Christine M.'s Profile

In planning our first visit to the Mystic Seaport Museum, we were unable to find a room in our price range in Mystic - everything was booked. So we settled on this hotel. We had stayed at the Super 8 in Sturbridge, MA before, and it was fine, so we weren't expecting any problems here. We stayed there on Saturday, October 3, checked out on Sunday, October 4.

The first problem was finding the place. It was dark when we got there, and their sign on the side of the highway was not lit. And the way the building is situated, from the direction we were coming from, the sign on it was impossible to see. We had to loop around several times before I finally spotted the place.

There was no problem with check-in. The room was okay, nothing fancy, but what do you expect from an economy hotel such as this one? And the free WiFi did work as advertised, unlike the Super 8 in Sturbridge.

Problem #1 was the shower head. It was one of those that you can detach and use as a hand-held one. This would have been great, except that the clamp that attached it to make it hands-free was broken. So taking showers was a bit of a pain.

Problem #2 was the deal-breaker, and the reason we'll never stay at this place again. My husband had gone to bed shortly after we checked in. I stayed up later, working on my laptop, with only the light of the computer and the TV...all the lamps in the room were too bright and not conducive to sleeping.

A few hours later, I got tired, shut down the computer, and got into bed. The next morning, I got up and was horrified to see a brown stain on the bottom sheet on my side of the bed that looked like POOP! I know for a FACT that I didn't cause it to be there. If I hadn't gone to bed in the dark the night before, I would have seen it beforehand, and refused to sleep on it.

I was so grossed out, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. This could have ruined our day at Mystic Seaport, I was that nauseous. We decided not to say anything, though, we just wanted to get out of there ASAP. And I doubt they would have done anything, anyway, the damage had already been done. I figured that the best things we could do was speak with our wallets and not return to this place, and write reviews like this one, to encourage others to stay away.

The price for this thing goes up every year...this year it's $40 in advance, $50 at the door.  For what? For teaspoon-sized amounts of food that you have to stand in line for ages to get?

We went to this once, and it was enough.  The money could be better spent on a dinner for two at a nice restaurant, one where you don't have to stand in line forever to either get food or go to the bathroom.

Biggest waste of money ever.

I don't live in Manchester, but the local minor league team, the NH Fisher Cats, are our fave team. We live about an hour away.  We have a season mini-plan.  So we show up at the Rover before or after any Sunday home games.  The food is great, the bartenders are friendly, what more can you want?

The Rover is part of why we return to Manch for games, year after year!

This place is a cesspool.  I would not send my worst enemy here.  They could very well have killed my husband.

I took him to the ER there on the advice of his doctor, because he was having trouble breathing, plus his legs and feet were swelling up (we knew that this was due to previously diagnosed congestive heart failure).

A little back story...a few years ago, he went there for an emergency appendectomy.  They found cancer in the appendix.  Further testing showed that there was no more cancer present, but they pushed and pushed for him to have half his colon lopped off *just in case*.  He refused.  And ever since, his doctor kept reminding him that he had cancer and was being a *noncompliant* patient.

Back to now...when I brought him in for the swelling, what did they do first?  They did an ABDOMINAL CATscan, looking for cancerous tumors.  They found NONE. Yet someone named Dr. Davidson would not leave us alone about a sales pitch for colon loppage surgery.  He, and everyone else in that hellhole, ignored the fact that my husband was sitting there getting sicker and sicker.  Once he said no to that surgery, they didn't seem to want to do anything else for him, except for some other test to see if he had holes in his stomach (I forget what it was called).  They didn't do any further tests, not to the chest area, where they should have been looking in the first place.

The nurses there were very surly and hateful when I asked questions.  Hubby was so out of it by this point, worse than he was when I brought him in, that he wasn't able to speak for himself.  I had to go out of town for a night, and while I was away, they left him to sit in his own waste for hours on end, no one came to check on him, to make sure he was okay and clean and all.  He got a rather nasty rash near his privates, which only went away when I brought Neosporin from home to put on it.  He also developed a very large and ugly bruise that went from his abdomen around to his butt on the right side, which was ignored and unexplained.  They also were not into bringing clean towels, sheets, and johnnies, he was using the same ones for days before I yelled at someone for fresh linens.

I was fed up and demanded that he be released so that I could take him to another hospital.  The nurses argued that he was very sick and could not go anywhere.  I argued back, asking what exactly were they doing to make him better?  All they were doing was bringing him meds, well, I can do that at home.

They told me that if he was released against medical advice, our insurance would not pay.  This was a lie, I called the insurance company, told them this whole saga thus far, and they said that this was a lie.  They told me to take him to the ER of another hospital.

So I got him out of that hellhole, and I took him to Lahey Clinic.  Best decision I ever made!  They listened to us, and very soon, they found a blood clot in his lung, that was what was causing the problems, keeping the other meds from working and all.  They started treatment immediately, and I am happy to say that my husband was released today (April 21) feeling better than he has in ages.

WHY did Melrose-Wakefield NOT find this clot?  I don't know, maybe they were too busy obsessing over tumors that they themselves admitted were not there.  I am just glad I got him out of that hellhole and into a place that does a much better job.

Stay far, far away from this dump.  I hear they are having money problems.  I'm not surprised, and every bit of financial cutbacks is showing!

This place is almost right across the road from Old Sturbridge Village, of which my husband and I are members.  We gave it a try when our regular lodgings in town, the Sturbridge Heritage Motel, decided to shut down for the winter (due to the poor economy, I suppose).

The first two times we stayed there, it was fine.  But the third time was the Trip From Hell.  First of all, there had been a snowstorm earlier in the week, and they didn't plow out the parking lot properly.  Just hauling our bags from the car to the room was treacherous, as the snow had melted and re-frozen repeated times.

