Mad Monkey Broadway — Hotel in Sydney

Locations: Good It’s located near city center, so it’s each to reach by train and bus. I chose this place for the first stop in Sydney. I took the train from airport with two suitcases, then transferred to bus. With a little bit walking uphill, then I arrive. (If took another bus could avoid walking that far)

There’s Coles and Kmart nearby, and not far away from central train station about 15-20 minutes walk. So it’s quite convenient when I come back around 10-11pm.

Kitchen: Small and occupied. It’s an L shaped kitchen. So if I want to cook, many times I need to say excuse me for reaching the stove.

There’s no space in refrigerator and dry food shelf unless you’re lucky or you know how to find an extra space in fridge.

The good part of kitchen is there’s small water machine. And the bowl and plates are not the thick plastic ones, it’s ceramic.

However, there’s only two faucets in kitchen. If you need to use, you need to wait. And the stove, there’s a shelf on the wall, so when you use the stove closer to the wall, you might need to bend a bit.

Room: good details I like their outlets are near beds, both upper bunks and bottom bunks. Besides, it’s at the side. (Because I experienced one is right in the middle of the wall again bed’s end before)

And they have a small light for each bed. So it’s useful when we need to consider someone else needs to turn the lights off while you still need to use it.

Also, there’s air conditioner in the room, even in 8 bedroom.

But the key and lock is a problem. You need to find a way to open the door. It’s not easy to open the door to get in.

Bathrooms: unisex The bathroom is unisex. So at the same time there’s male and female in the bathroom using/ waiting/ brushing teeth outside.

But it’s good that water is strong. And there’s rack to put cellphone/ glasses.

Other: (1) washing machines and dryer are 4 dollars each, it’s normal price. But there’s one out of function for 1 dollar coins, so you can only put 2 dollars in that one.

And there’s no way to air dry clothes. Only using dryer. So if you need to do laundry. It would be 8 dollars (washing machine +dryer)

(2) the friendly level of staffs varies. Wish you a good luck.

(3) the different free meals night sounds exciting, but it seems more like a party for staff and long term residents.

(4) the public space is not enough. There’s only 3 tables. The space is pretty occupied. If you want to eat the thing you just cooked, there’s probably someone just sitting there and chatting. But still with luck to get your seat.

(5) there’s a door linked with another store, and a fridge in kitchen but that marks no use because it’s belong to the store.

(6) the staffs do clean up the room and kitchen regularly. So it’s clean comparatively.

(7) however, when I checked out, they emphasized, “only” need to recycle pillowcase. It makes me feel doubted about how about other sheets of bed? Did they change the bottom sheets and duvet covers?

Summary: After seeing 3 different hostels in Sydney so far. I think this one is not bad. In the similar price, there’s hostels without air conditioning. There’s hostels dirty with cockroaches. There’s hostels far from...

Until now I’ve never left a Google review on anything, but my stay in an eight-bed dorm-room here was far below expectations.

I wonder if the overall review score would be lower if the staff did not offer free laundry money (no card option) for giving a five-star review (which I was checked on). This isn’t an isolated incident as another negative review from three months ago had the same experience. I was asked for a five-star review, not just for “feedback” as Mad Monkey claims their policy is (in the response to the negative review). I find it hard to believe that a regular staff member would go out of their way to ensure the company keeps such a high review score without instruction to do so.

It’s good to see that Mad Monkey are giving lengthy responses to many of the negative Google reviews, but it seems the issues outlined in many of them have not been addressed months later.

Most importantly: My Girlfriend and I had sores regularly appear across our body over the course of our 6-night stay which the local pharmacist told us are bedbug bites on the day we left. This isn’t an isolated incident as two other negative Google reviewers from three and four months ago claim they had the same experience. My girlfriend and I slept on opposite ends of Room 23 and both had a similar experience with this. We have both left reviews warning others of this problem.

The dorm-room space (in our eight-bed room) was extremely small, smaller by far than any other rooms I have experienced in Australia (also eight per room). This caused consistently bad smells because we were all more cramped than usual, not because the people/items in the room were particularly smelly. The heat from the close-quarters was also particularly bad (made worse by the problematic Air Conditioning Unit). The bunk-bed noise was also not ideal.

The Air-Conditioning Unit was visibly dirty. It would not always work and when we could get it going the air quality was very poor. My girlfriend became sick during our stay which she believes was caused by her head being in direct contact with the airflow from the AC unit while sleeping. There are no curtains on the top bunks to avoid this. I hope Mad Monkey will improve the air quality from the AC unit, but little seems to have changed from two negative Google reviews from eight and nine months ago which had the same complaints. Mad Monkey dismissed this feedback in their response, asking the reviewer to “turn it off”.

Some other points: -The staff were overall very friendly, helpful and available for us. -We found the Kitchen space very narrow. -The upstairs showers we were using was clean. -The location was very good for us. It is only a 10-15 minute walk from central station which connects to networks all around the city and to the greater New South Wales train lines.

Despite some positives, I feel that the health issues we faced as a result of this stay still warrants a one-star review and a strong recommendation against staying here. I would be very surprised if there are not similarly-priced hostels around Sydney which don’t have...

We waited a few days to write this review in a calm and objective way, especially since we left after just 2 out of 4 nights. Our first impression was positive: central location, early room access (8 a.m.). But it quickly became clear why the room was already available: the beds were only superficially made up, duvets folded, but visibly dirty (sand, hair, stains - see pictures). The sheets smelled strongly of old sweat. Despite asking several times, the beds were not freshly made, so we ended up doing it ourselves. The other beds remained untouched/dirty throughout our stay. The whole situation felt strange. The room was far too small for 6 people. No hooks or shelves. Luggage had to be stuffed into the lockers or hung on the beds. It smelled musty, a mix of sweat/mold/dampness. The carpet was sticky. There was hardly any sunlight, as the small window faced a inner shaft-like yard. We saw a cockroach and an unidentified white bug on the bed (even Google Lens couldn’t recognize it). The upstairs showers were relatively new and friendly. But overall, we felt like outsiders. The staff changed constantly. One working girl told us that residents work here in exchange for certain benefits (?). There's nothing wrong with that in itself we think. But because of that we had impression that some of the positive reviews we had relied on as regular travelers might actually come from these people. Some of them didn’t even respond to a simple “good morning”. We felt like money is being made here without investing in hygiene or room quality (at least not in our case). Our room (No. 13) was by far the worst we’ve ever stayed in. We also told the guy at the front desk all of this when we checked out. As experienced travelers, we can’t understand how this hostel in general can be described as very clean. That was definitely not our experience. If somebody cares about the location, you might be fine here, but everyone else should consider spending a little more for something better. Cleanliness is very important to us, which is why we decided to give only one star. And to the team or management: Please skip the copy-paste we’re sorry-replies. Get to the point and address the issues we’ve raised. We hope that you will take our concerns as an opportunity to take action. After all, that's what the review function here on...