What's the worst hotel you've ever seen? And why is it the worst?

[fishwax]

19. at one cheap motel in Salt Lake, my key unlocked other rooms in the hotel

So I had to assume that other people's keys could also unlock my room. I discovered this by accident when coming back from a trip to the car and the ice machine. I was counting doors after the stairs instead of looking at numbers, and I guess I went up the wrong set of stairs. I unlocked the door, stepped inside, and the shower was on--which surprised me, because when we first got into the room my wife had commented on how disgusting the bathroom/shower were, and said she thought she'd feel dirtier after showering than she already did. Anyway, I walked towards the bed and then it dawned on me that something was amiss--and then I realized I was in the wrong room. Yikes. I fled the room and went back to my own, where we slept with one eye open (and on top of the bedspread, because the thought of getting between the sheets in that roach motel was not pleasant).

We shouldn't have bothered with a room that night. Would have been better off sleeping in the car. But we had driven all night the night before and then had our lodging plans for the first night fall through, so we were really needing sleep, and this was during the Olympics, so there weren't a lot of vacancies to choose from.

That was the worst I ever stayed in ... the worst I ever saw was a motor lodge in Bakersfield. It was another desperate situation--we'd been driving all day, and were dead tired at one in the morning, just wanting a place to stay. And this was one of only two places with an apparent vacancy. There was a window in the bathroom that wouldn't close, and a window in the bedroom with a curtain that only covered half the window. The bed wasn't made--the sheet had popped off one edge revealing a rather stained mattress. Stains also on the floor and on the half-a-curtain. The whole room reeked of turpentine. We got our money back and hit the road--wound up driving all night and most of the next day until we were home.