Motel 6 Big Bear Lake, CA — Hotel in Big Bear Lake

My experience with this motel absolutely shocked me and has changed my view of Motel 6 totally & probably forever. It happened when I stayed there on December 24, 2021. Admittedly a busy time of the year and a ski resort with many roads closed because of snow, but not an excuse for what they did. All motels in town that were reasonably priced ($60 to $150) were full. Only really nice ones that wanted $500+/night had any rooms, so I was surprised this place had any rooms at all, put I soon realized why.|| Imagine my shock when I was charged over $400/night. You must be kidding! $400+ for a Motel 6? A total OUTRAGEOUS RIP-OFF! So why did I pay it? Because in this instance I had to, because by that time everyone was full except them, many of the roads were closed and I wasn’t sure I could make it to the next town.|| I have almost never paid that much for a hotel room, but when I did, it was pretty damn nice, and I don’t think I have ever paid more than $100 or so for a Motel 6. To top it off, they were an older property and NOT in good repair. I noticed and was not surprised when I saw possibly more than half of their rooms vacant that night. Of course, they were, probably because many people said “No Way”, and just took their chances to leave town. I wish I would have had that option. Had they been more reasonably priced, I have no doubt they would have been almost full and probably made more money also.|||| There is no doubt in my mind that they GOUGED me, along with everyone else who stayed with them that night, and I will never forget that they were even WILLING to do that. I don’t want to hear anything like “What-ever the market will bear”, because that has its limits, and it is an UNCONSCIONABLE way to do business. You offer a reasonable product at a reasonable price and a reasonable profit, and it should end there. Anything more than that is gouging, plain & simply. Taking advantage of high demand in order to charge a ridicules price for maybe even a bad product.|||| LegalDictionary.net defines and describes Price Gouging as ………… “It is this taking advantage of a bad situation, raising prices for much-needed supplies or services to an unfair, or even unethical level, that is considered price gouging….…PRICE GOUGING IS AGAINST THE LAW, though the laws vary by state”.|||| No doubt in my mind that this is exactly what they did, and didn’t even feel bad about it because the annoyance and my anger did not end there. There were also no amenities in the room (shampoo, conditioner, lotion, plastic cups, Kleenex, water, coffee or tea, etc.), as well as just one small bar of soap for a room designed for up to 4 people. I went down to the front desk, asked for at least 1 more soap, which she gave me, and then complained that they couldn’t even but a bottle of drinking water in the room. I was floored and pissed with her response. She had the audacity to say, “We don’t normally provide things like that so that it helps us keep our prices low”. WHAT....REALLY? I had to bite my tongue to keep from jumping down her throat at such a lame excuse as that, and I felt insulted that she figured I might actually be stupid or naïve enough to believe and accept that explanation. She compounded her BS by telling me that was their normal prices, which was of course a bold-face lie. So, as well as being crooks, she was a lying sack of $@$#$.|||| For many years I frequented Motel 6 and was reasonably happy with the company. I looked for the newer motels, if possible, which are a better value for what you get, because many older ones are not kept up and can be pretty bad. I have even defended the company from nasty remarks by many people of how bad they are by sharing experiences probably with those older properties, describing them as filthy, rude, ugly and even coining pet names for them, such as “Roach Motel”. I told them to try the newer and better maintained ones if possible before judging them. NO MORE!!!|||| I will now look for another motel chain to patronize and I will no longer recommend or defend Motel 6 to anyone and will tell everyone I can about their gouging practices. They will never...

Small room. Very clean. No bathtub. Good water temperature and pressure. No real place to hang a hand towel. There is one towel hook on the wall behind the door, a towel rack above the toilet, and the shower safety handle. One nightstand. One table and two hard back chairs. Electrical outlet on the side of the bed with the nightstand. The 2 bed room next to me was unoccupied with the curtain open, so I could easily see that the table in my room was replaced by the 2nd bed. flatter pillows (hard to prop myself up to watch TV) but a pretty comfortable (soft) bed. Intact/unbroken remote control (rare find). Good climate control. The linens were the cleanest I've seen in a while, in fact, this is the first time I opted not to use my sleep sack since I bought it. The towels were clean, but some of them were stained/worn. They didn't accommodate my ground floor request (which I always put in the notes of the reservation) even though it didn't seem busy- not very many cars in the parking lot. BUT I understand that there's a labor shortage (the lady who checked me in, who was very friendly, also seemed to be helping with housekeeping at 4 p.m.) so they might just not have had a clean room on the bottom floor. *Don't forget to tip your housekeeper! It's a difficult, disgusting job It's always a bummer to not be on the ground floor, as going up and down stairs carrying all of my stuff AND every time the dogs need to go outside, isn't really relaxing. Also, my older dog is starting to struggle with stairs. The dog area is the entire dirt courtyard (see pic) and other dirt areas around the property. There is no grass anywhere on the property. In fact, there's very little grass in the town at all. Dog walking station was never serviced during my two night stay (bag dispenser was empty and garbage overflowing). Luckily I always bring my own bags just in case and there were plenty of regular garbage cans available. Quiet, private property- almost completely fenced and I barely heard a sound the whole time I was there. Keep your little pets close....there was a coyote (see pic) on property in broad daylight (okay....6 p.m.). Please tip your housekeeper- it's a physically demanding and filthy job Unrelated to the motel itself- I was hoping my dog could swim in the lake, but it was really gross. There is a nice dog friendly path not far from the motel at the wildlife preserve. Boulder bay park is a nice, small grassy place to go for a walk also. Dollar tree in town had literally no food other than refrigerated/frozen, and the cashier said it's been that way for a couple of months.... so stop for snacks before you come. UPDATE- I originally booked for four nights but checked out after two. Apparently they recorded my early check out but didn't refund my card, so after a lengthy phone call (20+ minutes) I have to wait for a check to be mailed to me. I have frequently checked out early at other locations and have never had this...

I fully realize this is a Motel 6, so the guest experience and ambiance is already at a low expectation threshold, but this location isn't it. The staff were nice during check-in, but then after that everything kinda went down hill. The room itself is shaby, the toilet seat was nearly fully unscrewed from the toilet, the shower stall was just...weird? The beds were way beyond their point of useful life and should have been depreciated out of usage at this point.

Additionally, the door was missing the cross-bar thing for security and the smoke detector was fully missing (pics attached to this review). The exterior of the motel is lit up like Las Vegas, there's so much ultra-bright, crazy accent lighting, security lamps, security cameras, palm tree lights - like it feels like you're in a prison at night, with the crazy lighting in the stark difference to the dark residential vibes the motel is located in, so closing the curtains only sort of blocks out all these lights.

There was barely any landscaping when we were there, which hopefully that is re-done at some point as a part of their "renovations" because the grounds are drab as hell, with trash and debris all over what would have been a nice little courtyard area to walk your pets at. And to cap off our one-night stay, at 10am, we get a crazy knocking on the door and someone trying to let themselves into the room. I finally opened the door to find its an employee trying to get into our room? I told him that we will be checking out at 11am, per their policy - not sure why employees are trying to get into guest rooms before check-out??

And as you check-out and leave your room, they pipe-in some weird Muzak music across the grounds, similar to that homeless person deterrent music that some 7/11s and other businesses blast to keep people from loitering. Again - we're in Big Bear - is there really that big of a crime/loitering situation at this motel?

I don't know, this place just doesn't vibe well with the Big Bear Lake scene and for the price we paid, we definitely should've stayed somewhere else. The only pro was that they do allow pets, so we were able to stay with our dog overnight, but going forward, I think camping would have been a more pleasant experience than this...