I pulled in late and tired to a random motel 6 in Illinois. Went in to the office with my wife and three small children, talked to the attendant through thick bulletproof glass to get a room. Attendant was very weirdly hesitant.

Went to the room, found the floor was linoleum tiles that were all peeling up at the edges, doors, doorframes, beds all in bad condition, some seriously weird and disturbing smell we didn’t recognize.

Came back down to the office and asked for our money back, which is the single solitary time I’ve ever done that at a hotel. The attendant seemed relieved and was very happy to return the money.

Our kids were really little but they’ve always remembered that and they call it the “nope-tel”

Place in Las Vegas. They had a coin operated shower. You could pay by the night or by the hour.

Tame compared to some of the other stories here but the Motel 6 across from Disney World in Florida when I was visiting for a high school trip. I noticed that the soles of my feet were all black and assumed it was because I’d been walking around in the parking lot in bare feet. Turns out it was actually the carpet in the room. I wore my shoes in the room for the rest of my stay.

the breakfast buffet at Circus Circus in Las Vegas was a surreal experience.

If you were to look at it or photograph the food it all looked completely normal. But I have never encountered a situation where everything was utterly devoid of flavor. It was like encountering the literary device of eating food in hell where all looked fantastic but was like ashes in the mouth.

It extended to every dish. Sausages, eggs, biscuits, pastries. Nothing was edible! Lest you think me some picky eater my guilty pleasure used to be the Big AZ burger at 7-11. The food at Circus Circus was simply inedible to a degree that i’ll never forget it.

2 nights in a hotel in Sydney. Arrived at about 10pm straight from the airport. Unmanned entry to had to call someone from reception to come and give me the key despite arranging all this in advance.

Got in the room and the AC was broken so as a Brit arriving in Australia for the first time it was unbearably hot and the room stank of damp.

About the worst way to start jetlag recovery and I got out after the first night despite paying in advance.

Edit, oh and the fire alarm went off at 3AM!

There was one in Athens, Greece where I shoved furniture up against the door because I was sure I was going to be robbed or worse in the middle of the night. However, the worst was probably this “hotel” in Ensenada, Mexico where there was no way I was going to sleep in the bed, not going into detail there. There was a hole in the drywall where it looked like somebody got slammed into it and blood all over the bathroom (horror movie levels). I don’t think I stayed in the room and just went out drinking all night.

I’m going to say a Marriott in Manhattan, roughly in August 2007. I forget exactly where, but it was close to the WTC site.

I was on a business trip, and I wasn’t paying for it. The room wasn’t dirty or anything, but its just felt delapidated. There was wallpaper peeling in a couple of spots.

It certainly wasn’t horrible, but I just remember thinking about the fact that this just-adequate room in a major chain hotel was costing five hundred dollars a night.

I shudder to think what it would cost now.

Motel 6 in Seymour, IN. Saw serval roaches, smelled of cigarettes and stale curry, broken AC (in the middle of summer), the carpet had various stains, bathroom was as clean as an outhouse…

And we had to sleep next to a rotting petri dish of a jacuzzi. Here’s a pic

One time we stayed at a motel 6 in San Diego to visit a family member. The motel allowed pets and we had a dog and cat.

Turns out crack heads in the parking lot had to start the engine on their van every 2 hours and rev the fuck out of the engine ALL NIGHT long. 30 minutes of revving every 2 hours. Omg wtf.

Was on a road trip to South Dakota with my (now) wife’s family, and her father had just planned on stopping wherever on the trip rather than planning stops (which is probably better considering there were 3 adults taking care of 5 kids from 8 to 16 and we were an…interesting set (all ADHD, most with (un)diagnosed autism). We stopped at some motel 8 style place kinda late and just wanted to get some sleep so we could get on the road and to our cabin destination. We ended up having to stay there, but it sketch as all hell.

Man, those rooms were awful. The room was musty AF, and I remember not taking my shoes off because the carpet felt spongy. The beds were rock hard and the sheets under the duvet were polka dot look white sheets. I didn’t even undress and made sure to change my clothes before getting back in the van the next day.

Other than that, it was a lovely trip. It even led to a moment that my wife will never be able to live down with her family, and still comes up pretty regularly when we talk to her family.

Jan 1995 I stayed three nights at The Manor House in Aurora, CO.

I was solo and am male, so I doubt the creeper spent much time watching me. Still, damn. It’s hard to place, but I think the Panera across from Children’s Hospital on Colfax is where it sat.

My wife and I had booked a hotel with “shower en suite”. We assumed that this meant that the hotel rooms bathroom had a shower instead e.g. a tub.

Nope. In the middle of the room, there was a plastic booth not unlike those portable toilets you can find at festivals. This was the shower. You had to drop in coins to get warm water in the shower.

There was no bathroom as such. A common toilet was half the stairs down from the room, and it ran out of toilet paper on the weekend.

The breakfast was rather spartan, a lot of “either this or that, but not both” selections.

This was very emberrasing for our friends who had recommended that place (and helped us with a roll of toilet paper). They had been in that hotel some 30 or 40 years before, when it still had style…

Definitely the one in China where a breaker box in the stairwell exploded. We were very lucky the whole place didn’t burn down.

Myself and two friends went to Seattle to race (sailboats) and one had booked us a hotel on Aurora, I don’t remember the name unfortunately. When we got there they were both kinda iffy on the place but I didn’t notice anything too weird. It was your average cheap ish hotel. I had also had a few drinks by this point so that might have had something to do with it. Anyhoo, we went out drinking and had a lovely night, came back and passed out. In the morning I went to use the bathroom and as I’m sitting there everything started to come into focus, and yeah, it was pretty gross. I wandered back out and laid on the bed. As I reached my arms behind the pillow to stretch, my hand hit something, I grabbed it and pulled out a meth pipe. Nice. We packed up and headed to the front desk. They really didn’t want to refund us the money for the next two nights but when I put the meth pipe on the counter they suddenly decided they’d be able to do that for us. Ended up sleeping on the floor at a friend’s house and had a grand time.

An old convent in Venice. It had a single exit, which we found out when the fire alarm went off. It was a very large and high spiral staircase in the middle of the building.

It was 40C with 90 percent humidity. Of course, it did not have AC. Everyone had their window and door open at night and just hoped they wouldn’t get mugged.

Cheap, though.