Wyndham Garden Ankeny/Des Moines — Hotel in Ankeny

TLDR: Hot water takes 10-20 mins of running water to work, service was awful, not a free breakfast as advertised, renovations are nice but not quite enough.

We were originally going to rate this at least 3 stars, but the stay itself continued to get worse. We stayed 2 nights. The renovations are a good attempt to make it nicer, new paint, new furniture, but you can tell a lot was done quickly & cheaply. There is paint slapped over things, mold growing in the grout in the shower, a drop ceiling in the bathroom, paint coming off the doors, baseboards severely damaged, etc.

The hot water did not work at first. The front desk told us to just let it run until it kicked on, which was between 10 & 20 mins (we had to do this every single time we wanted hot water) & that if it was 45mins+ they'd move us rooms as evidently this happens often & is a known problem for them.

The "free, made to order breakfast for every guest" is false. It is a coupon for $5 off per guest or a free meal of 2 eggs & hashbrowns. Not a big deal except for the false advertising & information within even the rooms. The diner is cute & the food was good otherwise.

We brought our 3 small children with us. The hotel was nearly empty. We did not use the pool, but that area looked nice enough. We traveled with our 7 year old who uses a wheelchair after an amputation due to cancer on his leg. It was hard to get him through their heavy doors to the outside.

Our youngest got sick on the 2nd day of our stay & vomited on the bed & floor. We felt horrible & apologized profusely. They told us not to worry, they'd clean up the towels we used & change the bedding. We were gone for 12 hours that day, upon coming back, the bedding was still in the pile we'd left on the bed, the towels had been picked up but not replaced & the floor hadn't been cleaned other than what we did with the towels. We had to ask for bedding, got spare bedding for a couch & made the bed ourselves, put the dirty bedding in the hallway as instructed. We then had to ask for more towels.

We also had to ask 3 separate times to get a roll of...

First off, where's the garden? I imagined an atrium based hotel of some sort, it looked so nice in the pictures. Actually a pretty dirty and miserable hotel that felt like prison and was hard to get in and out of off the road.

There were too many issues to give a play by play, except for the start. Showed up with tons of stuff and was asked if I was OK with a room upstairs. Since they had no elevator I said no. I was given a room downstairs and when I opened the door it was filthy - it hadn't been turned from the previous guest. So back to the counter, he knew immediately why I was there before I said anything, so I assumed he was messing with me for not taking the second floor room. He gave me another room which was turned but filthy, dark, dingy, and felt like a prison. I don't feel intuitive in any way, or haven't before, but I got the distinct feeling that someone had died in the room. It had a feeling of death and entrapment. This was the room I stayed in for 2 days.

So the short issues: No breakfast even though they said it was included, loud cars all day/night since it's right off expressway and cheap walls - you hear people talking outside in the parking lot, cars going by, and every door and footstep in the hallway. My room was accompanied by flying insects at least. The chair was filthy, stained, and too short to reach the desk so you could eat normally - plus it was unstable and I kept almost falling out of the chair.

Worst to me was the smell, the whole place smelled like Indian spices the entire time I was there. Between the smell, the dirt, the feeling of death, and the fact that there was no garden at the garden inn - I won't be staying here again.

My trip extended an extra day, I packed all my stuff and got the heck out of there. I moved to a Hampton Inn which was almost the same price but was beautiful and clean. Definitely would not recommend staying at the Wyndham...

I mean if you are a light traveler this place is for you. If you have a bunch of luggage or other items, you will need to request a 1st floor room as this place has only two floors and NO elevator and no type of ramp for even handicap access. The rooms were ok. seemed clean. But you could tell the remodel was done in haste as so many things didn't look complete. Only two pillows per bed.

pool is right in the middle with really no time table for it to close. its a pretty big pool but being its in the middle of the building, so all the rooms around it, the doors open right to the pool so it was very loud for a very long time as we needed to sleep and get up early the next morning. and we were on the 2nd floor so i cant imagine how loud it was for those on the first floor right next to the pool.

zero hot water the first night we stayed. called front desk and they said it would come after about 3-5 mins. never did. one morning we all had hot water, but the next morning there was none again. just lucky it was 93 and up during the time we stayed so the cool showers did feel good.

There are NO do not disturb door hangers, so be ready for someone knocking and IF you do not hear them they will come in. That is why the 2 star rating. not very secure.

all in all, it was ok. the free breakfast is a voucher for the diner attached. only servers from 6-9 so be careful of your timing.

staff was helpful and nice. a little hard to understand what they are saying, but it worked out.

this place did what we needed it for as we were there for about 4 days and were not...