Saturday, June 18, 2011

A long overdue review for the ghetto fabulous hotel my girlfriend and I stayed at over Memorial Day Weekend

If you ever plan to stay overnight in Savannah, Georgia, stay far, far, far away from the Savannah Suites hotel. I get the heebie jeebies just thinking about this place. If you ask anyone, I'm one of the last people to be concerned about hygiene and overall cleanliness. However, I didn't dare to even step into that bathroom's shower. You'll find out why after reading this "fabulous" (Canesha likes to use this term to describe herself) review.

I would like to have our next vacation destination be New England during the Fall season. The changing foliage in New Hampshire (been there) and Vermont (heard from others) is breathtaking. One day will be devoted to Boston and possibly taking in a game within the hollowed grounds of historic Fenway Park.

Canesha's spot-on review

My boyfriend and I had the misfortune of booking a hotel under a certain website that won't give the hotel name til after you book, taking a chance because they'd never screwed us over before. Somehow we ended up with Savannah Suites, and they weren't even the cheapest. The reviews already on here are spot-on, and though I'm not sure they're still doing it, the Savannah Suites off Memorial Drive in Atlanta used to rent by the HOUR. This is the kind of classless establishment we're dealing with here. So our expectations weren't high as we went to check in.

Whoever said that people -- people who look like they just got out of jail and are stil adjusting to see normal people in the real world -- like to stare down people going to and from their room was right. I'm a pretty attractive female, so that didn't help. The last day there, there was this crazy wild-haired woman sitting outside of one of the rooms with trash bags filled with junk (evicted?) and she joined in on the looky-loo parade too. She also tried to talk to my boyfriend about Mary Kay products (??) but he brushed her off quickly before she'd really have the opportunity to bring out the crazy.

The first room they reserved for us was actually a handicapped room. As soon as you walked in, you were hit by a musty smell. Imagine going into an old building that hasn't been cleaned properly in years -- it was that kind of odor.

The "carpet" was this thin, cheap grungy material that looked like felt. The little furniture that was inside the room was comprised of pressed wood and chairs that looked like they'd come from the '70s. The tv was at least 15-20 years old, a piece of big bulky junk. Everything just looked cheap, cheap, cheap, as if the greedy owners of this rat trap have never renovated it and bought a bunch of second-hand items that didn't even look good when they were new. The last straw was the shower in the bathroom -- we'd never seen anything like it in our lives! It looked like something out of the movie "Hostel." There were weird bars and contraptions in it, the shower floor was literally flush with the bathroom floor -- meaning there's no way to keep the water in the shower. And there was no shower curtain. Basically you're just supposed to stand there and let the water go through a hole in the bathroom floor.

We asked for a non-handicapped room, and this one was only slightly better. The shower had a curtain (imagine that!), but the funky smell was still ever-present, along with crap-quality furniture, pencil-thin mattress, "flimsy" pillows, and 20-year-old thin comforter. We spent as little time in that room as possible, and purchased sandals at the K-Mart across the street to wear while showering and walking in the room. When night came, so did a couple insect companions, including a baby roach on the wall. The ceiling and walls are thin, so when some wonderfully intelligent person inexplicably thought that it would be fun to stomp on the floor upstairs, it came through loud and clear.

The staff is comprised (with the exception of one) a few bitter middle-aged women who couldn't care less about keeping hotel guests happy. One was a bit snappy when we requested a room without a torture chamber in the bathroom. Another seemed agitated when we had to go switch key cards when we changed rooms (and to echo another reviewer, the key card didn't work when we tried to use it, and the staff member acted surprised and got maintenance to come try to fix it. I glared at their charade from the side, astonished by their "eff effort" attitude.)

The frauds who own this particular Savannah Suites should be forced to spend a night there, AND use the shower without flip-flops. Oh one last thing, the coffee machine didn't even work, somehow the water for the coffee spurted upwards, creating a mess.

In summary, I wouldn't wish a hotel stay on my worse enemy.

Room Tip: For the love of all things Holy DO NOT RENT HERE.

Ahhaha!! Yes, this was worse than a Griswald vacation hotel stay. There are just two omissions here. First, all the air-conditioning vents outside the rooms were bent. Finally, we accidentally left a few articles of clothing in the room (yeah, we wanted out). Guess what happened when we tried to have the hotel send us those clothes via UPS? Yep. We're still waiting on them to this day.