Getting Real With Shadra Bruce
I was introduced to Del Taco as a child in Barstow, California. My grandparents took us to the one in town as well as one near the outlet mall once it was built. I love Del Taco. I crave it living in New York since there is no good Mexican food here. There are Del Tacos in Salt Lake, but it was too far away from my sister’s house to be convenient. I did grab red burritos at the Del Taco in Reno, but that whole experience was overshadowed by the evil New York haters on the roads there. But I was smart…the furthest East Del Taco comes is Toledo, Ohio. Toledo is a convenient 6 hours from Le Claire, Iowa, where we stayed the night before and 6 hours from Bath, where we are headed tomorrow. So I sought out a hotel in the same area of town as the Del Taco, which, not surprisingly, is close to the university.
I’m seriously questioning the reliability of TripAdvisor right now, because I relied on TripAdvisor to tell me which hotel near the university would be the best to stay at. Red Roof Inn had better ratings than both the Ramada and the Comfort Inn. We drove from Le Claire to Toledo with no trouble at all and checked into the Red Roof Inn as planned. And that’s where the nightmare started.
Certainly, we are spoiled by the types of hotels and inns we prefer to stay in, and Red Roof was not that. We knew and prepared the kids for the fact that the room would be smaller, and if space had been the only issue we had to deal with, we’d have been fine.
It was the air conditioning that rattled and whined but did not produce cool air that made us have concern.
It was the refrigerator that simply would not get cold that made us frustrated.
But it was the fecal matter in the tub that made us repack our belongings and get the hell out.
Perhaps others have had such a significantly different experience than ours that TripAdvisor is reporting accurately, but I suspect a bit of ballot-stuffing has been happening.
We thought, OK, we’ll just head over to the Comfort Inn. We’d stayed in a Comfort Inn the night before and it was fine.
After standing at the counter for five minutes unable to gain the attention of the woman in the office who was perhaps engaged in a game of digital solitaire or updating her Facebook page, I was ready to move on. I should have.
In her frostiest “we don’t need your business” voice, she explained that she could not accommodate a family of five unless we paid for two rooms.
Really? In all the days of our travels, not a single hotel (most of which only had two beds since Kyle has to sleep in a chair and remain somewhat upright) has enforced that policy and made us decide which child would sleep alone in a separate room. That they were charging top dollar in an empty, off-season hotel did not help the Comfort Inn.
Luckily, next door was a Ramada. We often stay in Ramada in Jersey City when we’re going to New York City, but had never stayed in one outside that location.
What a difference moving next door made!
The staff at the Ramada were more than willing to accommodate our family, and the manager even ran upstairs to find a room that had a comfortable recliner in it for Kyle to sleep in. They had us booked, welcomed, and feeling like we could salvage our last night in no time…and we got the room for only a few dollars more than we would have paid for a fecal infested room at the Red Roof Inn and far less than we would have been forced to pay for two rooms at the Comfort Inn.
It’s the little things that make a difference, and the Ramada went out of their way on the little things.
So we did end up going to Del Taco and I took my delicious red burritos with me to the Sonic down the street where the kids had been begging to eat since we started seeing them along our travels. (Anika likes the girls on skates who delivers the food; Parker had his eye on dessert from the moment we arrived; we all liked hanging out in the car and listening to tunes while having a yummy dinner).
It was a nice last night on the road after all.
