River Road Motel — Hotel in Wisconsin Dells

There is an expectation when you book a hotel/motel that at the very least, you will have a decent bed, you will feel safe, and the environment will not pose any health issues. Unfortunately that is not the case with this motel.||||We arrived and were immediately suspicious. The parking lot is dark. No cars present other than ours. Check in although easy only lended to our apprehension. According to the young lady at the desk who is being guarded by (her words) an aggresive dog behind a door, which we could hear) tells us the coffee maker does not work. Alas that was only the start....||||Upon entering our assigned room with a hand written code on a sheet of paper... yup... anyone could have this code, we knew this was a very poor choice and not indicative of the pictures on the internet. Once in the room... the smell of mold overtook me. It was clear that there had been, or still does, have or had severe water damage at some point which had not been fully remediated. Being allergic to mold I reacted immediately. This is extremely unsafe, unhealthy, and potentially dangerous for people with allergies, and in my opinion, warrants a call to the Wisconsin authorities. Given my immediate reaction to mold, I opened a window to allow fresh air to come into the room only to learn, that this window which is close to the ground, has no lock, no screen, and could quite easily be pushed in allowing someone else access. I would have turned on the wall air conditioning unit, however it was laden with dust, which I am also allergic too.||||Couple that with the fact that one of the beds was severely indented in the middle of the bed (Green acres bed) while having a downward slant to the end of the bed leaving us to question whether sleep would occur at all.  A quick look under the mattress in an attempt to diagnose this ill shaped bed revealed SEVERAL pieces of plywood strategically placed in an attempt to make the bed be level.  Furthermore these plywood pieces had water stains on them revealing that they had been previously wet at some point. Additionally there were stains on the comforters, red in color. While this could be someone elses makeup, it could also be blood. Neither of which I want to sleep with. ||||We tried to close the curtains to see if privacy could be achieved but that too posed difficulty.  Alas you cannot hang curtains and sheers on the same rod and then close the curtains.  Obviously, someone has no idea how to hang curtains.||||By this point we had seen enough.  We returned to the front desk and asked for a refund.  The young lady at the front, although sweet, couldn't issue this refund and needed permission to do so.  She took our names and phone numbers saying she would get back to us after she spoke with her authorties and gain permission to refund our monies.  Unsurpisingly, you could tell she could relate to our unhappiness and it was clear, this was not the first time someone had made a complaint to her such as ours.  Alas, I surmise a refund will not happen, as she never called back. Regardless we left to find a hotel elsewhere that would not pose a risk to our health and safety. ||||In conclusion, this motel is an unsafe, unhealthy, uncomfortable, and a dangerous establishment.  And while we love supporting small business, this establishment is not worth the risks it poses on so many levels.  My next call/email will be to Wisconsin authorties to report the issues of potential toxic mold.  Not to be revengeful, but rather in the interest of stopping a severe or life threatening allergic response from happening to...

Would give this hotel a zero star review if it was not located right off the main strip. That is about all it has going for it.

I am a regular at mom and pop cheap, outdated hotels. I think they have charm...this one did not. This was the worst hotel experience I've ever had.

Firstly, we were given no keys. Our room, and every room for that matter, had a touch pad key pad lock on it like you can get for the back door of your house. The kind that is battery operated so if the batteries die, you need a manual key to get in...except we were not given a manual key, just the code. If the batteries died we would have been locked out of our room entirely till God knows when because there is no one continually at the front desk or answering the phone. The lock was also a problem because the codes for those kinds of locks are not easily reset, and therefore are probably not changed after every guest. Furthermore, our specific code was an easy to guess zip code for Beverly Hills and the name of a popular 90s tv show. Not exactly something I felt safe leaving my valuables behind. Furthermore, the lock was installed crooked and the door looked like it had been kicked in before.

