Candlewood Suites Williamsport by IHG — Hotel in Loyalsock Township

I had an extended stay here. I think the people stayed here are mostly blue collar folks who either past through the area needed a night to stay or people working in the surrounding areas needed a long term stay. The hotel has a fully equipped kitchenette with full size fridge and double range with good stainless steel cookware. The hotel doesn't seem to be that old but it feels that way probably because it hasn't been renovated over the years. When you arrive, you would notice the small reception area/lobby, it has a very long hallway and older decorations. All the king suites are located on the top floors on the far end. The hotel doesn't have much to offer except free laundry and close to lots of eatery places and a small shopping center. Some rooms might have remodeled over the years given that they have granite countertop, "wood" flooring, and newer cabinets. However, the "original" rooms have oak cabinet (some with loosen screws) with very old carpet. If you happen to stay in the king suites (one bedroom suite), the temperature would be hard to adjust since they only one HVAC in the living room equipped with a chute to push the air/heat into the bedroom. It apparently is the same design in all their suites. The HVAC terminal in the standard rooms work quite good and can control the temperature quite well. The two major complaint the I have is: first, the low quality of TV signal. Though they provide you a big screen TV, it feels like you are watching TV from the 80's. I don't understand why they can't provide their quests with the HD TV signal that all other hotels are offering for many years now. In order to watch some decent TV programs, I had to stream my TV programs all the times since I couldn't stand the low quality TV signal. Second, the internet speed is horrible in half of the times and barely usable in maybe 20% of the times. The wifi speed is very slow to start with, it’s normally in the 5 MBPS range or less. It may occasionally spiked up to 25 MBPS range but that never lasted long. A lot of times, when there were more people at the hotel, the wifi speed dropped way down to less than 1 MBPS which was way slower than dial-up. If you stay on the top floors and or on the far end of the hotel, you would not have connection at all especially when there are lots of people staying at the hotel or in the evening when everyone is back. The hotel is slow in doing the repairs like broken dryer and washer. Overall, the staff was very nice and helpful. However, the housekeeping staffs need to improve their service. They would miss cleaning your room or not provide the amenities that you need like coffee, showering gel etc. I think it's the management of the hotel that is at fault in the quality of the hotel. IHG needs to have some basic standards for all of their hotels instead of allowing the management/owner fails to offer the decent accommodations for all...

I checked into this hotel thinking that I would get to spend some time with my family. I am active duty military and I traveled up from Maryland so my parents could see their 10 month old grandchild. When we walked into our room we were very happy with what we saw. The room was huge and their was a separate dinning and kitchen and it was immaculately clean!

HOWEVER, we went to eat at TGI Fridays with my family and came back to all this noise. We kept hearing kids screaming. Then the fire alarm went off. We figured that there must be some kids in the room downstairs that were getting into mischief.

After the fire alarm went off the kids kept screaming. It's about 8pm. I went downstairs to maybe talk to them or their parents and thats when I realized that our room was above the POOL. The kids were screaming as they were jumping into the pool. They were doing NOTHING wrong. Still the room had bad ventilation and the kids screaming continued to get louder as more and more kids went down to the pool. I went to the front desk and asked them to move us rooms and they said they did not have anymore rooms available. I asked them why they would put us in the room over the pool especially knowing that we had a 10 month old baby when we checked in. Our daughter keeps waking up to the screaming from the pool.

I can tough it out for a few hours, but when I went to the front desk I found out the pool was open until 11PM! I have never once wrote a review, I have never once complained about a room. I have hundreds of hotels over my 20 year career in the Navy. This is, by far, the worst place I have ever stayed. When you drive 4 hours to stay away from your house you do not expect this. I would rather sleep in a barracks in IRAQ!

I think the hardest part is that I researched so many places to stay and I was very excited about this place. What a horrible, horrible let down. Candlewood you need to take the room we are staying in (room 202) and make it into a mechanical room or change the pool hours to close at 8pm. There is no way that there has never been complaints before. I recorded the noise on my phone and I am willing to play it for you.

You can contact me anytime. My name is on file at Candlewood. I stayed here on September 26th in room 202. Our names are Kellie Hamilton and Kristin Brindley.

I also want to add that Mitchell, the night clerk, came to our room and heard the noise himself. He felt horrible about how bad it was, but could do nothing to help us. He said Candlewood needs to fix the sound proofing above the pool. He also told us that their might be a room at the Fairfield Inn (2 miles up the road) that we could try and get. ----we called and the hotel was booked solid.

I want...

In my second attempt to get this review posted I will avoid the one mistake that I made, posting a rate, and draw attention to the second reason my first review was rejected, irrelevant or inappropriate visual content .

This hotel was very nice and my first Candlewood brand experience. Although we had a very brief stay, the desk clerk who checked us in did everything she could, except carry our bags to the room to make sure we were satisfied.

The room was very comfortable and would be very useful if staying for a lengthy period of time. There were two things that I did have issues with pertaining to the hotel, and one pertaining to the IHG website itself.

The first issue with the room is the horrendous pillows. They are the worst that I have had at an IHG property, or any of their competitors.

The second issue, although I was staying using points, I was presented with a bill in the morning for a nominal sum. I asked why this is and has it been processed on my credit card. Being from Canada, if they had charged through an amount on my credit card, if the only way it could be reversed was to do a refund, the exchange rates used by the credit card company would be different, and I would have still paid something. Unfortunately the desk clerk in the morning was new and did not know why there was a charge, what to do about it or if a charge had been placed against my credit card. She was very friendly apologized that she did not know and called a co-worker. She could still not figure it out so she was waiting for her co-worker to show her. About 5-10 mins later another employee came in and she explained what happened and he had indicated that no nothing had been charged and that I do not need to sign nor do I get an invoice.

The last issue has to do with the IHG website and one of the reasons we chose this hotel. In my rejected review I posted a screen shot of the IHG website showing this hotel and that it had free breakfast. As we were driving from Ontario to Southern Virginia we wanted somewhere where we could stay, eat and go. When I questioned where breakfast was the clerk said they do not offer it. I stated it says it on the website and she informed me that she did not know why they would do that. In fact, the operator of this particular hotel wanted to include a breakfast but the brand policy is to not have breakfast so they could not serve it.

I am still trying to figure out how the screen shot was irrelevant or inappropriate unless it was because there was a rate that was displayed, as they always do when you search for a hotel in the reservation feature of the IHG website.

I would stay at this hotel again. I now know not to expect breakfast and will certainly bring my...