El Colorado Lodge — Hotel in Manitou Springs

Do not stay here ever, even if this is the last place in existence to stay for a night. To be honest, we needed to book a place for the night when arriving in Manitou Springs on Saturday, August 22nd due to last minute changes in our trip and most other places were booked full due to the Pikes Peak Marathon. I seriously regret my decision to stay here and the experience had absolutely ruined my entire vacation out to Colorado. From the moment we had arrived I was questioning my decision. For the price of 177 per night with no WI-FI, I would have thought there'd be some quality to this place, but upon opening the door to unit 14 I noticed an off-putting musty smell (later did we correlate this to the infestation of bed bugs in the couch) that still comes back to me from time to time now and I get anxious because of the coming experience that we still have to deal with. I checked the beds, outlets and other hidden areas for signs of bugs but found nothing, regretfully forgetting to check the couch as I was sanitizing due to COVID risks. We went out to the town for a while and got back later in the evening. Then we realized there was a black widow in a corner of the rubber trim and were focused on this and the earwig in the bathroom. I thought this was somewhat normal due to some bugs being common in cabin-type buildings, however after further examining the floor and rubber trim I noticed that there is no possible way this place had been cleaned recently as there was grime covering the radiators, which makes it easier to miss checking the infestation taking up residence in the couch. I wish I had taken pictures of the grime coating certain objects in the room as it looked worse than a squatters shed in the woods. Then it happened. As I had my duffel bag opened on the couch I heard my fiance yell for me in panic at midnight to come check something on the bed and I saw a little blood engorged bug crawling toward the top edge of the bed. I have seen pictures of these bugs before from horror stories on the web prior and immediately knew this was a bed bug. Shame on me for not looking at the past reviews. We tried thinking of the source of this parasite as I know I had checked the bed sufficiently earlier on for signs of them. We were frantically checking our luggage (again a mistake to bring in, but who wouldn't) for more of them and found some on my duffel bag and my suitcase. We decided we needed to pull everything out of the room as soon as possible outside and examine every item individually at 1am in the morning. I ran to the store to grab garbage bags while my fiance and brother looked through everything, which was difficult as I could only find one convenience store open at the time with one pack of bags left on the shelf. Once I got back I called and left a voicemail for the El Colorado lodge to tell them we were leaving. Then I had to call several hotels in the city for a room while my fiance and brother still sorted through our things and stored them in tied-up garbage bags. I had to go back inside to make calls to hotels to avoid making too much noise for the neighbors and that's when we noticed that the bugs were slowly emerging from cushion gaps of the couch. Seeing how many of these things were coming out of the couch was the most worrying and disgusting experience as I know of their toll they can cause if brought home. There were bugs of all life stages found in this place, telling me that this infestation was allowed to grow for far too long. After checking all items, putting the bags in the car and checking to make sure we weren't carrying any on ourselves, we went over to the new place to use heated washing and drying to kill any possible thing that may have gotten in our clothing. After hours of washing and drying, we had to carefully inspect each article of clothing and tie off into new garbage bags until 6:30 am. After restlessly sleeping a few hours, we had waste another day of vacation to get up and go to the hotel to get a refund, go to a laundromat to spend more money washing and drying the clothes (still quarantining the clothing) and going to a car vacuum to clean every inch of the car interior. I seriously cannot believe that there was any claim to this place having been cleaned before new visitors (us) as they obviously did not even clean the couch, otherwise this wouldn't have happened. We were told by Tiffany when returning to the hotel earlier in the day (1:30pm) that maintenance went to check the unit earlier that day and did find signs of bed bugs, which tells me that it was easily noticeable that there was an infestation. I hope we do not bring something home as this will cost lots of money to deal with. When we returned home on Tuesday evening we did one more washing and drying of the clothing on high heat. To be safe, we will be keeping everything tied in bags for a few weeks on the off chance an egg had been in the clothing. The anxiety toll itself that I get from feeling an itch at night will be enough to affect me, knowing that these things can hatch up to a few weeks...