Secondly, there was the bathroom. We had no toilet paper when we first arrived. Not a single roll even under the sink. We had to call the desk to get some, and as mentioned before...the desk is not exactly easy to contact. We also had no curtains on the window in the bathroom. A window that looked directly into the shower and the toilet. Granted, the window looked out to a brick wall in an alley, but that still did not exactly make me feel safe. Combined with the issue with the no key/easy to guess lock code...I joked with my partner that we should search the room for cameras. Lastly, they only gave us one bath towel for two people and it was SHREDDED. It was so worn and threadbare it wasn't even a towel anymore. The singular washcloth we were also given was riddled with holes.

The fridge...was like a 1970s or 80s wood paneled mini-fridge. Charming, but not in great working condition. It had standing water in the bottom of it that we could not figure out where it was coming from.

The tv was tiny and awful. It reminded me of the episode of The Office where there is a dinner party at Michael Scott's condo and he has the tiny flat screen that he can pull in and out of the wall but has to stand 2 feet from to watch and see a picture clearly. It even had the same mechanism to pull it in and out of the wall and angle it to different parts of the room.

Through the process of trying to contact Expedia to get us a refund or a property change we found out that either the internet is really really spotty, or they turn it off completely after 8pm. I can only guess as to which. Honestly, I'd believe either.

Lastly, was the ac unit. It was an ancient looking window unit that they had installed into a hole cut into the wall. On max cool the tiny room was still probably 80 degrees and humid. It was loud and hardly effective. Also, it was too small to fit the hole that they cut for it, so it was held into the wall with POOL NOODLES. Fing ridiculous.

I'd say if you're looking for a budget hotel with minimal standards, don't book here. Our one saving grace was that we booked through Expedia. We still had to pay for our full stay at this H*ll hole, but at least within three hours Expedia customer service arranged us a place at a nearby hotel so we didn't have to drive all the way home and waste...

We’ve stayed at River Road Motel numerous times through the years. It was modestly decorated outside with some potted flowers by the office, hanging baskets along the rooms, and it was always clean, so I was quite surprised when we arrived. ||||There were no flowers. The two 2-story guest buildings were painted black. Graffiti was all over the walls, used by the guests with the chalk the owner provided. Chairs were no longer outside the rooms for guests to sit with their morning coffee or evening beverage.||||The owner locks the office door even when she is there because she has “electronics”.||The ice machine used to be in the office, but is gone now. We were told to go down the street to the Kwik Trip gas station for a bag of ice. The owner said we could get coffee in the office and will be open from 10am to 10pm. Seeing we’re up by 7am, I’m glad I brought my own coffee and coffee maker. The owner has a loud, untrained, powerful dog. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. One of the resident cats attempted to enter our room. Not good because of allergies.||||The old keyed locks were gone and replaced with keyless entry locks. We were given an eight or nine digit code to unlock the door, which was written on a piece of paper. A shorter number would have been easier to memorize in case we lost the paper. ||||The two queen beds inside the room had mismatched bedding. Checking for bugs in the beds I inspected the mattresses. No bugs, but the mattress cover enclosures were torn and hanging underneath. The curtain rod above the window with ill-fitting curtains, hung too wide, nearly extending to the door. A power strip dangled in the air to reach the TV, refrigerator and microwave plugs. It all looked so ghetto. ||||The bathroom had unfinished repairs. Construction debris was on the floor against the wall, which told me the floor was not cleaned. What appeared to be an old switch for a heat lamp was missing its cover, leaving a wire exposed. The shower curtain rod hung so low we’d hit our head on it while getting in and out of the shower. The shower curtain dragged on the floor. The shower head was so low we’d have to duck. I attempted to shower, but the tub started filling with water due to a slow drain. There was no place to put anything. No vanity counter, towel hooks or bars. We were provided with two bath towels. No hand towels or wash cloths.||||When we were getting ready to leave after our two night stay, two other guests approached us to ask about our room. We all talked about how filthy the floors were, leaving the bottoms of our feet black, among other things. We all agreed we’d never be back. ||||Although the owner was pleasant, in my opinion, she doesn’t know what she is doing. We decided to stay in the Dells for another night but not at...