Budget Host Lafonda Motel

I travel between Arizona and Iowa often, and this is my favorite place to stop. It’s close to food, the staff are friendly, the rooms are clean, and the price is good. I’ve already booked a room for my drive back to Arizona in a few days. I recommend staying here and saving the money you’d spend at a big chain for something else.

The shower and tub didn’t look inviting, and the shower tiles seemed to have been painted, with the paint peeling off, so we chose not to shower. There were holes and stains on the curtains. The room door was so hard to open that I wondered whether we could get out in a fire. The bed was comfortable, though I’m not sure if it really was or if we were just desperate to stretch out after driving 800 miles that day. The sheets were too small and stained, even though they smelled fresh. I used my own pillow because the cases didn’t look clean. After all that, I’m surprised anyone rated this place better than poor.

We’d spent hours looking for an open hotel over several hundred miles and had been driving until 1 a.m. with four kids, so we were exhausted and desperate for a little sleep. None of us got any. The room had no working heat, the electrical outlets didn’t work, and both fire alarms kept sounding. We were told to remove their batteries, which hardly seemed safe. We ended up trying to stay warm in our winter jackets. The comforter also had a brown, unwashed liquid stain. I mentioned the problems at the front desk, but wasn’t offered any refund. We paid just $20 less than we’d paid for a Holiday Inn Suite the previous weekend. If we’d found another vacancy, we would not have stayed here.

We stayed for a week, and it was a terrible experience. The fridge never got cold, so our food spoiled, and the TV volume kept swinging wildly up and down. The shower water went from scalding hot to ice cold. We’d asked for the air to be turned on before arriving, but they didn’t do it, so our first night was unbearably hot. Somehow the room tax came to around 27%.