Holiday Inn Express Anaheim West by IHG — Hotel in Anaheim

READ! Got to our room and noticed the condition wasn't great,but figured whatever were just here to sleep. Spent thousands of dollars to attend warptour in longbeach so decided to cut costs and stay at holiday inn since we usually stay in these hotels in other cities. This is the absolute WORST experience I've ever had with one. After a long day of work and driving on Friday, we got to our hotel room and noticed there wasn't a shower curtain. Figured you know what not a big deal we can just ask and coincidentally a very friendly cleaning lady was outside when we were going to go ask so she went ahead and grabbed us one and installed it no big deal. After we had her do that we finished putting our stuff away, we noticed a weird beeping sound and found it coming from the outlets one right next to the bed by our heads and the other behind the TV. The beeping was very intense. It kept us up all night back and forth, beeping and beeping right next to our heads. Exhausted, we tried calling at 4am to the front 3 times with the hotel phone with no answer and once with our personal phone with again no answer. We were way too tired to go downstairs and ask for another room, knowing we had to "get up" an hour later to get ready anyway. So we decided to just go ahead and shower. Next, we found out the curtain rod was broken... now the shower curtain not being there made sense. So now sleep deprived from all the beeping to a freezing shower because of all the cold air coming in from both ends of the shower. We figured whatever we would talk to the front desk after we got ready. Tired of course, we are dragging our feet getting ready and eventually make our way down and speak with Chris. To start, no eye contact and very dismissive. We asked for a different room, and he said there were none. Figured fine. Nothing we could do everywhere was full, but he then suggested talking to the manager who wasn't going to get there for several hours because, again, it was very early. Figured okay later today we will come ask again. Come back and a different Chris with glasses very sweet and apologetic but again told us it was full. Said he could give a 15% discount but we could wait to speak with the manager in the morning. Again whatever. This time, we were so sleep deprived went and bought benadryl just to make sure the beeping wouldn't bother us. We go up and see our room is exactly how we left it perfect whatever one bed undone and the iorn on the counter with a towel and sandals on The floor. After a very long crappy day we just wanted to shower and try to sleep. Then we noticed our towels were gone.. like??? Why come in our room and do absolutely NOTHING but take our towels and leave a couple hand towels? Like at that point it just felt like one big joke we weren't in on. Like huh??? We call the front desk a few times but understandably Chris with the glasses was busy so he said he could bring them up when he wasn't again not a big deal because we are understanding which is why we let so much slide. Finally, we get them a while later, and we could take that freezing cold shower. We slept in and missed the beginning of our festival just to waste enough time to finally speak with the manager Edith and yikes. Bigger waist of time then talking to no eye contact Chris. She was trying to gaslight us saying she didn't have a chris that worked in the night then after some back and forth said "of wait, which Chris i have two," like what?? Then tried to accuse us of not coming and asking for another room when not only had we given her names and told her we had she wasn't there to witness it so why try and claim that we hadn't.. then to top it off she tried throwing in our face "if it was that bad why didn't you leave" like ??? Did you not confirm what we had been telling you? we were told that the rooms were all full?? Yeah, same with other hotels as if after spendingover 1k on tickets wasn't enough now after we PAID to stay here you wanna say well pay and go else where if its that bad? We tried! smoke detector didn't work either....

This is by far the worst Holiday Inn we have ever stayed at.

-Rooms: The rooms are okay, definitely not the cleanest (hair on floors of bathroom, moldy tile in the shower, weird substances and sheens on the walls, etc.) If you’re going to be out all day hitting theme parks and doing other things, the rooms are fine.

I’d say the weirdest thing is that there was not a single trash can in the room.

-Breakfast: Some parts of breakfast are standard and decent (the cinnamon rolls, bagel/breads, cereal, etc.) I did see an employee intermittently refilling things, but it wasn’t consistent.

Day 1 breakfast was pretty standard. Some stuff was out,oatmeal soupy, etc. but fine overall.

Day 2 breakfast was absolutely disgusting. When my son bit into his sausage link, a ton of grease water shot out and most of the inside of his link was greasy watery stuff. So gross. I ate later, and when I bit into my sausage, it was cold, and the grease water stuff shot all over my hand and clothes. The eggs are just funky - can’t even describe it. It’s like jello cubes in egg form. The oatmeal was watery again. The yogurts were not stocked. The coffee was out.

