Red Roof Inn Williamsburg — Hotel in Williamsburg

For $80-100/ night, I guess you shouldn’t expect much.

My husband and I stayed here for 2 nights with our baby due to its proximity to Busch Gardens. The location is pretty convenient.

Upon first glance, our first room was okay. The bathroom was a bit sketchy looking. The toilet and shower are in a separate room from the sink which is fine, but the washroom was a bit scary and the sort of place you should probably wear flip flops in so you don’t get ringworm or something. Later, we had a wall panel under the sink that just … randomly fell off???? Without even being touched…??? It clearly had water damage so idk what’s going on with the plumbing in this place. We just put it back. Nobody wants to step on a rusty nail.

The AC was absolutely blasting and set to an absurdly low temperature and was a pain to adjust.

The TV situation left a lot to be desired. Ours was mounted crooked, and the streaming services offered don’t actually work. We tried using the YouTube app for some cartoons our kid likes, but even once you log into the WiFi on the TV, it doesn’t work. The actual WiFi does work pretty okay on your individual devices, but for TV you’ll have a handful of basic channels.

The beds are extremely high. I’m 5’6” and could not get my feet on the ground from the bed and had to basically hop off. If you need to be able to step out of bed carefully due to age, disability, size, injury, or any other reason, or if you have small children, I do not recommend this place. My kid is able to get off of the bed in our home easily and thought he could do the same here, but we had to stop him because he could literally have broken his leg falling that far. I do not know who decided the beds needed to be like three and a half feet in the air, but it was a dumb decision. The bed frames are also just sort of wrapped in a metal shell and are extremely easy to move (wheel?) around, which you may not like, as you won’t have any leverage getting in and out of these massive platform beds.

We arrived a bit later after a long drive, and our little one wanted to walk around a bit while we scarfed down some food. Despite the amount of racket coming from other rooms and the parking lot, the person downstairs from us was evidently very bothered by this and called the front desk to complain. And I mean, okay. That’s their prerogative. If the pitter patter of a small one year old walking around for 10 minutes is enough to make you call in a noise complaint, maybe stay at a Hilton or somewhere with actual insulation in the building.

What I didn’t appreciate was how the front desk dealt with the situation. Most hotels will simply call up to your room on the phone if they need to communicate with you. Not here. Maybe the phones don’t work? This guy comes pounding on the door and only after being asked does he bother to identify himself. Instead of just speaking to my husband in the doorway when he opened the door, he demands he steps out of the room to talk to him. Sir, you are not the police, you work the front desk at a Red Roof Inn. Relax.

After that, we asked to be moved to a downstairs room for our second night so our little one wouldn’t bother any one, and they did actually acquiesce. The second room was no better and the washroom door actually didn’t close at all. There was no stopper for the tub in this room (there was one in the first room) so I’d you need to give your kid a bath, it’s hit or miss. We decided to just wait til we got home for that.

We took all our stuff when we left the first room and didn’t load it back into the new room until we returned. This is not a place that makes you feel particularly safe leaving your valuables around, and I didn’t see a hotel safe anywhere in the room. If you’re there more than a couple days, it seems they will force you out of the room so they can “clean” (hahahaha) — so take your valuables.

If you have one of those alarm door stoppers for hotels, this is the place to bring it. The locks are flimsy and loose and all look like they’ve been...

Don't expect a lot from a typical motel. We've stayed at other Red Roof Inns because we travel with a 35 pound dog and Red Roof does not charge extra for dogs. At this location, while I was waiting in the car with my dog, my GF went to go check in and when she informed them that we had a dog with us, she was informed of their dog rules in a rude, scolding tone of voice, like when a parent scolds a child. We get to our room and checked for roaches and bed bugs based on other reviews I read before we got here and did not find any critters. The room has worn paint on the fixtures, one wall lamp does not work, the toilet seat lid is missing, the mini refrigerator freezer section is frozen over with an inch of ice and the freezer cover door is broken off and laying on top of the ice, the AC unit is loud, and was only given one soap, one shampoo, and a half roll of toilet paper for amenities. Other than that the room seemed ok so we left our bags and went to check out Williamsburg for the afternoon and evening. When we came back and was getting ready for bed, I flipped open the blanket and top sheet and noticed two blood spots on the left and right side of the bed sheet and a strange odor emanating from the exact center of the bed which I thought was from the sheet, luckily my GF is always prepared and she whips out a sheet from her bag so we used that to cover the bed but I kept getting hints of that smell all night long. In the morning we found the maid and asked her to change the sheets and she obliged while we were there and the maid also placed the correct amount of amenities in the room that was not there when we first checked in. An hour later I checked the bed and found that the new sheets have what appears to be cigarette burn holes, and I could still smell that same odor which I can only describe as a mixture of urine, a pregnant woman's water breaking, a bloated leaking cadaver, and a weak cleaning solution. I lifted the sheet off of the mattress and with my trusty flashlight I could faintly see a 20 x 24 inch stain in the center of the mattress where the odor is coming from, I tried to take a photo of it but the stain is too faint to pick up with a phone camera. After visiting Williamsburg again for the rest of the day we slept on one side of the bed avoiding the stained area. The wifi in our room had a nice strong signal so I give them props for that. FYI for the smokers that are reading my review, there are smoking stations around the edges of the parking lot for you to use. I will also note that the parking lot at night is lit extremely well which is good for vehicle security. FYI, there's an envelope in the room that asks you to tip the maid 2-5 dollars for each day you spend there which is kind of odd since the norm is to tip at the end of your stay not daily, but I guess this is because the maid that serviced your room in the beginning may not be working on the day of your check out. BTW the room with the smelly mattress is room 125. But if they read this review they could possibly move that mattress to another room instead of replacing it since it seems like they are trying to spend as little money as possible. Red Roof inns are franchises so it's up to the individual owners to meet standards and it seems that most of these owners choose to try to salvage something such as a mattress instead of...

I don't know how I managed to book a room here without checking reviews first, but save yourself some trouble and READ THE REVIEWS.

Pros: low price, 5 miles to Busch Gardens, very close to Colonial Williamsburg, good service which I'll get to in a moment. Cons: EVERYTHING ELSE. The big dead cockroach on the sidewalk outside the office was not a good start.

There's a certain oily smell that roaches give off, and that smell was pretty pervasive. Checkin was quick & easy, no problems there, and we didn't see any bugs inside the office. We didn't see any in the room either, but the room was not cleaned properly - the beds were made up neatly, but the sheets had dirt down at the foot end, clearly from a previous occupant, and there was a GROSS stain on one. The floor was not clean, neither was the bathtub, and the easy chair had a bunch of strange little black marks, your guess is as good as mine but my first thought was insect poo. I intended to pull the sheets back to check for bedbugs, but I had already seen enough. We went back to the office, handed them the key and asked for our money back.

The younger guy was gracious enough, but tried to talk us into looking at a different room, "and if you don't like that one I will give you a refund" - um, no, I've seen enough, we're not staying, we need a refund please. He stopped arguing (remaining polite the whole time) but needed a manager override for the refund.

When the manager got off the phone, the younger guy silently pointed at something on a piece of paper. The manager said "what about it?" The guy said "they're not happy, they want a refund". Manager said "oh ok, I'll take care of it, no problem. What's going on folks?" We told him, and showed him the pictures - he said something like "Eurgh!" at the picture of the stained sheet - and proceeded to process the refund without further ado.

We landed at the Hampton on Bypass Rd, less than a mile away, with a perfectly clean and somewhat nicer room for just a few...