Holiday Inn Express & Suites York NE - Market Street by IHG — Hotel in Springettsbury Township

Where to start....

I am a parent of a travelling sports organization kiddo. As such, we travel a lot and always aim to stay with Holiday Inn Express. We have had excellent experiences for over a year now. Staff, across all the locations we have experienced, have been kind and accommodating.

We checked in Friday evening and the gentleman working was absolutely lovely. Very welcoming. He is the only positive I will be giving for this property. Shout out to him...do not know his name though.

Where to start? We booked as part of a block and NONE of our rooms were near each other. That was a bad start in my opinion. Next, we were given 3 towels for 4 people in our room. That math doesn't math!

From there, it was the breakfast or lack thereof. It was nowhere near the standard/selection we have come to expect from HII properties. Completely disappointed! Bacon was gross and dripping in grease and the coffee was foul.

If it was just the issues I have already listed, I could have probably shrugged it off and still given a decent review. But wait.....there's more, as the ShamWow guy used to say!

The families returned to the hotel after a long day of softball games and simply wanted a few things 1) kids swimming in the pool; 2)order out some pizza and dine together and 3)watch a Penn State football game and enjoy connecting with one another. The team/family bonding at hotels on trips is half the fun and experience!

Starting a little after 7pm the front desk employee told us that she received a noise complaint and we needed to hold it down. UMMMM, what now? 7pm on a Saturday night? It's a hotel, not a library. Also, I am pretty sure the noise complaint (if there was one) was due to the noise from the pool room. The workout area adjacent to the pool is being renovated and there are temporary walls and plastic in a hallway with guest rooms in very close proximity. NOT OUR PROBLEM. Oh and there were no pool towels. Whenever any of us went to get some from the front desk, we were made to feel like an inconvenience.

We were basically warned two more times by the front desk woman about "noise". By the third time, I said I am done with this...it's not even enjoyable and it's a little ridiculous. I then took my kiddos to the room for a bit. This was all before 8:30ish...

While I was in my room apparently a man got upset with our group when they wanted to watch the PSU game. Mind you, our crew was there before him. Apparently he said it was no fair and that he was promised the he could watch the baseball game. This same man was sleeping in the library, I mean common space, the day prior when some of our families were told they had to leave. Perhaps this is his (rent free) home? To be clear, I am not a mean person and I genuinely feel for the man if that is the case, but that doesn't justify our families (paying customers) being treated the way we were.

Icing on the cake...lady at front desk called the police. YES, THE POLICE! My 10 year old daughter and a couple of other girls were down in the sacred common area when the police arrived. My daughter and a couple of other girls were SOBBING crying/scared. I tried to comfort her but she was still upset the next morning. You can mess with me, but when you make my kid and her friends cry...that's a bridge way way too far.

Many of the families in our organization, mine included, are IHG rewards members. If this is the treatment being a "rewards" member gets you. Hard pass. Perhaps we should consider...

Upon checking in the hotel staff was very pleasant and the hotel appeared clean. The room was really nice and clean, very spacious. Our issues began the following morning. Breakfast was terrible. They were running out of things and they were not being restocked. The bread was so stale. The bacon was practically raw. No Waffles only a Pancake maker which the machine was out of batter and not replaced. We asked for more hot chocolate several times and it was never replaced. We came back from breakfast and our door wouldnt open. I went up and down the elevator 3 times to the front desk where they told me they fixed the key and they still did not work, neither key. Finally the resecptionist came up with me and said the battery was dying in the door lock and she would have maintenance fix it. We ended up being late to my daughters Softball tournament because we couldn't get in our room to get our things to leave. When we came back we were told by the front desk that there was nothing wrong with our door and they reset our keys. We were made to feel like we were being blamed for the key not working. Our door opened fine, but upon return from dinner both keys did not work again and we were still told it was something we were doing and not the door. It was absolutpey ridiculous. I never had my phone by the key either which they made us try to beleive we were the ones making the keys inactive by having our phones near them. We went to dinner and upon return there was another group of people sitting in the open seating, breakfast area watching a game on the TV. The manager began yelling at them telling them they were being to loud and had to leave. Instead of deescalating the situation she escalated it and as a outsider watching it happen it was horrible especially since the group was not being loud. We went back to our room and I came back down to hide these little pumpkins, our team was playing a game of whoever could find the most that weekend. My daughter and a few other girls came down to the lobby to get hot chocolate, which they were still out of and in walk the police. They walked up to me and the girls with me and acted like we were the ones causing a disturbance when we had nothing to do with it and we're in no way associated with the other group that had been in the lobby and since left. They said the hotel was closing the lobby for the night ( it was only around 9pm) and if we didn't want to leave the hotel would press charges. The officer said this in front of the children with me even though we had 0 involvement and the girls were so confused. I am paying for a hotel and I'm getting kicked out of the lobby because the hotel staff can't manager her own emotions? Our group will not be staying at this hotel again. It's a shame because we really enjoyed the conference center and having a team building event Friday night, but between the breakfast issue, the key issue and then then the police being called for no reason we will...

When we arrived we were notified the room we specifically reserved for our family was not available. The reason provided was they couldn't access the room to clean it due to a faulty lock. My guess it was most likely given away to someone else considering they called to tell us that at about 5:30pm. Why would they just be trying to prepare the room at that late hour and they really have no way to get in a room if the lock is not functioning correctly?

We were offered two rooms that were slightly down the hall from each other (one for free obviously). We accepted however when we entered one of the rooms it had a very strong smoking/vaping smell, to the point we couldn't even use the room. We asked for a rollaway bed to squeeze everyone in one room. It was not ideal, but we could use the bathroom in the "smelly room" if we needed more space to get ready in the mornings.

The first morning we woke up to a toilet that had overflowed. Interestingly this seems to happen somewhat often as the gentleman who was coming to fix it said he had another room to take care of first.

The day before we were to check out as I walked down to the "smelly room" to use the bathroom I heard people in the room. Come to find out they had checked additional guests into the room. Talk about a safety issue. Luckily we were not in the room when the additional guests checked into the room. I can't imagine they were thrilled with the room considering it smelled and the bathroom was clearly used.

During our 3-night stay we had no housekeeping services. Not once did anyone empty the trash or do any type of cleaning. We were not told at check-in that we would need to ask for the services so I don't know what the issue was.

The elevator was very shaky and smelled like the ocean at low tide. It was so bad we took the stairs up and down from the 3rd floor rather than use it. This led us to notice that the side hotel door was always propped open with rocks or cardboard. Multiple times I removed the items only to find someone had propped it open again. Another major safety issue.

There are so many hotels in the area I would recommend staying anywhere else. The hotel is in neglect and it was truly the worst hotel experience we have ever had. The only positive was overall the people were nice, but most were very young and didn't have any authority or knowledge to do anything to help. We did receive partial refunds (one night plus another $60 off) which helped us...