Best Western Grand Victorian Inn

Room and lobby were very clean. Good breakfast choices.

Hot tub was only warm and did not bubble vigorously. Small amount of motion circulated slightly milky appearing water. Hoses were lying on the floor and presented a tripping hazard. Wish pool area stayed open later than 9.

Clean enough

Need some upkeep

It was quiet and clean

Nothing

Breakfast was good, place was clean, staff was friendly. The TV in the rooms was very good and the channels.

The bar restaurant was not open that long from only 5 to 9, the menu lacked decent food and prices were extremely high for drinks. My bed was very uncomfortable and lumpy. Was born and raised in the valley and to see how it went downhill from what it used to be was depressing.

Nothing it was disgusting

It smelled like cat urine and the pool, gym and hot tub are open to the public. They were absolutely disgusting

This hotel was an absolute nightmare- uninhabitable. We drove all day with a toddler and finally arrived at our hotel desperate to settle in for the evening. Our first clue was when we first walked in the door- it was well after check-in time, and the lobby was PACKED with a group waiting for rooms to become available. They had a large event booked for that evening at the ballroom and had had a room block that was arranged months ago. Most told me they had been there well over an hour and still the rooms had not been cleaned…I would think if you knew in advance that you were having such a large group coming in you would at least be prepared with staffing to get them checked in in a timely manner. Eventually they finally got them into rooms- but instead of being placed on the same floor as they had requested and arranged months ago, they scattered them throughout the hotel. I feel really bad for anyone who would try to book any sort of formal event through this hotel…After what I saw the other day (not even on a weekend- this was a weekday!!!) it was rough. Now- that aside- when we first walked in, we were hit with a musty smell. Somewhere between musty, moldy, and BO. Admittedly I gave the hotel the benefit of the doubt and thought it might be some of the patrons- considering how packed it was, how long they’d been wanting, etc. It was not. That was just the beginning. After quite the wait through a very long line, we eventually got our room key. We went up and as soon as the elevator doors opened into the floor we were hit with an intensified musty/moldy/BO smell. Ok, well let’s check the room. It smelled like someone had been chain smoking in there! I understand that they don’t have control over if a patron decides to smoke in their room- obviously it’s not allowed or encouraged. However- if they had a cleaner go in between guests, there’s no way they shouldn’t have marked the room as unusable until they addressed the issue and were able to resolve the smell. My understanding is that the fine they charge if someone smokes in a room is to cover the cost of removing the smell and deep cleaning it- not to pocket the money and rent the room out as per usual. Moving on, I went back down to the front desk- waited again in the extremely long line (still of backlogged guests that had been waiting from the one group) and requested a room change- which they happily accommodated. Up the elevator again! I open up the new room, and there’s no stale cigarette smoke baked in (small wins!) but it still smelled awful. So awful- concentrated musty/moldy/BO smell. It was at this point I started gagging. And panicking. It honestly smelled so bad, I wondered if there was a possibility I was pregnant again and I had a super sniffer. Regardless, I was over it- the whole hotel smelled bad, and the individual rooms smelled far worse- not better. So I went down to the front desk to try and cancel our reservation for the whole weekend…we would have to figure out somewhere else to stay. Unfortunately- while I could cancel for the subsequent days- there was no way to cancel for that night because it was within 24 hours of that evening. I want to stress here that the front desk staff were kind and did the best they could- but their hands were tired. If it’s within 24 of the night you’ve booked, you’re out of luck. Silly me- I should have driven all day to come up several days before to check that the hotel wasn’t filthy and didn’t reek. That’s on me. I’ll also note here- I was not booked through a third party- I booked directly through the hotel. If I HAD booked through a third party I would have had more protections than I did. Lesson learned! (I should note- at this point I DID have my husband come up and smell the room. He is notoriously a bad smeller- but even he affirmed he could smell it and it was BAD- but more than that it made his eyes itch and burn in less than a minute. Also worth noting- definitely confirmed since then- not pregnancy super smell- it did just smell that bad…) The staff at the front desk did give me a business card to try and contact the manager- which I did try. Unfortunately- it just rang endlessly without even providing the option of leaving a message. That left me with the only option of calling the corporate customer service line. So then cue- nearly an hour phone call trying to explain the situation in spite of a language barrier with the overseas call center- at which point they called the front desk and asked nicely. Obviously the answer was still that the front desk did not have the authority to authorize that due to existing policy. Cool. At this point, I called my credit card company and they encouraged me to dispute the claim (which I will definitely do) and document the conditions. I’m so glad they encouraged me to do so- and review readers- did I ever find the source of the smell! Of course there’s the general grime and filthy carpets that have a striped pattern so the grossness is hard to see in a picture. BUT- there was evidence of leaks and water damage EVERYWHERE- to the point where the ceiling panels were falling down, bulging, and in many places you could see the mold pushing through the cracks. There was black mold covering so many surfaces. I initially had thought it was just dirt or grease or something- nope. Black mold colonies. The more I looked, the more I was astonished at just how bad the black mold and water damage was. And there wasn’t even any effort to hide it or clean it up. No wonder it smelled so bad!!! If that’s what was visible I can only imagine what was under the surface. By the time we left (with all the wait times probably 2-3 hours after we arrived) we both had raging headaches and my toddler couldn’t stop scratching her eyes and face until we gave her Zyrtec. We found a different hotel in town and had an exponentially better experience. This whole experience took up so much time and energy- please if you have any desire to have a remotely pleasant experience- don’t stay here. The staff are kind and competent- but the hotel is a nightmare. And if you ARE going to gamble on a reservation here- make sure you travel to the hotel at least 24 hours before you intend to stay so you can make sure it’s inhabitable. Otherwise, it’s really on you for just ASSUMING it would be remotely clean and not a black mold biohazard. Good luck! P.S. I also heard from other guests that the hot tub is broken and is barely above lukewarm. Yay.

Nothing

Everything was very dirty, very smelly. The pool was disgusting