Stupid Hiltons

This is a story of how the Doubletree Inn and Suites in Omaha, NE is a terrible hotel. Now, my sister-in-law paid for the room, all $85 a night for god knows how many family members. Since I didn't have to pay perhaps I shouldn't complain, but I see it as since she put out so much money the experience should not have been as bad as it was.

For me, the first bad sign, and the worst thing, it that there was no WiFi. None. The Super 8 in Rolla has WiFi. The Iowa rest stops and welcome center had WiFi. But a major, and expensive hotel in Omaha doesn't? I could have opted to pay a daily rate to use their dial-up, but to hell with that.

Right after I found out there was no WiFi another of my sisters-in-law came to the desk to get her meal tickets. (We got free breakfast buffet. More on that later) The clerk wouldn't give her tickets for her kids, since the computer only showed two people in the room. Now listen, if you aren't going to register kids since they are free, that's one thing, but then you aren't going to feed them? They also charged her $25 for a rollaway bed. $25 fucking dollars for a ROLLAWAY? If only this were all.

Now, I will point out that the people at the checkout desk were very nice, and professional and helpful. They were almost the only people in the hotel who were, but I do want to make it clear that so far my beef is with hotel policy and not the desk staff. The breakfast staff was another story altogether. The hostess was rude and dismissive, the servers wouldn't take our drink orders, so I had to ask a busboy. Then when I got my milk there was something severely wrong with the flavor. It wasn't spoiled, I know from spoiled milk. This had something added to it. My best guess was orange juice, but that's only because I don't want to think about how much worse the possibilities are. I've seen Fight Club after all. The food itself on the buffet was seriously sub-standard.

Our room was decent enough, and clean, and we got the requested extra pillows (Joe and I sleep using an obscene amount of pillows) but the showerhead was hanging half out of the wall, the TV Consisted of 4 ESPN channels, Fox News, two local network channels and HBO. Local phone calls cost $1.25, and there were fines for using a calling card as well. There was a bottle of Aquafina in the bathroom, with a tag that made you aware it cost $4.
Since we had my computer in the room, and all our other belongings, we chose to not have the maids clean up. So we put up the Do Not Disturb sign and told them in person we didn't wish to have our room cleaned. Yep. They did it anyway. And yes, we have gotten to the point in the story where I'm even complaining about my room being cleaned.

Despite the room being $85 a night (before taxes and fees) we still had to pay $6 a night for parking, all of us had problems with the key cards not working properly, the phones didn't work, it would take 5 minutes for anyone to answer at guest services when they did work.... the whole thing just really sucked. I'd blame Paris (Doubletree is a Hilton hotel) but God knows that she hasn't ever done any real work for the company.
I filled out the little customer (dis)satisfaction survey, but nothing will ever come of that. So I decided to use what little influence I have on the internet to encourage all of you to avoid the Hilton Family chain of hotels the next time you have to travel. I know I wont stay in one again.

Tags: Bad hotel, hilton, travel woes, doubletree, omaha