So a friend & I did not book a hotel room until we started driving to LA from another part of CA..we found this hotel on priceline.com & booked a room being that it was so cheap & we did not want to spend a chunk of money on a place we were not going to be at all day. BIG MISTAKE. PLEASE DO NOT BE CHEAP WHEN IT COMES TO GETTING A HOTEL ROOM. The outside of the building is kind of run down & dirty, do not let the pictures fool you. But the inside lobby was nice..beautiful marble floors, nice color scheme, but very very old school. Older than old school. I knew something was up when they handed us our keys..they look like dorm room keys!! So we get in the elevator, which btw smelled terrible..like garbage. When we get to our floor & are trying to find our rooms, we see the "community showers & toilets." WE WERE NOT INFORMED OUR ROOM DID NOT HAVE A BATHROOM. The shower would make you calustrophobic. It looked like a place where a rapist would get u or where someone would stash a dead body. I also did not like the idea of sharing the shower!! There was no barrier to the shower or anything it was just a door seperating it from the hallway..& the toilets. OMG. There was doo-doo smeared all over one of them. By this time we were already disgusted & didnt even find our room yet. The hallways were hot being that there is no air conditioning & it smelled foul. & THEN we found our room.
We put the key in & it didnt even work. Thats because you had to almost break down the door to get in. The smell of smoke & old man cologne was in the room. It had holes & rips in the carpet & had a sink. The mattress was cheap & when you looked out the window it looked like you were in the projects. Every single screen on every window was bent & or torn as if sum1 were trying to get in or jump out. & were talking the 14th floor. We were pissed because this was not what we expected. We complained to priceline & the front lobby & were told we cannot cancel this reservation without being charged for the night. & while on the phone, the cleaning lady barges in even with our "do not disturb" placard on the door knob. Because we could not cancel this, we decided to upgrade our room.
So we are moved to the 9th floor..this time the elevator smelled like straight up armpits. The hallways smelled the same, like garbage, & our lock on the door was flimsy. BUT we had a bathroom. It had a toilet & sink, but no tub. There is just a shower head on the ceiling so basically the whole bathroom was the shower with a toilet in it. There was this creepy little vent on the wall that creeped the crap out of me because it was like someone could be watching. But we tried to make the most out of it so we turned the tv on while we got ready to go to the beach.
When we were leaving, we did not bother to turn the tv off & again put up our "do not disturb" sign. Hours later when we returned, our tv was off. Everything else was in place, I didnt think the cleaning lady was in there. We were a little creeped out but joked around that the place was haunted. I wouldnt doubt it, being that its old & it looked like a place where you would go after your wife kicked you out & commit suicide. It reminded me of the movie The Shining. Everything about the place was creepy..very diverse guests, BUT crackheads & bums surround the area. Even in the lobby. Very, very unprofessional..but anyways!! We were very glad to check out. But upon checking out, I asked the guy working if the hotel was haunted. He had a look on his face as if we were already supposed to know, & said so casually, YES. We started laughing because we thought he was joking around, but I asked why? He says, "Well this hotel has been around since the 1920's & there have been murders & suicides throughout the years.." My mouth dropped!! My friend then asked, "Are there timers on the tvs?" & he said no..but ppl ask ALL the time. So we are scared to be in that place so we hurry out of there..on our long drive home, I start to google the history on this place. Sure enough, it comes up as one of the haunted hotels in la. Its a historical landmark, the 1st hotel in la to have 3 stories. Its also where movie stars used to hang out, & also a place where a few movie stars committed suicide..I still cant believe we stayed in that dorm-like piece of trash but please..if you do not wish to have an experience like this, splurge a little.
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