vacation. We have been Mayan World owners ever since and have had clean units every time. We have worked our way up from Sea Garden to Grand Luxxe in the 20 years.

On the upside - when we told II about it in the review, they gave us a free week to use within 12 months.

We also have learned that if you only see a building and a pool in photos, do not take a chance! You must see room photos!

 

[moonstone]

I think our worst would be a resort in Daytona Beach a few years ago. I booked a 1 bedroom, full kitchen, on an RCI Exchange. As we drove up to the resort we could see scaffolding, construction garbage chutes down the sides of the building and finally the parking lot fenced off. We found a spot to park and went into the office to ask about the construction. The woman told us only the top few floors were being renovated and the construction didn't start until 8am and would be done by 5pm each day. She also told us we'd need to park in the vacant lot (grass and broken glass) across the street after we unloaded our luggage. We got our keys and went upstairs, our room was on the floor immediately below the construction. We walked into our unit to find a studio with a partial kitchen. We went back downstairs with our reservation stating we had reserved a 1 bedroom with a full kitchen only to be told due to the construction there weren't any available!

I called RCI and was immediately transferred to a supervisor (without me asking) who asked us to give her 15mins and she'd call back with a solution which she did. RCI also called the resort to ask why they were doing renovations without letting RCI know, and why they didn't honour our booked unit size. Since it was peak season RCI couldn't find us another 1 bedroom unit available in the Daytona area so they refunded our cost for the exchange and gave us back our week plus a bonus week. We agreed to stay in the studio unit rather than drive over to Kissimmee or down to Titusville. Since we are usually just in the unit for the evenings and overnight the construction didn't really bother us too much.

We are in Ormond Beach this week and drove by that resort yesterday and it is undergoing renovations again! I wonder if they let RCI know this time?


~Diane

 

[WinniWoman]

Wow! You guys really have some horror stories to tell! Appropriate for today is Halloween. LOL!

We have certainly been in some old and tired resorts/units/hotels, but nothing like what you have experienced, thankfully.

The worst we ever had that I can think of was when we went to Williamsburg, got stuck in nightmare traffic in Alexandria on the way down from NY, car brakes went because of all the stop and go. Barely was able to get off the exit eventually and find a place to fix them- it was Good Friday. We ere there for several hours as they tried to get a part. Finally fixed and then we took route 1 all the way down from there as the highway (95) was still a a parking lot. Got to the resort at 12 midnight only to find the place had not been cleaned. Called the desk immediately- there were crumbs all over the floor- grossed us out and we were so tired. They did come and clean the unit.

But that was it. Once we stayed in a motel up in Lake Placed for the dog sled races and there were drunk mushers up all night in the hallways.

I guess we have been very lucky. Even with Home Away rentals all has been good for us.

 

[Passepartout]

Ours was in a motel in Henderson, Nevada (Las Vegas). We were driving to see the kids in Phoenix and were just looking for one night enroute. It was late after the 9 hour drive from home, and there were no rooms anywhere, and of course we didn't have a reservation. After many tries, we found a highway motel, a 'no-tell-motel'-one of those with the bullet-proof glass and a tray to slide money into the 'office', with one room. There was no key, the clerk let us in. There were extra mattresses leaned against a wall. The place smelled. We had the dog with us so options were few. We fell into the bed to get a few hours' rest and when I got up, there was an inch of water of unknown provenance on the bathroom floor. We dressed, got in the car and beat a hasty exit.

Jim

 

[Krteczech]

Our was four months after hurricane Wilma in Cancún in 2006. We purchased a week stay package from reputable travel agency and ask many questions before we committed. Well, we were the only family in this damaged, but fully staffed hotel. They moved us from very bad to reasonably acceptable unit, and chauffeured us to really nice place “for relaxation”. Turned to be a TS sales presentation, but we fortunately already knew how to handle it. The weather was great, we enjoyed uncrowned Yucatán. On the flight back we learned more horror stories from other travelers about their stay. Turned out our hotel was not that bad after all...

 

[Big Matt]

My worst timeshare was in Atlantic City at La Renaissance. It was very old and everything was worn out. It was clean though, and the location was good. My worst of all time was an efficiency unit in Nags Head at the Quality Inn John Yancey. It was falling apart, the beds had no support, the bathroom had no towel racks or toilet paper holder. Everything was torn off of the walls and wood paneling had holes in it. We were eventually thrown out for complaining and wanting our money back. I was in college at the time so I suppose they knew that they were renting to college kids, but man.......

 

[AwayWeGo]

All the timeshares we stayed in were OK or better. A few had issues. All those were resolved while we were there.

When we were poor, we stayed in some dicey motels on the outskirts of Atlantic City -- best we could afford at the time.

