View Single Post
Old 01-14-2011 | 07:38 PM
  #57000  
DAL 88 Driver's Avatar
DAL 88 Driver
At home on the maddog!
 
Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 2,874
Likes: 0
From: Retired (mandatory age 65)
Default

Originally Posted by KC10 FATboy
I don't know why people complained about the MCO hotel. The hotel was clean, in a safe area, and it was located near everything you could possibly want via the city trolley. The timing of the trolley was reasonable and I believe it was free. And of course, the free hotel cookies !!!

Newport News, not so much. My room had boogers on the wall, and the mold growing in the wall paper was an added touch. The closet doors were off the hinges and stacked up against the wall. The chair in the room was torn in multiple places, and had many prominent bodily stains (edited to keep a PG rating). The hotel's restaurant (and that's an insult to call it a restaurant), served the worst breakfast bar and food I've ever had from a hotel.

But it gets better. Within reasonable walking distance, you have a steakhouse (which wasn't recommended that we go there by the hotel staff) that opens after 6pm, a pancake house, and a gas station. The pancake house owner says to me as I walk in, "you must be a Delta MD88 pilot?" "Yes, I am, how did you know that?" "Because NOBODY walks down this road but you guys." You don't even have fast food options available. Everything else requires a car because of the distance and/or the sidewalks end.

The insult to injury is that the ride to the hotel takes a minimum of 20 minutes; yet, there are malls, shopping, entertainment, good hotels, every restaurant you would want located ONE exit away from the airport. Go figure.
Yeah, that layover just never made any sense to me. There is a McDonald's within about a 20 minute walk from the hotel. Other than that, you pretty much covered it. There used to be a BBQ place down the street too, but I think it went out of business. The first time I stayed there, the van driver recommended the BBQ... he was really raving about it. It tasted like (but not quite as good as) that BBQ in a plastic container you buy in the grocery store. I'm not surprised they went out of business.