I have stayed in several hotels. Some good, some not wonderful, some amazing. This hotel in Ocala, Florida was somewhere in between and I'd like to tell you why. For starters, you can view my video here for an overview of the room and my initial review.
Now having heard my first reaction and seen the hotel room for yourself, you'll notice that it appears to be a rather nice place. And you would be correct.
The room itself was as clean as can be expected in a hotel room (I have worked in them, they are never actually clean). I had no complaints as far as appearance.
Location, on the other hand, was a different story. The front of this hotel faces the back of a Howard Johnson hotel pool. Because of this, we ended up moving our car (as I mentioned in the video) to the back of the hotel where we could see it from our room.
Once moving the car behind the hotel we became hyper-aware of what was happening around it. Soon after settling into our room we began hearing music coming from the back parking lot. Upon investigation, we discovered a group of people sitting in a beat-up truck listening to Spanish style music (I have no idea what the correct term for this kind of music is lol) and eating/drinking. This was pretty concerning considering our car was out there and we all know how drunk people can get. My husband ended up going to the front desk to let them know what was going on. Nothing was done about it of course. But at least him going down there showed some kind of record (video) of us complaining had something happened to our car.
Another issue we had with this hotel was the smell. At first, I thought it was the cleaning supplies. But it honestly didn't smell like anything we had ever smelled before. My husband brought up that it smelled like gas, they did laundry on-site so it would make sense that they might have some kind of leak or something was burning. Later we got the bright idea that perhaps the men on the truck outside were working on re-tarring the roof. Makes sense right? So perhaps that smell isn't always there, but then again, when we asked the front desk about it we were told that they didn't smell anything. Maybe that's something they were told to say or maybe it's a common smell in that hotel and they don't actually smell it anymore. Who knows? But it was there just the same. So you're warned.
All of this we could forgive, some things are just out of an employee's hands.
Our final issue, however, was something we could not look over. It was the main reason we stayed with this hotel instead of another in the area. The free continental breakfast. It's one of the main reasons any family picks one hotel over another. That free breakfast is worth it in the end, to know that you don't have to stop at McDonald's 10 miles down the road and spend $30 on food that won't fill them up even a little bit.
When we checked in the woman behind the front desk told us that breakfast would be available at 6:00 am. Great! We could get breakfast before driving another hour down the road to Disney! We got everyone up and out of the hotel room by 5:45 I think. We wanted to get down there before the rest of the guests to get more of a selection.
They were still setting up the breakfast area when we got down there. It was fine. We were early. We waited a little while, woke up some more. At about 6:00 am I started to get annoyed, the boys were hungry and wanted some cereal. I put them some in bowls and asked for milk, which was apparently quite the task because the front desk person on duty that morning seemed highly annoyed that she needed to fill the milk pitchers. The boys ate. There were still no bagels/muffins and although the warmer was on, there were no eggs or sausage either. There was also no batter in the waffle area. It was quite the shit show to be completely honest.
At 6:30 am the boys were done eating and I was done waiting. Especially having seen the sausage sitting in a bowl in the kitchen area next to the breakfast area. Why did they not just put the food out when they saw several people waiting (it was not just our family, a few groups of people passed up breakfast because it wasn't out when it was supposed to be). So the boys were done eating and I was annoyed, I told my husband we needed to go. We could stop at Starbucks somewhere and I'd just get some coffee for breakfast, not a huge deal. The boys ate, that's all I was really worried about.
Just before we left the front desk employee informed us that breakfast would not be served until 7:00 am. How odd considering we had been told the night before that it would be served at 6:00 am.
We got the impression that this breakfast was not for the guests of the hotel, but were for the employees and those men working on the roof. Obviously, we didn't have any proof of that, but it was a suspicion we had.
So you can stay at the Comfort Inn & Suites in Ocala Florida if you would like, but I wouldn't recommend it. I certainly won't be staying there again.
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