Capital Plaza Hotel — Hotel in Frankfort

Location, location, location. If you're looking for a place to stay in an excellent location, this is one of them. But I believe an excellent location can lead a business into laziness and complacency. This is the feeling I got from Capital Plaza.

First, I want to say that the employees at Capital Plaza were wonderful people. I place none of the responsibility of my "just okay" experience on them as individuals. The overall experience, however, was disappointing. We blocked off a set of rooms for our wedding down the road at Buffalo Trace Distillery. We had coordinated with Ashley, the event organizer, to have gift bags handed out to guests as they checked in. We sent those several weeks in advance from our home in Dover, DE. A few guests had arrived before us and did not receive their bags. When we asked Ashley about it, we found that the gift bags were still in the package we'd sent, tucked away in a back room. With a shrug and a smile, Ashley handed them to us to give to the front desk for dissemination.

When we arrived, we wanted to include an itinerary in the gift bags; my wife drafted them up and emailed them to Ashley who had agreed to print them out, as we couldn't access the computer in the business center. As documents tend to do, the formatting shifted when Ashley opened them, but rather than catch this and correct it, or bring it to our attention, she printed them as they were and we had to improvise.

On the final day of our stay, one of my wife's worst nightmares was realized when she got stuck in an elevator. Now, things like this happen, and it's hard to fault people for unexpected mechanical issues. What I took issue with was the utter lack of urgency from the maintenance department. The situation was addressed with minimal effort and shoulder shrugs. When I addressed this with the front desk, the response was "I'm sorry that happened, but..." According to the clerk, a contractor had come in to work on a different elevator without notifying the hotel, and for whatever reason they had shut down the elevator that my wife had been in somewhere between the third and fourth floor. When a maintenance guy joined the conversation, he blamed "the computers" and "bugs" and what-not. There had been no indicators that any of the elevators would be worked on that day and ultimately, a strap of caution tape was haphazardly taped across the elevator on the first floor.

When we checked out later that morning, another desk clerk asked how our stay was and I pointed out my disappointment with the lack of urgency during the situation. She was much more sympathetic, but I didn't get the sense that any further action would be taken.

The Capital Plaza is a short walk to downtown Frankfort and a short drive to the Buffalo Trace Distillery and many other excellent restaurants. It's a gorgeous area, and I can't help but wonder if the hotel's location has led to a culture of complacency. People are going to stay there. Hell, I recommend that you do stay there--as long as you're just passing through and want a short and safe walk to the bars and breweries in beautiful and historic downtown, Frankfort; however, I would not recommend Capital Plaza if you're looking to host a...

The hotel that gave up...

Arrived for a convention being held at the hotel, stayed two nights. The room itself is a good size, fairly clean, and at $80 would generally have been considered a good value. Except for the following:

1. Ran the shower for a bit Friday night, and found the carpet on the other side of the shower wall was thoroughly soaked for 18" out from the wall.

2. Drains were broken in both the bathroom sink and bathtub.

3. Hotel wifi was overloaded and useless for two days. I'm an IT professional and could not connect.

4. During my presentation at the conference the hotel's IT guy made sure to tell everyone in the tradeshow that I was to blame for "sucking up all his broadband", when in reality my laptop was playing its screensaver, and was connected to MY hotspot (did I mention the wifi was useless?). I thought it was very professional of the hotel staff to blame a guest for their lousy system being useless for days.

5. Tried to order room service Sunday morning. After being put on manual hold (also known as putting one's hand over the phone and mumbling with a co-worker) i was told they were offering buffet only - no room service that day.

6. At first I was concerned about being bothered y noise since my room was right next to the vending machines. I never did hear any traffic in the hallway ... because the HVAC system is LOUD! Like, 63-77 decibels loud with the fan on low. That's somewhere between a loud conversation and a dial tone, happening beside your bed. All. The. Time.

7. Shower was weak, with the fixtures either really tarnished or something growing on them. I didn't investigate.

8. House keeping randomly tidied up some things, but left other wrappers and used cups lying around.

9. The big fountains on the patio are dry and abandoned.

10. For my presentation the hotel provided a projector from circa the Bush administration. No, the first Bush administration. Daddy Bush. That old. It was the same color as my old Comodore 64. When I reminded the lady that it is 2014, and inquired about a projector with HDMI, she said: "Ya, people keep asking for that, but the bosses won't buy it."

And that pretty much sums up this hotel: The staff are mostly friendly and helpful, but poorly trained, poorly equipped. It's like the hotel has just given up and is riding out the remainder of its years.

PS: The only other good thing I can say about the room is that the TV is a new LG model, with available HDMI ports so that I could connect my laptop to stream Netflix. Oh, wait .. did I...

Absolute worst hotel experience I have ever had. I only gave a 1 star because it forced me to give a rating. Upon check-in my room smelled like a musty, old, body, and I immediately noticed the stains all over the carpet. I immediately inspected the bed linens and found stains on the blanket. I took the blanket off, and the next morning asked housekeeping for a new blanket (I asked the next morning because I arrived late in the evening). The blanket that was given to me also had a stain on it that was dark, and looked like an old blood stain that didn’t come out in the wash. I was horrified. The mattress looked in good condition visually but was terribly uncomfortable. I woke up after my first night with welts all over my body. I thought I was having an allergic reaction to whatever they wash the linens in. WRONG. Fast forward to 1:00am on my second night, I couldn’t sleep, because I was itching like crazy. I was laying in bed and looked at the time on my phone and saw a BED BUG crawl across my pillow. Yes, a bed bug. When I killed it, blood splattered all over the pillow. Now I know where the welts came from. I have a total of 14 BITES all over my body, 3 of which are on my forehead, and 1 is on my eyelid. I brought this to the attention of front desk staff and management, and while they were nice, I truly feel like they were trying to escape blame. I was there for training and a conference with 600+ people so I didn’t feel like I had a choice of another room, so I didn’t bother asking. That’s my fault, but I mean, if bed bugs are in one room, they are in multiple rooms so what good would it have done? They ended up compensating my roommate and myself to cover the cost of taking everything we brought with us to the laundromat to spin in high heat driers. I honestly feel like it was “hush money” though. They also stated they would refund the organization that I was with for my room. I’ll have no way of knowing if that happens. I am absolutely disgusted. Not only am I horrified and disgusted, but I am truly in agony with the bites all over my body. I will never set foot inside that place ever again, and I would t recommend anyone else to either. They are doing some renovations, and I would suggest shutting it down. Who knows how many people are taking home bugs. Worst experience in...