Cedar Cove — Hotel in Sandusky

My boyfriend and I stayed at Cedar Cove last night and had an experience that we will never forget. We travel to the Lake Erie area often but this was the first time staying at this motel. My boyfriend booked it based on price, online pictures, and the availability of continental breakfast (I’m a sucker for free breakfast).

We arrive at the location around 9PM and there is a sign to call for a reservation or for emergencies. He called and someone came out from the back and unlocked the door to let him in. The lobby is very obviously under construction. The attendant told him that he has us in a room with a double bed. We booked a King room. He stated that we booked 3rd party and that 3rd party vendors didn’t update their websites and that King beds are no longer an option since they’re remodeling. My boyfriend then asks about breakfast and the attendant said due to construction no breakfast. He offered $15 off due to the inconvenience. I later looked online and a king room books for $80 (which is what we originally paid) and a double room for $55, we were charged $69 after taxes and fees. We are tired so he agreed. Looking back it makes no sense that the amenities promised were not available but we still paid the same (actually higher) rate for our double room.

This doesn’t end there… so we are get back in the car and drive to the back of the motel, find our room and go inside. The room is absolutely freezing. There is no way this room has had heat in it for days. The bed has a blanket the thickness of a typical throw blanket sandwiched between 2 flat sheets. Luckily we always bring pillows from home so the sad 3 pillows didn’t impact us. Anyways, at this point we just started laughing because how can this get much worse. We turn on the ac/heat combo machine, which was turned off, and keep our coats on. After about an hour my boyfriend decides maybe a hot shower will help get us warm and also heat the room. The shower handle has a very limited spot that sends out hot water- move it a smidge and it’s freezing cold. We then turn on the hair dryer and run it for a while to attempt to heat the room further.

We then get into the bed and decide we will watch some TV until it warms up. We turn on the TV and… the cable does not work. A pop up came up to call Buckeye Cable or whatever the company was as there is an issue with their service. So we then turned off the TV, set the heater to 77 and decided to try to sleep. It was cold all night. We both slept completely under the covers and cuddled together. The heater did not actually click off until 7:45 am.

I think staff definitely need to make sure they heat rooms, especially when they know guests are coming. This was booked days before. Also, walls, floors etc take a while to heat. A comforter of some sort should also be provided. The biggest negative impact to our stay was the freezing cold room and lack of bedding. I think with any hotel/motel stay, the basic expectation is a comfortably heated/cooled room, appropriate bedding for the season, and a working TV subscription service of some kind.

We will laugh about this experience and will always have it as a funny memory and story to tell but it definitely put a huge damper on our date trip. We will not stay at this...

Building itself is older, but rooms are all modern and updated, with the exception of the AC unit (at least in our room). Room was very clean.

The beds were perfect (for me at least). Fairly firm, with a dense foam on top, but not too thick. Seriously, I'd like to know exactly which mattress it was for my next replacement.

TV was connected to cable box with a regular HDMI if you have a laptop or something with HDMI out you can use it. I forget if the TV had DVI or anything else besides HDMI inputs.

I believe it was the owner, at least one of the managers seemed to be going around helping clean the rooms etc. Looks family run. Gives me confidence in the cleanliness / safety.

The free breakfast was pretty good, little muffins, donuts, clean pancake maker, cereal, ect. Really nice single serve coffee machine in the lobby. Worth it to have a low 100's room to be a short walk over to grab coffee / breakfast. Way better than the room coffee you get.

Some of the rooms are a distance from the lobby, the lobby is a bit of a walk to the pool.

About as close as you can get to cedar point, and its not horrific getting in and out.

Never even looked at the pool, was too tired from walking all day so couldn't say.

Only negative is although the air conditioner works, it smelled very musty when the compressor wasn't running (while it was just running the fan after reaching the target temp). The wall around the AC also either had previous water damage from the AC or maybe currently getting wet from the AC. Since the AC was running most the time drying the air out it wasn't that bad, but that would be the next thing I'd replace if it...

my boyfriend and i stayed here 1 night and it was an okay experience in short. we paid $80 for one night and you get what you pay for essentially, we pulled in and were instantly put off a little. the pictures made it look bigger and not like a motel but it looks like your average motel, cute water fountain out front though. they have some chairs and tables by the lake and the outdoor pool was clean and well kept (not heated). when walking into our room my initial reaction was it’s cute and cozy, upon further examination (bed bugs and cleanliness check) i’m glad to say there are no bed bugs and sheets were relatively clean, i found one stain on the bottom corner of the bed and a small one on one of the pillow cases. the floors were clean just kind of damaged in the bathroom and some holes in the walls behind the light fixture it wasn’t sealed things like that. the shower was a shower to say the least wasn’t bad, hot water worked and easy to figure out how to use it. the counter and sink was very nice seems like they just updated that and the toilet and forgot about the rest of the room but it was a nice touch. my biggest issue was the wifi, it’s an unsecured network so you need a vpn or it’s insanely slow and hardly works and even with the vpn the wifi would go out a lot too. the breakfast was your average hotel breakfast but yummy and this very sweet lady was keeping it restocked very well. if you’re looking for a nice relaxing place to stay, this isn’t for you, walls are pretty thin and i heard everything outside my room and above it. overall i would say if you need a cheap place to stay, this one isn’t bad and...