Circa 39 Hotel

1 reader found this review helpful

Our stay at the Circa 39 Hotel from February 22 to 25, 2005 constituted the worst stay in any hotel I have experienced. It started poorly when we arrived and found our room was not ready. We returned 6 hours later and were given a dirty room. There were pubic hairs throughout the bathroom and sand on and in the bed. There was no cleaning staff available at 6pm so exhausted, my girlfriend and I tolerated it. I never slept that night because our toilet leaked and flushed every 12 minutes. I went down stairs in my pyjamas at 0430 and requested a new room the following day. None were available but I was reassured the cleanliness and toilet were priority issues.
On Day two we returned at 5:30 pm. The manager at the front desk knew who we were and reassured us the toilet was fixed. We entered the room and found it still running. My girlfriend (unbeknownst to me) knew I was upset and cleaned the pubic hairs out of the shower stall before I found them. My anger transitioned to sadness because NO ONE should ever be treated like this. The nose mucus on the back of the bathroom door was also still present.
Our room, Room 223, had broken windows, which did not seal. The heavy machinery and stereos at the construction sight next door began sharply at 0800. We never slept past this hour.
For the women and businessmen reading this: THERE ARE NO BUREAUS OR A FULL LEGNTH MIRROR. A small glass shelf dangerously obstructs the bathroom sink 10 inches above it. Putting on makeup or shaving is sincerely dangerous should you look up too quickly. I ended up using the dirty ironing board to store my clothes because the management refused to provide us with anymore than 5 additional clothes hangers.
Upon returning from shopping on the Third Day we found the bathroom still had large black hairs behind the door and stuck to the sides of the toilet. I must emphasize, the hair was obvious. I was not performing some military inspection looking for minute particles of dust just to be dramatic. What really upset me however was the cleaning staff had taken our toilet paper and Kleenex away. My girlfriend does not approve of me writing this but I truly believe this was INTENTIONAL PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR ON THE PART OF THE CLEANING OR MAINTENANCE STAFF AS RETALLIATION FOR MY PREVIOUS COMPLAINTS. I can not confirm my suspicions but I let the Reader of this article make the final decision.
There were several other problems. First, 39th Street is about two miles away from the South Beach nightlife. With traffic, that’s a $10 cab ride (not including tip.) You are only given two sub-standard sized bath towels and face cloths. The televisions do not face the bed so you must lie sideways on top of the dirty comforter to watch it. There is no movie ordering option, the bar closes at 10pm, and the continental breakfast does not include fresh coffee.
To get to the beach you must first cross Collins Avenue. At the 39th Intersection it is wide and without a traffic light. Traffic moves very, very, fast and there are no crosswalks within a block. It is a dangerous location to cross with your children. The nearest convenience store is four blocks away and requires you to cross a bridge where several homeless people live. While they never threatened us, their ultra-aggressive pan-handling (stalking behaviour) was unnerving even for me.
The worst part of our stay came at check out. We were clearly recognized by the staff and management who wanted nothing but to get us out of they’re before we complained about getting our money back. Their lack of eye contact and intentional omission to ask anything about our stay proved to me they knew they had done wrong and were not going to make any offers to compensate us. (I was so sad at this point I did not even want to ask.)
In conclusion I want to emphasize neither my girlfriend nor I are arrogant, mean-spirited, or hostile people. It gives me no pleasure to write this article and I would rather forget about this experience all together. I just can not bear the thought of this also happening to someone else.
Respectfully submitted,
Kuffer R. Kaltenborn
Portsmouth Police Department
3 Junkins Avenue
Portsmouth, NH 03801
(603) 610-7517 (automated voice mail only)