Crystal Inn Eatontown

We left after one night out of the five we’d booked. The room we first got had hair in the bed, sticky stuff on the nightstand, mold in the shower, marks on the wall, and dirt across the floor. The woman at check-in moved us to a room that looked better, but there was still hair in the bed. It smelled of smoke, and our nonsmoking room had cigarette burns on both the blanket and chair. The staff were nice, but the cleaning was awful. After several calls with Expedia and the hotel, we did get a refund. I wouldn’t stay here.

The staff were extremely friendly, and for the price the room was decent. I only needed somewhere to sleep, and it did the job. The hotel was busy, though, and people kept leaning against and knocking on my room window. Wi-Fi worked for browsing, but I wouldn’t count on it for gaming or watching videos. The TV setup was all third-party streaming, with no cable or regular channels, and the picture quality felt like something from the early 2000s on a flat screen.

Noise and the way staff handled it made this a miserable stay. At 10 PM, people in the room next door started playing loud music and talking. I called the desk three times before midnight. On the first call at 11:20 PM, the agent said she’d call them. By 11:35 PM it was still going, and although she said she had called, she offered no other help. I asked her to come upstairs and hear it herself. At 11:45 PM, with the noise still keeping me from sleeping, she sounded annoyed, cut me off to say, “I am in the middle of checking. It's really busy night,” and hung up. Nobody offered to move me or otherwise deal with it, and the disturbance went on past midnight. That was an extreme failure of guest service and security. There were problems before that, too. The first room had a strong, lingering stale cigarette smell, so I had to change rooms. When I arrived around 3 PM, some guests were visibly drunk, smoking, and talking loudly in the courtyard/pool area. Their voices carried through the hotel. In the second room, I found a sticky stain on the nightstand and hair on the bathroom wall, which felt like basic housekeeping had been missed. Between the hygiene issues, disruptive noise, and appalling late-night response, I strongly advise booking somewhere else, even if it costs a little more. I’ll never return.

The staff were professional, which really helped make this older place feel a bit classier. I was glad to find it for a last-minute night or two. The room was clean, and the beds were comfortable. There weren’t any bugs. The furniture looks updated, though there’s no art on the walls, and the renovation work seems poorly done. You can tell they’re trying to look after an older building. For a short stay, it was good.