Comfort Inn Beach/Boardwalk Area — Hotel in Santa Cruz

We had the absolute worst stay at a hotel in our entire lives. Not only did we have a terrible experience overall, we also feared for our safety. It started when we made the reservation months in advance. My mom told the person on the phone that she was handicapped and would need a handicap parking spot and handicap accessible room. When we arrived, there were no parking spots available let alone a handicap spot. In fact, the hotel manager let people parking the two handicap stalls without even using a handicap placard/sticker. Another person was parked in the loading zone in between the handicapped stalls. We had to double park behind another person. We found out that if the person we parked behind wanted to leave, they would have to call us and we would have to come and move our car. That is not acceptable at all so we had to park in the alley where it was clearly not a good neighborhood and had no lighting. When we checked in, the hotel manager was the rudest person possible. We got our room keys to our room on the second floor. Then we found out that there is NO elevator; only stairs. Apparently, it was the only room left even though we had made them aware we needed a handicap accessible room. I had to lug tons of luggage up the stairs but what was worse was my mom injuring her leg walking up the stairs. It was extremely hard for her to do anything the rest of the vacation. I guess the hotel manager didn’t like me complaining because for the rest of the stay he literally stalked me. Every time I went out of the room or to my car he would come out of the office and follow me. Then one day we were in our room and he literally walked by our window and looked in. Gross! What a total lack of privacy. We didn’t feel safe at this point, but then it got worse. And I am not exaggerating when I say that this guy was there 24/7 – literally every waking moment he was working. We had the privacy please sign on our door (to tell the maids to not come in) the entire stay as we did not trust anyone entering. So, after one night my mom called down to ask for more towels, toilet paper, and soap as we were out of all those items. He was rude to her on the phone. Then he came up and I answered the door. He only had three towels that looked like they had sloppily been folded (they must have been used?). Then he spent five minutes lecturing me about how if we have the privacy please sign on his men won’t come into our room and won’t give us new supplies and he started yelling that “WHEN YOU CALL AT NIGHT TIME YOU DISTURB EVERYONE!”. I was just like ok that’s fine, anyway do you have the soap and toilet paper? And he said “NO! You’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning!”. I have never experienced anything like that in all my life at hotels. They only gave us one roll of toilet paper which is ridiculous. We ran out quickly. Now let’s talk about the room itself. The sheets and blankets were all stained which was disgusting. There were random hairs everywhere. The bathroom was gross, and you couldn’t have the light on without the loudest, most annoying bathroom fan being on. The toilet was super loud when flushed so it would wake us up whenever one of us would go to the bathroom. There were no drawers or dressers in the room to speak of. So you have to leave your clothes wrinkled in the suitcases. The bathtub dripped constantly. The bathroom sink also had a stopper that wasn’t working correctly, so it immediately filled up with water and wouldn’t drain. We had to have the rude manager come in and fix it, but all he did was move the stopper slightly to its side which didn’t last more than a half hour. I had to reach in the water and remove the stopper completely which was utterly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever had to do/seen as the stopper was covered in gross scum and hairs. I want to throw up thinking about it. How can we call this a hotel stay when we didn’t have the basic amenities, nor could sleep because we feared for our safety? And one that made us physically...

Photos are of the 1 King 1 queen suite with a pull out couch. Easily sleeps 6 can probably fit a twin or full size air mattress as well.

Shower Water pressure was good. The Continental breakfast was good. They had yogurt, cereal, juice, coffee, hot cocoa mix, oatmeal, pastries, bananas, bread for toast, 2 waffle makers and batter, cooked sausage and eggs, and hard boiled eggs. Breakfast started at 7:00 I think it ended around 9:00 or 10:00.

The mattresses for the king and queen bed were both spring mattresses the pillows were soft but didn't hold shape. After a long day in the water fighting the waves, on the sand digging holes playing with the kids, walking all over the boardwalk and The wharf, by the time I laid my head down. I was out like a light and it didnt matter.

The electrical outlets were kind of loose which was problematic.