While spending the night in this motel, my husband awoke at 2:00 a.m. itching uncontrollably all over his body, so much so that he could no longer sleep. We turned on the light to discover that he had bug bites all over his body. We then looked on the bed where he had been laying and found a small bed bug which my husband immediately smashed. Blood smeared on the bed when he smashed it which was confirmation that it was a bed bug. Needless to say we were horrified. We then continued to check the bed and found multiple more bed bugs as well as more blood smears. We caught one of the bugs in a small plastic baggy to show the hotel manager. We immediately walked over to the main office which was closed. We rang the emergency bell and the hotel manager came to the door. I told her that there were bed bugs in our room and she immediately said, "That's impossible!" So I showed her the bed bug in the baggy. She took it into the office and looked at it closely under a desk light for about five minutes. She insisted again that it was impossible then asked to come to our room to look. We eagerly took her to our room and after inspecting the bed with her, we found another live bed bug. She then pulled all the sheets off the bed and threw them outside. She came back in and sat on the bed cross-legged which we thought was extremely odd considering we just found bugs on the bed in front of her. She kept saying that this didn't make any sense THEN accused us for bringing them to the hotel!!! We were in shock... We immediately started packing our clothes into plastic bags that were extras in the room garbage cans. After filling those few small bags, I asked her if she had any additional plastic bags since we didn't want to put our clothes (which may now have bugs into our car without a barrier) and she replied with a snippy, "No." I was appalled. After packing I grabbed a pen and asked for the motel owner's name. She rudely said that she's the co-owner and the managing owner. I then asked her for her co-owner's name. She still refused to give it to me. I just kept asking calmly again and again. She finally gave me some information. She gave me her name and the owner's name (who she said is her husband who lives in Houston) but no phone number. She continued to sit on the bed and watch while we finished getting our things out and continued to tell us that we brought the bugs which was not true. She said she has a great exterminator who she's used before who she will call. I then asked, "So have you had beg bugs here before?" to which she replied, "Absolutely not!" We asked for a refund and she flat out refused to refund us. She told us we "weren't being very gracious" and said we needed to leave immediately!?!?! All of this was just adding insult to injury. As if it couldn't get any worse, my husband had an allergic reaction and had to go to urgent care clinic twice, once the day of and again a week later. The day it happened we called an exterminator who walked us through how to kill any bugs that may have tagged along in our stuff or on our bodies. I am traumatized and have continued to have trouble sleeping since. The manager told us she would contact us within three days to let us know the results of her exterminator who would determine whether it was us who brought them in or if they were already in the motel...we haven't heard...

JUST DONT DO IT

I do give the location 3 stars because it is an absolutely prime location but the lack of staff to bring issues to is a huge problem. Our room seemed to be somewhat remodeled recently, but there was large gaps around the ac unit, the window facing the rear of the building had no screen and was falling out of the frame, as well as large gaps along the bottom of the exterior door. The water pressure at the bathroom sink was absolutely horrendous like you couldn’t even wash your hands, let alone brush your teeth. But the real issue that had us leave after the first night with presumably no refund was due to the case that one of the two beds was very obviously made of fiberglass which wouldn’t have been that huge of a deal had it been properly sealed but it was very much not so the entire room was covered in fiberglass flakes. We ended up waking up extremely itchy even the one that didn’t sleep in the specific bed. I can only imagine how much fiberglass my sister my dog and I inhaled but we ended up leaving the property this morning. I attempted to speak to the office but nobody was in it, only a sheet with a phone number on it taped to the door saying to call with any issues (because this is obviously ongoing) and of course nobody answered the phone even though it said they were open 9am-9pm and I called at 11am and here 3 hours later I have not received a call back. I may update this review if they are willing to take some accountability for this, but otherwise I will leave it posted. I should’ve just splurged more instead of trying to save some money to have some more to enjoy this trip but luckily the extended stay by Colorado Springs airport still had some rooms available and they will certainly have someone around to take care of any issues we may have but I don’t expect any from a national company. This place has the potential to be a beautiful place to stay so close to downtown manitou but under the current ownership it doesn’t appear that will actually happen based off all of the other reviews. I feel it would be best that they sell it to someone that will actually take care of it. As someone who has worked in customer service for upwards of 10 years I don’t normally like to leave poor reviews because I know the damage it can cause to companies but this is a situation where I feel as though I need to WARN people. The other people staying on the property seemed fine, respectful and the area itself was lovely as we even saw a couple of deer this morning, but I cannot recommend anyone stay at this property under the...