Attending a wedding usually gives a person pleasant memories. My niece married recently and her wedding was a beautiful event. The memories of it are special and will be with me a lifetime.....all that is except for the motel stay after the wedding. From heaven to hell in one night we went.

We traveled about 5 hours to attend my niece's wedding and chose to stay at the Day's Inn near Interstate 81. It was convenient and so felt it would be easy to get there when we arrived in town and also central to the church and reception.

Upon check in at the Day's Inn we were met by a rude desk clerk who couldn't find our reservation. After many sighs and grumblings, he did find it and proceeded to tell us he couldn't put us in the room type we requested....ground floor and nonsmoking. He said someone had mistakenly put another guest in the room reserved for us. BUT had another room he would "give" us. We were on ground floor, but a smoking room as evidenced by the rank smell of smoke that permeated the room upon entering it.

We had arrived late to the motel and had to be at the church within an hour and half to prepare for the wedding. Since we had traveled quite a distance there was still the entire process of showering and dressing for the wedding. My daughter was in the wedding, which made it even more imperative to rush. The air conditioning in the room was not optimal and so we could not get cool enough to put our makeup on and feel fresh about it. We may as well put in on outside in the heat. None the less we didn't have time to complain to the front desk. So off we ran to the church.
When we left and locked the door...it had a funny sound but didn't have time to think much of it at that point.

The wedding was beautiful and the reception very enjoyable. The entire evening was perfect and the motel was forgotten. By midnight though the 3 of us were plenty worn out and ready to fall into bed for a sound sleep. But on the way back to the Day's Inn my son said he was hungry and wanted Taco Bell. We decided to drive thru and eat in our room so we could be comfortable. Upon arriving back at our room we put the key in the lock and nothing happened. The door would not unlock no matter what attempts we made. Each of us tried our talent at unlocking the door, but it was as if it was bolted from the inside.

After about 10 minutes of frustratingly trying to unlock the door, we walked down to the front desk and informed them of our dilemma. The desk clerk was on the phone with his girl friend and had to finish his conversation before trying to assist us. He inferred that we just didn't know how to unlock a door and would show us how to do it!! Well Mr. Know It All proceeded to put the key in the lock and nothing happened for him either. He tried for over 15 minutes and finally admitted his own defeat. At that point it was after 1:30AM and he said he would have to call a lock smith to unlock and we would have to wait for them to come.

Being a bit tired and a bit PO'd, that was not the right words to say to me. I asked him if he had another room we could stay in till the room was unlock so we could at least be comfortable and rest a bit (at this time of night). He hedged and finally said he would just put us up in another room for the night and gave us the key to the new room. Now mind you our night clothes were in the original room and we had nothing to sleep in except the semiformal clothes from the wedding. The kids and I decided sleeping in dress attire was better than not sleeping at all at that point. So off to sleep we went at 2AM.

Just as we started sawing our ZZZZZZZZZZZZ's there was a loud knock at the door. I glanced at the clock and it is now 3AM. Thinking it was the desk clerk telling us our room was unlocked and we could go back there I answered it. WRONG!! It was some stranger saying this was his room and his wife was supposed to be in there. I glanced at the dark room and saw only two other bodies in bed asleep. So I assured this man that he had the wrong room. He became irrate with me and told me "no this was the room"!! My patience matched his and he was informed that it was MY room and I slammed the door in his face. Granted, I was not a nice person at that moment, but enough was enough. So I crawled back into bed and fell asleep pretty quick.

But 4AM had rolled around and my original room was now available, as the desk clerk proceeded to tell me when he called us on the phone! Did we want to return to the room now? HELL NO! Slam went the phone in his ear! And back to slumber land I proceeded to go....again.

Ring! Ring! It is now 6AM and we have our wake up call from the front desk. How kind of them to want to wake us up a third time in 4 hours! One problem though, I had not asked for a wake up call. Our intention was to sleep till 10 or so and leisurely get up and check out. The desk clerk was adamant that we had asked for a 6AM wake up call! Gee I am now forgetful.

At this point I decided I wanted my old room back and so we got up and went to that room. This time the door unlocked just fine and the air conditioner which had been on high all night had finally cooled off the room enough. To freeze our behinds off that is!! I put my pajama's on and jumped into bed determined to catch a few more minutes of sleep. That is till the cleaning lady decided to start with our room since we had not used it and was only going to need to freshen it up!! Enough of this adventure I decided....so we all got up and dressed and headed to the front desk to check out.

The day crew was on duty now and had to catch up their gossip from the night before. One had gotten so drunk she couldn't hold her head up very well. The other had gotten some and was all smiles. Me? I stood there for 10 minutes hearing them recall their Saturday evening out! At this point I chimed in and told them about OUR Saturday night out!! I got only a incredulous looks of "how could I possibly disrupt their chit chat"! Then the cute blonde girl started checking me out and wanted to charge me for both rooms. I looked at her and used one or two four letter words to tell her what I thought of this Days Inn. Not very adult or lady like, but I had my fill of the Hotel Hell and all the incompetence we had experienced.

On my way out of the front lobby I found a comment card and grabbed it. I put it in my purse to save and fill out when I had time to calm down and put it into some semblence of rational words. I mailed the comment card, along with a letter directly to the Corporate Office and retold the entire little adventure to them. I was very professional in the complaint I wrote up and mailed them. It included all details from room numbers and dates to clerks names who were on duty. I wrote it without all the venom I felt so they would not feel it was from just a grumpy old lady. Want to know the response I received from them? Not one word of acknowledgement that they had even received the letter. This cemented in my mind that this same attitude of the local Inn trickled down from the corporate office.

I know this type of mishap was unusual and could happen at any motel/hotel. It was the continual poor attitude and ineptness that was there from check in to check out and silence of the corporate office that sealed my negative opinion of the Day's Inn motel chain. I will never be able to recommend them to anyone or think of staying with them again.

Recommended: No