There is a small refrigerator to be honest I can't remember whether It had a freezer section but it seemed to work just fine the microwave worked just fine.

The pool was clean even in October and when we got there somebody was cleaning it even though it looked clean prior to the guy cleaning it.

Parking at this hotel can be somewhat of a problem during busier periods however I overheard the manager say that there was additional parking in the back I'm not sure.

You're not so close to the theme park or the rides that it will keep you up at night (I sleep with white noise anyways) but you're about a block away so it's pretty short walk free parking is great.

The guy who owns our runs the place the manager, seems pretty nice to me I've read reviews where people have a problem with him. I don't think English is his native language and he just seems kind of blunt a little bit and doesn't exactly put up with people's Bs.

Having worked customer service I know that people feel like they're entitled to everything and as soon as somebody tells them no they get stupid.

As soon as I got into the room I looked for any kind of damage (there was really none in this room that I seen) to take pictures of that I could be accused of having done.

We pulled back the blankets and looked for blood stains or evidence of bed bugs we saw nothing to indicate that there was any kind of problems like that in our room.

The only possible thing that we saw that was dirty was our feet after walking on the hardwood floors or fake hard floors.

I've never stayed at a hotel where this wasn't an issue and the floors looked clean but were dirty.

Overall this is the second time we stayed at this particular hotel the first time we had a slight issue with the bathroom door as it was squeaky and the toilet was really loud when it was flushed meaning in the middle of the night if one of my kids went to the bathroom it was annoying however turn on every phone in the room with white noise

After 40 years of visiting Santa Cruz and staying in every shady cheap motel hotel there is near the boardwalk and Beach I can say that this motel/hotel? seems to be better than most and we will definitely be returning and staying...

Overall I scored this comfort in a 9, because of the cleanliness, closeness to the Boardwalk, and the customer service. We had a minor monetary issue, the breakfast can get better quality proteins. We stayed on the busiest weekend July 26-28, for 2 nights. There is ample parking, several handicap spots for my Mother-In-Law, and there were 3 spots for Gold & Platinum Choice members like me. The exterior appears to need a fresh coat of paint, but the interior rooms were wonderful, and updated.

The day I booked (sometime in May) and the day before our arrival, I requested to have the 2 rooms next to each other. Our rooms where rooms 205 & 206, so I was happy. When we got to our rooms, my whole family a total 8 of us; 4 in each room put gloves on and started to look at the beds, lifting them up, and taking off the bedding in the corners of each bed to look for bed bugs. We didn't see any evidence of an infestation.

Secondly, we all got sanitizing wipes, and totally sanitized all of the surfaces we are in contact with. That includes wiping down the floors. We were very pleased that it was very clean, and there were some areas like the bathroom door, some walls, and the stick to the blinds were semi-soiled.

Third, we all unpacked and we were impressed by how clean it was, freshly painted and how newly remodeled the rooms were. After that we left and the Board Walk was 1 block away. Walking back at night, it was fairly convenient since it was so close, and we were all tired. The Comfort Inn was very very bright and welcoming. The beds were very very comfortable, and the hot water never ran out after taking turns in the shower. The A/Cs in each room worked well. However in my Mother-In-Law's room the #s were set to Celsius.

The breakfast in the morning had options, like waffles, cereals, coffee, juice, teas, sausage and eggs. The sausage and eggs tasted very processed, and on Sunday we avoided them. They also had packaged pastries, which were great, and convenient. The waffles were great like usual. All the Kids love making them!

The minor monetary issue--I booked 2 rooms with all my Choice Points 120000. It was fully paid for. I understand when checking in, a hold of the 1st night's price will be put on my credit card for incidentals for both rooms. Every hotel we've ever stayed in, the hold is released upon check out. Well that was not the case. I got a notification while I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in the afternoon that my credit card was charged and it was for both rooms. I called the front desk, and they told me that they were very sorry, and that they released it. It wasn't automatic, it took about 3 days to return to my card.

We already recommended this place to our...