Country Inn & Suites by Radisson, Monona - Madison East — Attraction in Monona

Last Saturday [12/31] my partner and I went down for breakfast before our departure. It was approximately 6:50AM. The lights were off but all the food was all set up. Didn't think anything of it, since we just woke up. We began serving ourselves when a younger african american woman with dreads and a hat on popped her head out of the kitchen to inform up breakfast wasn't until 7AM. She was very rude about it. We sat down with our bowls of cereal and waited the few minutes difference.

The young woman exits the kitchen, grabs my plate of half served food and chucks it in the garbage. I had asked her why she did that and she charged at me instantly, got in my face which scared me a bit because the lights were out still. She bent over and got attitude about why she threw my plate away. I was upset at this point. I asked her why she was in my face while I was sitting down at the first available chair beneath the television. The she started to back up. I implied that was very unprofessional and she said that she "didnt care because she will be there tomorrow anyway."

At this point, on my way back to my room, I was disturbed by another woman, older african american, who caused a scene in front of the elevator as we were waiting for it to open. I shrugged her comment off because these woman were looking for a response and not a solution. Another lady presences herself, as the assistant manager. Didn't identify her name or any genuine act of kindness to deliberate appropriately.

I was already flustered at this point. My first two encounters that early on a Saturday morning were enough for me, but the "assistant manager" didn't seem to care that a guest was being treated poorly by her own employees. We didn't get to eat breakfast that morning because of the danger the kitchen staff surprised us with and then to be disturbed by a house keeper who felt opinionated and chose to say something to a stranger in passing just to stir things up.

I would NOT suggest staying here. I payed to stay in their "king suite" for 1 week, approx $140 a day and this is the kind of treatment I got the one day I finally decide to even have their hotel breakfast. My partner had complained previously about the cleanliness of the room they hardly even accomondated us for. We found hair in the tub, in between the sheets and gum on the floor. When we booked the room, we were not informed the pool and hot tub were out of order. this whole trip was a nightmare and I wouldn't suggest anyone staying here with the lack of professionalism they have running this hotel.

I would not rate this safe...

I will start with a positive. Out back there is an inlet from the lake with a fountain and a walking path. It's very peaceful and I found beautiful. We even saw a family of ducks while staying there. The room layout is nice. It has a separate living room and a door to shut on the bedroom. This helps in making the place seem less like a hotel and a little more homie since you can spread out. Having a 3 year old with it gave him plenty of room to run within the rooms. That's the end of my positives. Negatives first and for most the place is dirty!! Filthy!! My son's feet were black after walking around in the room for one night. We walked into the room to find a tooth pick on the floor and several pieces of string. Suggesting it was not vacuumed, not that that would have been enough. I almost got locked in the bathroom. Then when trying to get that figured out we realized the bathroom door if shut would not open from the outside, even when unlocked. Luckily we had adjoining rooms with family so we switched to avoud worry about our 3 year getting locked in. Both rooms toilets got plugged. One to the point we needed maintenance to bring the plunger for fear of overflow. The other took several flushes and waiting for the water to go down. The thin toilet paper shouldn't have been enough to plug the toilet. The furnishings are very out dated. Carpet and couch suggest 70s. They also still smell from when smoking was allowed in hotels. Due to how clean the room already was we didn't pull out the hide-a-bed like we had planned for our kid to sleep on. We opted to just keep him in the King sized bed with us. Also bring your own pillow. The pillows in our room were tiny, basically your head could only fit. Our family's pillows were slightly bigger but I'd play it safe if you are big on pillows. Breakfast was ehh. I've had far better hotel complimentary breakfast but I've also had worse. I'm sure you know what to expect in these cases anyways. The cookies weren't available when we checked in but we got some later, good, nothing to write home about but I'd grab some extras to have for breakfast. There is a pick-n-save(grocery store) in walking distance which is nice. We did hear that they are suppose to begin a remodel November 2019. If they upgrade and get better at maintaining it could be a very nice hotel!! I really hope they are able to get the inside to match the feeling I got walking around outside by the water. I preferred to sit outside and enjoy the sites instead of getting in the stuffy, musty,...

This whole thing was a nightmare. We called before booking to ask for adjoining rooms. A woman instructed us to book the rooms then call back and make the request, so that's what we did. She assured us that we would have an early check in and adjoining rooms (or at least next to each other). We called again the morning of arrival (this is the third phone call for those of you keeping track!) and again were assured we had an early checkin and adjoining rooms by someone who identified himself as the manager. Great, we're exhausted and have a 3 year old who needs a nap so we head to the hotel. When we walked in, the woman at the front desk couldn't have been more annoyed with us. When we quadruple checked that the rooms were next to each other, she said no they weren't even on the same floor and there was nothing she could do since the room numbers had already been assigned. Not a care in the world, just business as usual for her. So we go about telling her that we called, etc, etc, and we really need these rooms next to each other. Again, she says nope nothing can be done. So I asked if we would be compensated for not having our requests met. That got her attention and she said she'd go speak to someone. Turns out, the manager was on the other side of the wall and heard the whole exchange. How unprofessional can you be to let your employee try to handle this on their own when they clearly don't know what they're doing? She comes back out and again says, sorry but there's no more rooms next to each other and one of the rooms (for the 3 year old) wasn't even ready yet. Mind you it's already after 2pm, checkin was at 3pm so we weren't that early. My husband immediately got on the phone to find another hotel with adjoining rooms. Again she says let me talk to the manager, who is STILL sitting right there and never came out. They ended up unassigning the rooms and putting us in "adjoining" rooms. Throughout this whole exchange this woman did not apologize, did not smile, did not even try to act as if she wasn't annoyed or cared about our situation at all. We finally get upstairs to the room that is ready and guess what? They weren't even adjoining! What a colossal waste of our time. The rooms were dirty, smelled like mildew, had urine stains on the bedding, and overall looked run down. The only positive thing I have to say in this review is that the location was nice. Do yourself a favor and spend the extra $20 to go...