Best Western Plus Sanford Airport/Lake Mary Hotel — Hotel in Sanford

This place was absolutely disgusting. They arent deserving of as much as 1 star, but I obviously had to select something to leave a review. If it was possible I would rate them less than 0. From check in to check out, this place was a total nightmare. I don't leave negative reviews like this, and honestly cannot say I've ever had an experience as unpleasant as this. I genuinely can't believe this place operates the way they do, so I'm leaving this in hopes that the owners will become aware of the issues and make a change.

First off, the entire place is filthy. There was dirt and stains and all types of trash and pieces of random wrappers etc scattered all along the floor and hallways. It looked like it hadn't been swept or vacuumed in years. There was water damage stains and sticky splatter marks throughout the hallways along the walls. The entire 2nd floor (the one we were on) smelled like weed, which was honestly better than the disgusting moldy smell present in other areas.

The room itself was even worse and we actually had to ask for a different room because the first one was so dirty it was obvious that it had not been cleaned.

Upon entering the room, the stagnant musty / moldy smell was overwhelming. All of the furniture was scratched and scraped and mismatching as if they had found it in the garbage. (Including the photos on the walls which were literally pictures that had brown water stains and dirt smudges that they put in a frame for some reason). The blinds on the window/"white" drapes had splatters and splotches and stains, which could also be found in other parts of the room; on the wall, the bed, the carpet, and even the ceiling. There were even dirty handprints on the walls and one on the ceiling in the middle of the room above the bed as well (I honestly couldn't understand how or why they got there).

The second room wasn't much better, but atleast I didn't find someone else's hair on the pillow and sheets like I did with the first room. We were sleepy so we decided to ignore the crumbs on the ground next to the bed and the shower which was clearly dirty. Unfortunately we couldn't quite ignore the moldy and dusty AC that didn't work properly, turning off at random although it hadn't achieved the desired temperature, and exuding a concerning burning smell.

Then comes the awful customer service. From beginning to end, there was no effort from any single employee to be kind or helpful, but one instance stood out from the rest. A few hours after leaving the hotel we realized we forgot something and turned around to grab it since we were leaving the area afterwards. The woman up front (Sherelle?) was rude, completely unprofessional, and clearly not inclined to offer any help whatsoever, acting as if we were a bother to her, and literally cussing us out / talking $#!@ as we walked out which is unthinkable because we were absolutely respectful and didn't treat her that way.

I also figured I'd mention: The elevator made jerky motions and seemed to not function properly / smoothly. (When you first step in, it starts to move before the doors even START to close. It dropped about 4 inches after we stepped in - with the doors open - which is also concerning considering the fact that it was only my husband and I, weighing less than 300lbs TOTAL and its intended to hold far more weight than that). Because this freaked me out, I thought to check the inspection plaque on the wall of the elevator, and found it showed it expired last year... so definitely not up to code or safety standards as far as that's concerned. Florida code requires that elevators be equipped with DLM so it stays locked until the cab doors have securely shut which was obviously NOT the case with this elevator. Not to mention... an elevator is not allowed to run if its inspection is expired; operating an elevator with an expired inspection certificate is considered a violation of safety regulations and is prohibited by law.

They clearly have no concern for their patrons safety or for their satisfaction. Avoid this place...

