Howard Johnson by Wyndham Buena Park — Hotel in Buena Park

I was told to leave during booking because I requested my credit card back, it was taking so long to book in I was getting edgy he was taking my credit card numbers down. The clerk was behind a giant Apple display, I could not see what he was doing. Then after explaining that I had fraudulent charges on my card from stolen numbers in the past he said he would allow me to stay lol, he realized I had not once been mean, arrogante or raised my voice. I think he wanted me to explode to support is dismisal, on my way out once he realized he screw up he insisted in showing me cameras of him booking me in, I told him I did not care to see it, he was on protective mode from then on. Booked me in then only with my drivers license and told me he did not need my credit card (ummm how odd) I only had to insert it myself (ummm like it should have been from the start). He mentionned he needed to match my id to my visa card, who cares what names on it as long as its valid credit card, but my name was on it, takes a second to check not 3 minutes. 6 day stay they cleaned the room once, I asked if I could borrow a wine bottle opener they said 'no problem we will bring it to your room', I am still waiting for that corkscrew. Same with the remote control that never fonctionned, ask for a replacement 'yes no problem we will bring it to your room' still waiting. This place shows it age but gracefully. Both mattresses in the room have seen better days, sitting on the side was directly to springs and wood base, I had to sleep on the side facing the wall or I would have been in a crevas. The first and second night I could hear the noise from other rooms, the walls seemed paper thin I guess I was lucky the other nights or stopped caring/listening. Parking is good and location is good, never tried the breakfast but it was set up early and available, the pool and hot tub seemed clean and usable 10am to 10pm, Target and restaurants near by are walking distance. 15-30 minutes to Disneyland and Convention center dependant on traffic. I guess my welcome and empty promisses from the staff made my stay miserable (and / or was put on a no service list). One more thing there was garbage all over the gardens/lawns, seems like no one took notice, some was picked up after a few days but many smaller pieces of wrappers and other broken plastic were never picked up. I have no pictures to show because its nothing I wanted to remember, this place has no class or elegance good thing I left early and returned late, not a place or room you want to spend quality time in, just a bed/shower/facility. We had better barracks and field stays in the Army. I did enjoy the half fridge and coffee maker in the room 2 packets of coffee, after that I had to go ask for more as it was never refurbished, coffee was of good quality. The parking and surrounding area felt safe enough. Better than Motel 6 by the overpass in the same visinity I had stay for my 2 previous nights. No vehicular noise or train could be heard from the room at anytime. I think you know I did not really enjoy my stay. Cheers, I will do my ultimate to never stay there again and move closer to Disney and Convention...

Had water pouring from our bathroom fan from the upstairs to the downstairs twice more than excessively because the neighbours upstairs decided to have a bathtub. Fine totally not the hotel’s fault but when we brought it to their attention, they didn’t even offer to clean it up and until I went to the front desk to ask for some sort of fix to our problem of our wet items that were saturated, he offered me four dollars in quarters and a box of tide to do our own laundry. Upon checking in, a lady in front of us was checking out with the nasty remarks of how cold her room was, and she had asked for blankets and never received them or so forth so when we checked in, we made sure to ask for extra blankets and all of said she would get some to us. We never did. I even texted the phone number to Text for concerns that Howard Johnson provided and nobody replied to me. Also texted a question or two and never got a response. Absolutely bullshit breakfast nothing but toast, some stale cereal, and a few packages of instant oatmeal available (2 out of 7 days) also note we were there as one of the first ones for breakfast upon opening so nothing can be said that maybe we were too late or cut short… Apparently, their juice machine was always broken, except for one day… Like come on if your juice machine’s broken, grab a couple boxes of juice how hard is that? No fresh fruit, muffins? Bagels, yogurt, or any other options… but yet we watched the staff make their own breakfast of waffles and go to the back and cut up fresh fruit (bananas) and so forth for their own breakfast.

We ended up making our own shopping trip to target to pick up breakfast essentials for our family and our kids to ensure we’d have breakfast not something we planned on as again one of the main reasons for booking. This hotel was the promise of A fully stocked continental breakfast.

One of the main selling features of us renting this place was for the included breakfast option (because of our fast schedule, we had planned of our family trip from Canada to the Disneyland parks) but again when your only options are waffle mix and toast and two days of offered oatmeal dry packages… no water to even make the oatmeal. It really cuts down on your enthusiasm for breakfast it’s more coming to the breakfast area to see what they actually have available. We’ve been here we’ll make it a full week and nothing has changed throughout the entire week even when asked for other options or why the drink machine was down nobody had an answer and just telling me it was broken. The hot tub was smaller than our queen size bed, and lukewarm at best disgustingly full of bubbles hasn’t been cleaned in how long… The pool was ice cold — unusable!!!

I have a LOT more to share but im sure you get the...

I would recommend staying somewhere else! I have grown up traveling and still continue to travel often each year. This is by far the 2nd worst hotel I've stayed at as an adult. This experience will keep me from booking another Howard Johnson hotel in future travels.

I did not like:

The first room we checked into:

1. A/C unit would not blow out air, and it sounded like it was going to die.
2. TV was not working properly. (Not a huge deal as we had each day planned out from 8a to 1030p or later.)
3. The shower had ZERO cold water.
4. Breakfast was ONLY waffles, cereal, and bread. I went down to the lobby to inform them of the first two issues. A gentleman came to the room and fixed the TV in about 30 minutes, which made my child happy. However, to fix the a/c unit, he brought back a tower fan. In the morning, I went to jump in the shower, but there was nothing but hot water coming out. I turned the hot water all the way off to verify that there was zero cold water coming out with the cold water turned completely open. Again, I went back down to inform them of the issue. They offered to switch rooms. At this point, I needed to be somewhere at a specific time and didn't have anymore time to waste. So we took the second room.

Second room issues:

1. Room smelt like smoke.
2. I found a dead cockroach, and on the last night, we spotted a live cockroach.
3. No TV remote in the room. (Again not a big issue as we had a schedule to keep)

Both rooms:

1. Walls and ceiling/floor are thin. You can hear conversations in the adjacent rooms and hear people walking above you.
2. The hotel itself seems dated and possibly they are in the process of a remodel, but the snap together flooring definitely needs to be fixed as there are lots of gaps.
3. The beds are VERY springing.

Upon check out, I informed them of the issues we ran into in the second room. All I got was an unempathic apology and told they have an employee at the front desk 24/7. That's nice to know but when you are leaving daily at 8a and not getting back till 11p. The last thing I wanted to do was deal with the front desk. We were so exhausted each day. That we just crashed out when we got back to the room.

A friend of mine that stayed there at the same time I did. Said their king size room was gross. Some sort of stuff on the ceilings, on the a/c unit and looked like it went into the a/c unit.

If you made it this far. What I did like:

1. I stayed in a double queen room and I was surprised that the rooms are decently spacious. You have about 5+ feet from the foot of the bed to the dresser.
2. Although their breakfast is minimal, it is a breakfast.
3. It is very close to Knott's Berry Farm. It's about a 6 minute drive.

I would definitely suggest you find a different...