Stuart Little's Hotel

Although our trip to NYC was a complete blast, we nearly lost our cool due to a bad experience at our hotel.  I'm very particular when it comes to booking hotels and spend a lot of time researching places prior to making a reservation.  I use a website called Trip Advisor quite a bit and it has always paid off as the hotels are reviewed by ordinary people and their honest portrayals are generally right on.  We have stayed in amazing places in Rome, Prague, Loire Valley, etc all through recommendations from this site.

As you know by now, we're a family of four and we try to book at least a mini-suite if possible.  One may call this a luxury but with a bit of research, I find that you can get decent deals.  Having a larger room and ideally a living room and bedroom is great especially since our kids don't mind sleeping in the same room and often in a pullout bed.  Although the task of finding such reasonable accommodations in NYC was daunting, I found such a hotel on Lexington Avenue.  It had excellent reviews, was well located and for the price of many single rooms elsewhere, we booked a 2 room junior suite through Expedia.

We arrived after an uneventful trip from Paris but none the less it was late and we were tired.  We arrived at the front desk and it was quite busy but luckily we did not have to wait long.  However, we were immediately told that the hotel was oversold and that they no longer had our class of room available.  This is not what you want to hear so I gently complained that the room was prepaid and we did not want to be downgraded to a smaller room.  The receptionist left in the back for a few minutes and when she came back she stated that she would be able to get us 2 rooms right next to each other and that the next day she would have our room available and we could transfer.   Of course this was an inconvenience but I was on the verge of accepting when I believe Helene asked if the rooms were interconnecting.  She stated that unfortunately, no, they did not have interconnecting rooms!  Well with 2 young kids under 10, having them sleep alone in a separate room would not work.   Needless to say, we accepted a smaller room with 2 beds with the promise that it would only be for 1 night.  In fact she said not to unpack all our bags and that while we were sightseeing the next day, they would transfer the bags to the new room.

The next morning we indeed left to attack the day and I stopped at the front desk to let them know our bags were ready, etc.  It was a different Manager now and she stated that she was very sorry but the hotel was still oversold and there was no guarantee we could be moved.  I was floored!   She promised to do what she could but no guarantees.  We promptly phoned Expedia to explain the situation and they immediately called the hotel.  Sure enough, Expedia phoned back to say that we would be moved to our originally booked room.  When we returned late in the day though, the room was not fully ready and they did not move our bags which we eventually did ourselves.  The good news was that we loved the new room which was very large and we finally unpacked all our belongings and settled in...

That night we were all tired so we decided to order room service from the restaurant off the lobby which was considered one of the best hamburger restaurants in New York.  All went well but due to it being late and the fact that our room was in a corner adjacent to another room, we decided to leave our trays in our room rather than put them in the hallway.  We figured that housekeeping would remove them the following day.  To our surprise when we returned late the following day, we opened the door and the room was freezing.  All of the windows were open presumably to remove the now strong oder of leftover hamburger and fries.  You wont believe this but the rooms were made up however they left the trays in the room and opened the windows rather than removing them!  We phoned and we were told that no one could come recover the trays that evening because the hotel staff were having a Christmas Party!  To top it off, they told us that the best bet was to place the trays in the emergency stairwell and that they would be picked up there.   We also had to call the front desk 3 times in order to get a blanket for the pullout bed.  The second time I called, they actually told me that there were no extra blankets in the entire hotel!   But wait there's more.........

The following morning, the kids are in the our bedroom watching TV and I'm walking around in my underwear shaving which I'm prone to do.  I was in the living area when I saw this thing...dart under our hotel door and run across the living room and behind the couch.  Well....I'm not proud  to admit this but I literally screamed and jumped onto the pullout bed!!  Of course this "thing" was a fair sized mouse and it scared the bejesus out of me.  The kids and Helene ran in to understand what was going on and when I explained, it was complete pandemonium, we all went into the bedroom closed the door and barricaded the space under the door for fear the mouse would decide to follow us.  Ridiculous I know.

Well, I promptly called the front desk and explained what happened.  The worst thing is that they did not act surprised and said they would send someone. Of course, they were apologetic...hello?  Someone indeed did come and applied a big sheet of very sticky paper presumably to trap the mouse.  We saw this while peeking from the bedroom door.  He then left almost as soon as he arrived.  I phoned the front desk again and I think they expected me to thank them for the promptness of the sticky paper however I stated that we would prefer not to stay in a room with a mouse whether stuck or unstuck!  They stated, that they completely understood and that they would transfer us to a new room and to...yes, pack our bags and they would bring them to the new room sans mouse we hoped.  There we were packing all of our belongings again including everything that was in the living room while the mouse made 2 additional appearances deftly avoiding the sticky paper.

That afternoon, we come back from a great day sightseeing and believe it or not, room not ready and bags not transfered.  By this point the blood pressure rose to a rather dangerous level and I went to explain the entire saga to the Manager who did appear shocked and apologetic, promising to immediately call to provide a solution.  No call that evening although we did manage to get into our 3rd room in so many nights, this time on the 16th floor and admittedly, the nicest room thus far!

The next 2 nights were thankfully, uneventful.  After finally tracking down the manager, he offered to comp us 1 night.  Upon our return we sent a letter to Expedia to formally complain and they have confirmed the 1 night refund and the hotel has offered a significant discount for our "next stay" HA!

To top it all off...I was planning to right a negative review in Trip Advisor to hopefully dissuade my fellow travelers from staying there.  To my surprise and I have to say laughter...I saw a very recent posting from someone who was staying at the hotel at the same time as us.  Title of his review "BEWARE OF THE MOUSE"  !!  Clever rodent.