Vacation and #BadMoonRising

On By Teri PolenIn Monday Share

Last week I mentioned we’d get into the gory details about our beach vacation from a couple weeks ago. As a reminder, the Polens aren’t known for having stellar, hassle-free vacations. A few examples – a cruise involving a hurricane, flooding/low temps in Hawaii, flight reservations canceled by people we’ve never met, questionable landing gear efficacy. Because of our history, most of our friends know not to travel with us. Let’s start on a positive note with the good things from our trip. The weather turned out much better than forecasted, and humidity was low. Below is a beautiful sunrise on the first day. After epic fails with restaurants the first few days, we enjoyed fabulous food the rest of the week. We had a wonderful day trip to Charleston, SC and took a fantastic food tour there. I read 3.5 books on the beach – woohoo! Any time with family is always good, and Son #1 and his girlfriend were with us.

Now for the not so good. I’d reserved a beautiful, updated condo at a resort we’ve stayed at many times over the past twenty years 3-4 months before our vacation. We’ve never encountered any problems in all that time. Upon checkin, we were given keys to a different condo, and I didn’t notice the discrepancy in the room number until we went into the condo. We immediately went back to the front desk and were informed the other condo was no longer available (I never received any advance notice) but weren’t given a reason why. Several other guests also seemed to be having similar problems.

The condo we’d been given was our only option. This one hadn’t been updated at all, the stovetop was something I didn’t want to touch let alone cook on, the dishwasher door was close to falling off, some of the floor tiles cracked when we walked across them, the kitchen was poorly stocked. Monday morning the A/C went out. To the resort’s credit, maintenance had it fixed within a few hours. Tuesday night the cockroaches showed up. Wednesday morning I called the front desk, and they promised to send someone to spray ASAP. We were in Charleston all day, and when we returned to the condo that evening I called the 24/7 front desk again to confirm pest control came. After four attempts of letting it ring over twenty-five times, I finally gave up.

The guest services manager offered to take 20% off our final bill, so that’s something. Maybe it’s new management, someone screwed up in the scheduling office – who knows? It was disappointing, but we made the best of it.

Moving on, openings are still available for Bad Moon Rising! If you missed the post last Monday and want to be featured, email me at tpolen6@gmail.com. Not sure what Bad Moon Rising is? Click HERE for more information. Have a fantastic week!

45 thoughts on “Vacation and #BadMoonRising”

    1. We were at Litchfield Beach Resort, but when we’ve stayed at HHI I’ve also used Island Getaways – always a good experience. We still had a wonderful week on the beach and in Charleston despite the problems.

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  5. What a debacle, Teri! It reminds me of my trip to Missouri where I got charged for a non-existent hotel room. I trust you left a review? If not, that is at least a way to voice the issues. We live in very different times with worker shortages everywhere and building supplies hard to come by (unless you’re building a high rise apartment complex). I love the photos and great that you got to read some books!!

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    1. I remember you mentioning the nonexistent hotel room! Hope you got that straightened out. I gave myself a week before leaving a review, but I posted it today. That sunrise was beautiful – the best that week, so I was glad I got pics that first morning.

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  6. Robbie Cheadle

    Hi Teri, it is disappointing when accommodation isn’t what you expected. On our most recent trip the place we stayed in Groot Marico was very rustic. It was clean and every thing worked so that was fine but there were no locks on the outside doors. That did my head in and I couldn’t sleep a wink.

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  15. I’ve had those horrible room switches. And the bug infestation. And many of your other issues. Glad you made limoncello out of the lemons you were given, but I’d still complain.

    The pics were lovely. And how nice that one of your sons (plus girlfriend) made the trip.

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    1. Exactly, Dan. If I’d had advance notice the original condo wasn’t available, I could have found another one. We’d already flown down, so we really had no other options. Someone dropped the ball on the communication for sure.

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  19. Bugs? Um…no. I might have camped out at the front desk until they found an acceptable remedy. I’m really glad you DID have some groovy times on vacation, but yeah, that’s not at all cool. Twenty percent isn’t enough to have to deal with all that. They should have comped the entire stay. Next time, smack someone in the head. (lol – jk)

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    1. We were gone all day, so that helped. Bugs don’t creep me out, but that doesn’t mean I want to share a condo with them. If it was snakes? Heads would roll! This stay was such a big disappointment compared to all the other wonderful years we’d been there, Sue. I’m hoping it’s just a one time glitch.

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  20. Victoria Zigler

    Glad there were some positives to the vacation, and that you did at least get a bit of a discount (though with the state of things I think it should have been more than 20% off personally).

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