Best Western Marina Hotel & Conference Center

Sanford, Florida

This is the Best Western Marina Hotel & Conference Center, in Sanford, FL. The photo above comes from the Best Western website.

We had the opportunity to stay there a few months ago, in the fall of 2001, while we were waiting for the Auto Train. We were delayed a day from our originally-planned departure, and so we reserved this room at the last minute through American Express. Amex gave this place a three-star rating, so we were expecting it to be pretty nice. We wound up paying $80, or $5 more than we'd paid the night before to stay in the four-star-rated Westin in the middle of Orlando, which was very nice indeed.

Maybe it is, on average. But the place was almost totally vacant when we were there -- the parking lot was empty and we only ran into a couple other guests -- and they were handing out weenie rooms. That might explain why they were so empty, come to that.

Every hotel has these "weenie" rooms. Every one. they're the rooms you get if you show up with no reservation at 10:00 p.m. on a busy night; or if you're paying $1.98 on the Expedia Bargain Express. It's logistically impossible to keep every part of a large establishment in tip-top shape all the time, so there's no point in really trying. You repair things as quickly as you can, and the rooms that are temporarily out-of-order, you rent dead last.

We were surprised, then, to proceed to our room through the empty parking lot and to discover that you could see daylight around the top and side of the door when it was closed. Since our room was about 40 feet from the shore of the lake, this meant that there was this constant whoooooooooooooo-ooooooooo noise the entire time.

Since the only way to ventilate the room was to open the door, though -- the window was just a big pane of glass that didn't open, and there was no fan in the bathroom -- I suppose the draft had its benefits.

And it ventilated the bathroom, too, because much of the bottom of the door had rotted away:

The rottenness of the door distracted you from the dirtiness of the tile -- the bathmat you see there wound up black on the backside -- so that was okay, too.

The room was equipped with a minibar. Unfortunately, the minibar was not, in turn, equipped with any snacks, drinks, etc. Further, I was almost afraid to open the thing, since there seemed to be some structural problem with it and the countertop. In this photo, you can see the front face of the countertop attempting to free itself from the rest of the fixtures, perhaps preparatory to seeking its fortune in a better motel:

Oh, and the towel-rack in the bathroom was, it seems, thinking along similar lines:

After a while, it broke free of the wall entirely and dropped the towels on the floor. Good thing the Best Western Marina Hotel and Conference Center is stingy with the towels.

When we needed a couple extra pillows -- there were two standard-size pillows provided for the king-size bed -- we were told that there was only one extra pillow in the entire place, and that we were welcome to come pick it up at the front desk.

And I think this place wound up charging us $1.00 each for local phone calls. Hey, in a place like this, you've got to expect such charges. Doubtless the high-rollers who normally stay here don't notice the gouging -- they're too busy swinging from the towel-racks and guzzling the contents of the mini-bars.

On the plus side, the Best Western Marina Hotel and Conference Center had some of the friendliest, most helpful hotel staff we've encountered recently. The desk clerk gave us duct tape, the maids gave us wire hangers, and the maintenance chief lent us his personal hydraulic jack, all so we could repair our car in the parking lot.

In the end, I would recommend the Best Western Marina Hotel and Conference Center in Sanford to those travelling in British cars; others are advised to avoid the place. The friendliness and helpful attitude of the staff is not enough to entirely make up for the fact that the place is obviously falling down.