Best Western Plus Orlando East- UCF Area — Hotel in Alafaya

Upon walking in the door, I was met with an adverse greeting. Then, while checking in, it got a tad confrontational when I asked questions. I was tired and thought it best to simply blow it off and go to my room. Immediately upon walking into the room, I noticed a smell that would soon become a headache, and then I noticed clumps of hair on the bathroom floor. I went back down to reception to ask for someone to come do a quick cleaning and spray some air freshener. I was assured someone would be up soon. After 30 minutes or so, we decided to go out for dinner and assumed housekeeping would take care of the room while we were out. But nope, nobody came. It was late, so I instead just threw down some towels over the mess and went to bed. Throughout the night, dogs barked, and the noise from the hallway was unbelievable, but we told ourselves we were only going to be there for a few days and time should go fast. The next day, after waking, we excitedly went down for breakfast only to discover there were only scrambled eggs left and some bread for toast ... and it was only 9 am, so we went out for breakfast. When we returned, I didn't see any housekeeping in our hall, which would be normal since it was now nearly 2 pm. Opened the door to discover housekeeping again didn't show. Since I placed our extra towels on the floor, we needed new towels, so I again went to reception to ask when housekeeping cleaned the rooms ... and I was told housekeeping ONLY visits the rooms upon request which was a new tid-bit of info not told to me previously. I then explained my previous requests to this new person, and she gladly gave me a new stack of towels, but nothing was done about the smell or bathroom hair balls. The 2nd night, we not only experienced the same noise but were also met with tiny little critters called cockroaches! That was it. The next morning, I told who I believe may have been the manager about the two previous days, then said I'm checking out. She happily let me go, but when I looked at my printed bill, I was shocked to see I was charged for 3 days vs. the two days we stayed. When I asked why the extra day because it's only 8 am and we're exceeding the checkout time ... I was told it's because we were leaving earlier than the quantity of days I said we'd be there when we checked in. I had no idea Best Western held people to a verbal contract of days one expected to stay at their hotel. It's now been more than a week since I checked out and my card still has the original $600 charge taken at check in.

Now, was this review really necessary, or am I overreacting? In the end, it doesn't really matter because hotels are often loud, and run out of free breakfast treats ... but it's never acceptable to wake up with bugs crawling on you and to be charged for days one didn't stay.

Dear Best Western ... if I'm ever asked to recommend this property or any other ... I'm saying...

We stayed here last weekend 3/4-3/7 and had an interesting experience. I’ll start off with the good, the renovated rooms are nice and clean and the staff we interacted with was friendly. Now on to the fun stuff.

This hotel is under renovation and I’ve stayed at hotels under renovation before and it’s never been a problem. This one was a bit problematic, maybe this hotel isn’t ready to be putting guests back in rooms yet.

We arrived at 4pm (an hour after the 3pm check-in) and we were advised that it would be another hour till they had a room for us. This was problematic cause we had an outing at 5:30pm I still had to do a little prep for. Luckily a friend at the Hilton across the street offered her space to me. We didn’t get a call until after 6:30pm, I missed the call and they didn’t even bother to leave a voicemail or contact the main booker of the reservation. We weren’t able to arrive to our room till after midnight, the doors were locked and there was no one to be found, luckily other guests waiting for help in the lobby helped us in.

We get to the room, no fridge, no clock, no phone. Can’t find the ice machine. It is what it is, it’s 1am we can deal in the morning. Morning comes and I go looking for ice again to discover there are currently no ice machines and you have to go to the front desk for ice. Having to go from the 3rd to the 1st just for ice was annoying, especially cause we didn’t have a fridge. When I brought this up, she apologized, was very polite and offered a 25% discount. Problem was we paid in points and she couldn’t do anything about points but her general manager could and they wouldn’t be in till Monday. Okay fine.

Saturday evening we are back in late again, we want to use the sofa bed that night and it won’t open. We give up.

The next day we decide to try again, turns out they never took the wiring off the bottom of the frame that would release the bed, so we had to flip the couch and remove the wiring ourselves. The mattress also was still in its plastic bag so we had to remove that too. While this is happening, in a room near us, I’m assuming someone was being trained in housekeeping and whoever was training them was yelling at this person the entire time. And then we lost all running water for awhile which set us all back. It was a fun morning.

Monday morning, we check out and ask to speak to the GM to be told they are now gone for the day but they will call us. They took the booker’s information and off we went. It’s been nearly a week and the GM has not reached out.

Consider other hotels...

So we stayed here and they gave a stranger a key to our room at 3am who had opened the door called down to front desk and the guy told me that he was sorry and the people went down and informed him that there was people in the room. After that I could not sleep due to fear for my family. Talked to manager in morning and she said she was going to look into it and advised me to talking to booking cause since I booked the room thru booking she can’t do nothing about it. So yeah they don’t care about your safety at all. I left a review on booking for this hotel and the hotel response is unreal night employee amitted it happened but they are denying it happened and trying to blame us for going outside to have a smoke after it happened to calm us down after people opened our door. And booking is doing nothing about the issue either. So I no longer recommend using booking and I really don’t recommend this hotel.

Update to GM response To GM we was not in and out all night and there was a stranger who had opened our room door at 3am who woke us up even my grandsons. I did use the lock which meant they didn’t enter completely but they did open door with lots of force. I had to use my cell to call front desk due to room phone was not working and the gentleman told me it was due to computer which is still not acceptable to be woke up at 3am when you are supposed to feel safe which we didn’t that night. After that. You can put the blame on us all you want but it does not change the fact that you put us in danger due to not everyone thinks about that lock and if we was one who didn’t think about it they would have entered completely. And even the lady at the front desk that morning amitted it to booking and your manager said she could give me points but why would I want point for a hotel that does not look at your safety. I didn’t even mention how bad the lobby and elevator smelt like weed or the bugs that I saw in the place. But you blame who you want I know it’s true and not afraid to let others know so they can look at their on safety...