Inside the room, not only did the advertised free Wi-Fi not work, but neither did the data port on the phone for dial-up.  In fact, the phone didn't work at all.  Also, the electrical circuit at the bathroom vanity didn't work.  The light wouldn't turn on, and the outlet where you plug in a shaver or hair dryer also did not work.

We walked across that skating rink of a parking lot and asked for another room.  The owner was rather surly, and once she found out that my husband had used a hand towel in the bathroom, she refused to give us another room.  She did come over and somehow got the vanity electricity working, but didn't care about the phone or internet access.  She would not give us another room, and we'd already paid, no chance of getting a refund, so we stayed.

The next day, my husband went to a model railroad show.  I didn't want to go to that, so I stayed behind in the room.  I wanted to sleep in and I looked for the DO NOT DISTURB sign to hang on the door.  There wasn't one.  I made one out of paper and hung it on the door after he left, and tried to go back to sleep.  Housekeeping came a-knocking anyway.  I yelled at them to go away and leave me alone, and they did.  But I couldn't get back to sleep.

When my husband came back from the show, we went out to dinner.  We came back to find that we were locked out of our room, although we had paid for two nights.  Once again, we walked across the skating rink to the office to complain.  The same woman, the owner, was there.  She acted as if WE did something to deactivate the key cards, and was reluctant to do anything about it.  I was getting to the point where I thought I'd have no choice but to call the Sturbridge police, and get them to come and force this bitch to let us into the room that we paid for, at least so we could get our stuff out and leave.  But she finally reactivated the cards.  Back across the skating rink we went, I tried my card, didn't work.  Luckily, my husband's did.

The next morning, once again, housekeeping came a-knocking HOURS before the 11AM check-out time, we weren't even showered and dressed yet.  Once again, I told them to go away.  And once again, we had to lug our bags over piles of frozen snow to get them out to the car.  I could not wait to get away from this place!

The place is clean and the rates are cheap, but even with cheap prices, I still expect things to work as advertised, I expect there to be a DO NOT DISTURB sign available and that housekeeping obeys it.  And, especially with this being New England, I expect them to know how to properly plow and shovel their parking lot to make it safe for guests to move about.  Finally, I expect the owner and the staff to be polite.

Do NOT stay here.  We are going to Old Sturbridge Village again this weekend, and, looking for budget lodgings, we are giving the Super 8 up the road a try.  That place got good reviews on other sites, we shall see how that goes!

Wow, they must have a huge turnover at this dump.  I quit renting DVDs there a long time ago, because I was accused, by their staff, not ONCE, but TWICE, of not returning DVDs that I did indeed return.  They called me on the phone, sent me nasty postcards, and threatened to sue me to pay for movies that I'd returned.  The movies in question were obscure ones where they only had one copy, and I could prove that I returned them by going there and showing them the returned movie ON THE SHELF.

The staff was very rude and refused to stop harassing me, I had to call Blockbuster's (non-toll-free) corporate number to get this settled so that they would not sue me over this.

I know that they've since changed to a more Netfix-y business model, but the damage has already been done.  I will NEVER patronize Ballbuster again, certainly NOT the one in Malden.  Once a business treats me like garbage, there is little they can do to get me back.

Theresa,  I live in Malden, too, and I used to order Papa John's online for delivery all the time.  Then one day, I tried to order, and the website said "no delivery store found".  I was royally pissed.  I tried calling them and no one answered the phone.  And when I tried the store locator on the website, that location is no longer listed.

My husband was driving past it one night, and he stopped to check it out.  He said there was a sign on the door saying that it was closed for renovations.  No word as to whether it will reopen as Papa John's, or some other pizza place.  The Papa John's sign was still there.

This was back in August, before you wrote your post.

I hope they open back up as a delivery store, as I really love their pizza.

Try living in this town and hoping to get mail delivered here.  I'm expecting my digital TV converter box coupons in the mail this week; others I know (in other towns) have ordered them at the same time I have and have received them already.  But I wonder if I will EVER get mine.  TWICE this week, there was NO EVIDENCE of a mail carrier even coming to this neighborhood...NOBODY got ANY mail at all.  This happens on a regular basis around here.

We've had so much trouble with this post office that we were forced to get a P.O. box in another town.  That works well, except that we can't get the DTV coupons sent to it...has to be a street address.

The postmaster there is a nasty piece of work.  He once called me up and yelled at me because I wrote a letter to Congressman Markey to complain about his lousy post office.  The issue that time was them refusing to deliver mail to my husband after he moved in with me...and he DID put in the change of address thing.

The letter to Rep. Markey did work, because all of a sudden, hubby's mail did start coming here.  But still, half it it was lost of manged, so we opted to stay with the P.O. box.

I will be writing to Rep. Markey again if I don't get my DTV converter box coupons by the end of next week.  This is ridiculous, and this post office needs to either get a new postmaster or be shut down.

Hate, hate, hate them.  Can't wait until we can move!

I'm with Steve N. here.  I used to really like this show, but now, it seems to be nothing but an hour-long *infomercial*.  And it's always for the same old same old handful of crappy places.

I also agree about their message board.  It's too heavily moderated, and not in the right way.  Apparently, you can't say ANYTHING bad about Phantom Gourmet Inc, but posts that bash other posters are approved.

And don't even get me going about their Food Festival!  I went to this the first year, and we got NOTHING out of it.  And now they are charging $40 this year, and probalby with the same small handful of crappy places that pay them.

I don't bother with that show much anymore...I only watch it if I am bored and have nothing better to do at the moment.