-Service: This was pretty bad! However, I will start by saying that the gentleman with facial hair was friendly and he brought us up blankets and towels when asked. (I know other reviewers had an issue with that, so maybe they saw those reviews and made sure to be on it with the towels). He was friendly upon check in and seemed to be working diligently.

The bad of the service: We booked two nights. One night was using hotel reward program points and another was through a different service. When we checked in, we let them know we used two methods to book each night and specifically asked if that was going to be an issue or if we’d need to do anything. We were told no, we were all good to go for two nights.

The next evening our key card wouldn’t work anymore. I politely explained to the lady at desk that key card wasn’t working. She asked for our room number and once I gave it to her she said, “Oh. Well your card isn’t working because you extended your stay and never came to tell us or sign paperwork.”

I was a little taken aback by her way of speaking to me, but I replied, “Well, we booked each night differently, but we didn’t extend our stay last minute?”

She rolled her eyes at me and said, “Since you chose to extend your stay, but never filled out the paperwork, your key card expired.” Then she just stood there staring at me, irritated seeming. She made no move to be helpful and didn’t even move to grab the said form! Just stared at me like I was an inconvenience.

After a few moments, I said, “Okay… so do we just need to sign a form? If so, I need to get my spouse, he booked it under his name.” She rolled her eyes again and said yes and eventually got the form, then issued us new key cards.

I walked away feeling disrespected. I was polite and pleasant in my approach, and was treated like I did something wrong.

We were all dead asleep at 7:11 A.M. when the phone started ringing, waking all of us up. It was the front desk (a gentleman this time), telling me that I never signed a form and needed to sign it. I groggily explained that we signed the form last night. He told me we didn’t and it was blank. I repeated myself again and he said, “okay” and hung up.

Later that morning during breakfast I saw the same lady from last night and heard her all throughout breakfast speaking to guests (some on the phone) with a very unprofessional, fed up attitude. I just can’t believe a front desk service employee speaks to people this way!

Overall, this hotel just doesn’t have good vibes. It has a funky layout, the workers seem really bogged down/disengaged, the lights are dim, things just seem dirty and sketchy/run down. It’s not the worst of the worst, but definitely below standard and needs some intervention, staff training, systems structuring, etc. Stay here if you have to/are barely spending time in the room, but set your expectations low and don’t expect warm,...

I stayed at the Anaheim West Holiday Inn Express for the first time from October 26-28, 2024. During my stay, I encountered the inconvenience of not having towels available for two days including the day we checked in. The night manager, Michelle, kindly went the extra mile and offered me 25,000 points as compensation for the inconvenience of using my pajamas as towels, which I accepted in good faith.

However, the next day when speaking with Rodolfo at the front desk, I mentioned how impressed I was by the high level of service demonstrated by Michelle and with the mention of her name, he immediately indicated that this offer would not be honored. Michelle was not present at the time. Rodolfo specifically stated that she was not properly trained, and incompetent. He wasn't attentive to my concerns as the guest while he was talking at me. No active listening, no problem solving, no ability to regulate his own emotions, and didn't even acknowledge the issue that there were no towels in the room for 2 days, but instead, he'd continue to make insulting remarks about his colleague and suggested that she should be written up. Unbelievable!

The lack of towels was a non-issue compared to how Rodolfo suddenly laid into his colleague publicly (who was not even present to defend herself). That went seriously wrong. I find it extremely unprofessional to share negative comments about a colleague with an external guest, creating an uncomfortable situation for me. Staff should handle internal HR issues one-on-one, as opposed to doing something publicly which negatively impacts the overall brand of IHG hotels. This was the first time something like this has happened to me across the many hotels I have stayed at. I'm also a Lifetime Platinum member at another hotel and this IHG stay will definitely be an unforgettable experience for me. Ultimately, I feel like I was given a false promise, as none of these issues were my fault. Instead, I feel as though I was necessarily dragged into the hotel’s internal challenges. I work in customer service myself (not at hotels) and we get tricky issues that arise from time to time, but we are never rude to our clients, we don’t blatantly lie to them, we don’t shout at them. We speak to them respectfully to validate the issue and find a solution that they are satisfied with.

Furthermore, I checked out on October 28, 2024. Rodolfo advised that my room deposit was supposed to be released within 24-48 hours. Today is now November 3, 2024 (7 days) and the room deposit has not yet been refunded. Very disappointed in Rodolfo and his service here who can't handle a simple issue of not having towels ready in the room, simply not caring about the guest experience and then blowing the issue up with sharing internal hotel drama with a hotel guest. Is it that miserable to work there? Come on, IHG leadership. You...