I booked one night in this hotel after a cruise because it is so close to the airport with the free shuttle service. I can say with 100% confidence that this is the worse hotel I have ever booked. Starting off strong, as soon as I walked through the doors, I was immediately taken aback by the smell of urine. How the hell does that even happen in a hotel lobby? The second red flag was all the little pieces of who knows what all over the floor. I understand that the property is undergoing maintenance but come on, at least vacuum up the floor. It looks like the carpet hasn’t been cleaned since the prehistoric days. The check in process was pretty smooth, I don’t have anything bad to say about that. My room was on the third floor so I got in the elevator and my goodness! The elevator also has a very strong, disgusting smell with more of those pieces on the floor. I got off the elevator and found my room. The door is all beat up with scratches all over it. Both the hallway and the room smelled strongly of either mold or mildew, and of course, there was more of those particles on the floor throughout the room. I checked the bathroom for anything gross. The sink and toilet were fine but that shower was repulsive. The faucet was dripping and there was some gross looking brown thing on the bathtub floor. I also saw a little bug on the bathroom mirror. Going into the bedroom, the very first thing I did was inspect the sheets for bedbugs and to my surprise, I didn’t find any, thank goodness. However, the pillows were way too thick and my boyfriend and I ended up sleeping without them. Since this place was so disgusting, I begged my boyfriend to take me to a different hotel but he reminded me that that process is easier said than done, so to my hesitation, we did spend the night. I even told him that I’d rather sleep at the airport than here. Best believe we were here for sleeping and sleeping only. Speaking of sleeping, I barely got any. The air conditioning was loud af but since this is Florida in the spring, we needed it on. Not only was it super loud, but it didn’t even stay on consistently. It would randomly start running for a minute or two, then stop. This went on alllll night. There was also some other loud noise that would randomly start up off and on but I wasn’t able to pinpoint where it was coming from. Plus the strong smell was absolutely miserable to breathe in and out. It made me feel nauseous and my eyes water. Since I had booked this nightmare through Expedia, I tried reaching out to them to try and get a refund. I explained the situation to the live agent but all they did was reiterate the 24-hour cancellation policy and tell me that the hotel denied my request. The agent wasn’t nice about the situation and even disconnected from me in the middle of our conversation. Supposedly BE did offer to move us to a different room but what’s the point when the problem is the entire hotel? I tried connecting with a different agent a few hours later and was told that the hotel wasn’t even answering the phone. My guess is that they saw Expedia on the caller id and knew it was concerning my complaint again. This Expedia live agent was a lot nicer and offered me $25 Onekey cash “for the inconvenience,” but other than that, I was out of luck. I am not the type of person to leave petty reviews. As a matter of fact, if you go to my profile you’ll see this is the only review I’ve made. That’s how awful this experience was. I just want to make sure that no one else makes the same mistake of booking this hotel that I did. The free shuttle service isn’t worth all the hell you’ll go through staying here. I am very upset with both Best Western and Expedia. BW for having such an awful hotel and Expedia for disconnecting me mid-conversation as well as not compensating me for this nightmare. I will not be using either...

Another UPDATE: we cannot get Jamison to call us back....they will not release the information of the tracking on my jacket. We have called countless times, around 25 times now. We also have a claim in with corporate, now they are telling us that they cannot find the jacket...we have it in writing that they had the jacket and were just waiting for our package to mail it back....still nothing well over a month now, absolute nonsense.

I would honestly give this negative stars if I could. We checked in around 8-9 on Thursday night, myself and daughter. When we got there we had to wait around 20 minutes because the girl at the desk was very busy, she was very very nice though (her name started with a D) I asked her about late check out, explained that my daughters game was very early Sunday when we were checking out and she said what time would you like to check out, I asked for 1PM, she said she would make a note and that it was fine. Hotel was dirty, smelled like pot terribly. On Friday I stopped at the desk mid day to let them know that our shower was not draining properly....Different lady at the desk (short slick back bun) so rude said "no maintenance here", I responded with well we need to shower so something will need to be done, Ma'am maintenance isn't here so there isn't anything to be done....Older male walked around the corner and said I will come up and take a look....well he never came, we took the water out of the tub ourselves with cups from the room....it was disgusting. We searched for surrounding hotels to move to but everything was booked. Sunday comes....phone is ringing I answer "YOU NEED TO GET OUT"...I said excuse me...get out now, check out is 11 and you need to leave now, we will be up in 20 minutes....I pretty much told her don't you dare come in this room, explained that we were allowed to stay till 1, she basically told me I was lying and had to get out now. So we quickly packed and left, as I was walking out of the lobby we heard her yell something that was obviously inappropriate but we were completely over it. I will be calling corporate directly to let them know exactly the things said and what happened. However please do not stay here....it was just absolutely awful.

Wanted to update, realized my jacket was left behind because we left in such a rush, we called and a man on nights said the jacket was there, we sent a label....OVER TWO WEEKS AGO....they are basically refusing to send my jacket back even though we know they have it (in writing too via email) but that they are overwhelmed with renovations.....lies, there are zero renovations going on at this hotel. We contacted corp, they lied and said the jacket was returned....it's still been days and we paid for two day fed ex shipping....still nothing. I have called the hotel multiple times asking to speak with Jamison....they just tell me he is busy and he can't come to the phone they also will not allow me to leave a message. This hotel is Disgusting in both atmosphere, behavior and all around...