After we became semi-affluent, only 2 motels we stayed in were in the el dumpo category, memorably so. One is big the Day's Inn near the Convention Center in Orlando FL. We needed accommodations for 1 night before check-in at a timeshare, so we named our own price on a 1-star PriceLine room, & Days Inn is what we got. Three police cars where there with blue lights flashing when we showed up to check in. The room itself would have been OK if it & the general state of the place had been tidier. As it was, The Chief Of Staff slept in her clothes.

The other dump, out in Las Vegas, was so bad that it lost its Days Inn franchise but was too cheap buy a new sign. It just rejiggered the old Days Inn sign to say Good Day Inn. We did not actually choose the Good Day Inn. It was part of the freebies we got for attending a vacation travel club high-pressure sales pitch -- airfare plus accommodations for 2 in Las Vegas. The only positive thing I can say about the free hotel room is that the price was right. The parking lot was dark. It was in a bad neighborhood downtown. A security guard escorted us from the office to our room. The lights in our room didn't work. The floor was wavy. I said to The Chief Of Staff that we should just leave & check in somewhere else -- it's not as if Las Vegas had a shortage of hotel rooms. Nope, she said, it's just 2 nights before our timeshare reservation, so we'll tough it out.

Lessons learned:
(1) Don't bid on any PriceLine hotels with ratings lower than 2-stars. They might be OK & they might not. Life is to short to take the chance.
(2) Don't go for timeshare tour freebies consisting of airfare & accommodations. The hoops that have to be jumped through to get the reservations & the chance of being put up in a dump completely neutralize the potential value.

So it goes.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[PamMo]

Without question, it was long ago (our first anniversary) and far away, in an unforgettable motel in San Clemente, CA. DH and I spent all day at Disneyland, and left at closing to drive to San Diego. We were exhausted and decided to look for a place to stay when we got to San Clemente. We saw a motel sign along the highway for reasonably priced rooms with waterbeds! (Does anyone remember those?) We thought that would be fun to try, and the motel had really nice cars in the parking lot (Cadillacs, Lincolns, even a limousine), so we figured it must be a very nice place. Dear Lord, we were so naïve! DH was confused when the front desk asked how long he wanted the room for - like, for how many hours? When we walked into the room, it was lit by dim red lights, and the bed and walls were completely covered in red & black crushed velvet and mirrors. Mirrors were EVERYWHERE! We were too tired to leave and try to find somewhere else to stay, so we went out to the car to get blankets (I didn't want to touch anything in the room), and slept in our clothes. Cars came and went all night long.

So, just about any hotel/motel room we've stayed in ever since seems great by comparison!

 

[Grammarhero]

Massanutten hotels. Look at these pictures! It was basically two-star Motel 8. Blankets were itchy. Room had bugs. Crap old tv and furniture. Rust-stained sunks. No HDTV. Other hotel guests were loud.

I’m not sure about the business strategy of putting folks in two-star hotels hoping they would buy your three star timeshares.

 

[am1]

Knights inn main gate west. Got out of there after 1 night and stayed at oak plantations on a timeshare offer. Next day walked into the Florida mall and my mom got conned into a tour at bonnet creek for discounted magic kingdom tickets. 2 months later I was bidding on Wyndham points during a real estate mba class. Night class and had computers at every desk. Eventually was renting thousands of reservations a year until got pushed out.

 

[alwysonvac]

Caribe Hilton in San Juan back in January 2001.

We decided to do a weekend getaway to San Juan. I had Hilton status at the time and the Hilton Caribe advertised the completion of some major renovations so we decided to stay there.

On the night we arrived, they didn’t have a room available for us so they put us up in a boutique hotel downtown called Old Convento. It was an old convent. It was very nice and we had a very nice meal there too. Lol, we didn’t want to leave.

We we return to the Caribe Hotel the next afternoon. The Hilton HHonors desk apologized for our first night and told us that we were assigned to an ocean view room. Lol, it just had a glimpse of the ocean but it was the worst room we’ve ever received. We were both shocked that this was a Hilton. It was absolutely disgusting. My husband took pictures of everything. We went back downstairs and asked for another room. The front desk person said that we lucky to get an ocean view room. We said we didn’t care about the view, we simply wanted a clean/updated room and couldn’t stay in that room. We were given a simple room in the back of the hotel (no view) but it was better!! Then we decided to have lunch at the hotel restaurant. It was a buffet. Well the peel and eat shrimp tasted old and previously frozen. Yuck!! So we decided not to take our chances eating anything else onsite. Thankfully a Morton’s steakhouse was available next door and we had a wonderful dinner. Lol, we couldn’t wait to return home. Needless to say, from that trip we learned not to rely on the Hilton name.

Lol, DH was so upset he actually created a table of the issues. I’ve included some pics below.