I don’t demand a lot from a hotel room. Having done a bit of traveling over the years, I’ve established my list of requirements to a few basics - a comfortable bed, a desk to work at, a high speed internet connection (of course), and a TV with a decent selection of channels and a working remote, with, ideally, a sleep button. Eventually, I did have all of those things at the “Historic Mayfair Hotel” in Los Angeles last week. But it still qualifies as one of the worst hotel experiences I’ve ever had.

I was in LA for the Rotary International Convention. The Historic Mayfair (that’s its name, although we came to call it the Pre-Historic Mayfair, or the Decrepit Mayfair) was one of the official convention hotels, and was the designated place to stay for those involved in Rotary Youth Exchange. It’s in downtown LA, about a mile and a half from the LA Convention Center, where our meetings were being held. I won’t quote from the hotel’s website, because it’s just too painful to repeat what they claim to be, compared to the reality that we experienced there.

I arrived late Wednesday night, waited while the two people in front of me went through a way-too-long check-in process, and finally got my key card. It worked, something that I learned not to take for granted on the second night. The room was tiny, barely wider than the double bed. There was a ledge before the windows, which I did my best not to trip over. The closet had a stubborn bi-fold mirror door and three - count ‘em, three - hangers. The bathroom counter was small, just barely enough to hold my few toiletries. Most noticeable, though, was the lack of a desk or table. They had given me the login and password for their wireless internet service, just no place to use it. I went downstairs to complain to the desk clerk, and he said he’d ask housekeeping to bring a desk in the morning. He succeeded in getting me to leave his area with this promise, although, as it turns out, he did nothing to follow through on it.

Death almost came the next morning. I was up early, a combination effect of the 3-hour time zone difference and the fact that there were only sheer curtains on the windows, which were no match for the California sunshine that came streaming through. Little did I know the trap that had been planned for me.

It wasn’t quite as gory as the scene from Psycho, but the shower almost was the end of me. In a space designed for a small tub, they had installed the most nefarious shower I had ever encountered. It had a wall the same height as a normal tub, but the width of the standing area was about 18 inches. The shower head was mounted on the wall at a height that matched my chin, and, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not exactly the tallest guy around. But the death trap design was something I had never seen before. The standing area (floor of the tub) was less than four feet from front to back, and in the middle, it had a rise of about a foot, with a curved lip. That is to say, standing in the half of the tub closest to the shower head, I had the water at face level. If I moved to back of the tub, a frequent necessity because the water would unpredictably change from ice cold to scalding hot, I was now a foot higher. But one could not reliably stand on either level, because (a) there wasn’t enough room for both feet at a normal width apart, and (b) the curved edge and surfaces of the tub became dangerously slippery when wet.

After almost losing my balance several times, I discerned that the only way to survive this experience was to hold onto the shower curtain rod with one hand, place one foot in the lower quadrant and one in the upper (the Captain Morgan pose, I guess), and attempt to clean oneself with one hand. I did so as quickly as I could.

My heart still pounding from this death-defying shower, I dressed and went down to the desk to demand a move to a room that I could survive for a few days. Nope, sorry, all full. I asked about the desk that the night clerk was supposed to have ordered for me. No indication that he had done so, but the day clerk said he’d take care of it, and sure enough, an hour or two later, employees arrived with a desk and chair. OK, so I’ll deal with the shower, as long as everything else is tolerable.

That night, I returned to the hotel to find that my key card no longer opened the door to my room. Revenge of the hotel staff, I presumed. Another visit to the front desk, a replacement key, back up to the room, and the same result. At least the elevators were fairly quick. Down another 14 flights. This time, he gives me two keys, figuring that one should work. The first did not. The second one, to my surprise, did. I treasured that key card the remainder of my stay.

In talking to other guests at the hotel, I found that several had also complained about the same things, and some got moved to better rooms. Apparently, one has to cry to get service in this place. I hadn’t thought of that …

What other comments should I offer about this hotel? The service in the restaurant was terribly slow. And the bar was closed since late May, for “renovations.” Strange timing. The hotel, which can’t be a very popular lodging locale, is sold out a year in advance for a convention that brings about 20,000 people to LA. Why would you close your bar when you have a rare full house? We certainly would have consumed a few drinks there, although that activity and its repercussions might have been all that was needed to make the shower 100% fatal.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 10:39 am and is filed under Al. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.