Twin Star Lodge

I'm very unhappy with this place from check-in through checkout. We had to pick the cheapest option we could find, and the stay was awful. I usually understand that cheaper places may be lower quality, but this was one problem after another. The front desk room smelled bad every time I went in. It was a food smell, and its strength varied. I'd prepaid on Expedia for a week. The night clerk first told me the deposit was $50, charged my card $53 for it, then said it had declined because the deposit was $63. I pointed out the $50 amount on a lobby sign, and we argued over what it said. Something didn't seem right. Work money was tight because we hadn't been paid yet for our Mardi Gras production jobs. I told him to cancel that charge and put through $63, but he charged $60 without returning the $53. Both charges are still pending. The double charge meant my partner and I couldn't buy lunch or dinner the next day. The changing amounts weren't a language issue. I repeated each one back to make sure I'd heard correctly. We stayed a week and housekeeping never came in to take the trash or replace towels, coffee, and soap. Our room was beside the laundry room, so we heard everything going on. One morning, workers woke us extremely early while putting new plywood on the covered upstairs walkway outside people's doors. Maybe I'm being touchy, but they could've been mindful about the time and noise. We sometimes work overnight, and others may keep that schedule too. We were given just one room key, so I had to ask the office for a second because we're two people and don't always keep the same hours. The clerk acted like he didn't want to give me one. Then I was looking in my car's back seat and heard a golf cart pull up. Through the back window I saw the maintenance man stop and stare at my butt, though it was hard to see under my baggy clothes. I leaned back to look him in the face, and he turned away and drove off. Ever since, seeing him outside makes me uncomfortable and worried he might be staring at or following me. Craziest motel experience I've had. The TV reset every time we turned it on, with the volume all the way up, which was abrasive and annoying, especially at night when we were trying to keep noise down.

The staff were kind, and that was the one good part of the stay. The room itself was in awful shape: roaches in the drawers, hair on the wall, stains I couldn't identify, and cracks in both the sink and lampshade. The dresser drawer dropped into the one below it, and the bed creaked whenever I sat down. The doors were filthy, too. There was no ice, the washing machine was broken, and the air conditioner made such a loud noise that it woke me every few minutes. Workers woke us early as well. I tried to get a refund so we could stay somewhere else, but got nowhere. I don't usually complain, but this was too much. I wish I could post the photos I took. The ad was very misleading. I asked for a three-star place, and this is what I got. There is no way it deserves three stars. There were also camera wires running along the sidewalk and taped across the lobby floor. I could keep going, but that's enough.

The location was a big plus, across from Waffle House with a view of the Beaurivage. The room was clean, and not having carpet helped. For the price, I would have rated it five stars: everything I needed worked, including the unusually large refrigerator, hairdryer, iron and ironing board, and microwave. The only broken item was the door interlock, the kind of latch that used to be a chain, which had snapped off. What brought my rating down was the extra $25 they charged when I added one day to my stay, on top of their usual rates. If you book a stay and leave as planned without changing anything, you probably won't have trouble.

The room was hot and humid, and I wasn't convinced it had been cleaned. The TV didn't work either, and some of the people around the place looked sketchy, which made me uncomfortable. Breakfast was supposed to run from 7:00 to 9:30, but at 8:29 the doors still hadn't even opened. This place was genuinely terrible.