Heading To California: Thumbs Down

Greetings from the Comfort Suites Hotel at Port Columbus Airport (CMH), Columbus, OH. Karen and I are staying overnight in order to make an early morning departure tomorrow. We're flying into Sacramento via Denver.

United Air Lines (Thumbs Down)
Several months ago we purchased tickets on United Air Lines that had us departing Columbus at 10:30 AM with a non-stop return flight departing at 7:30 AM. Recently, United sent us a very friendly email saying they'd canceled the flights we'd purchased tickets for and had assisted us by booking us on other flights. How nice. We're now departing Columbus at 6 AM and our non-stop was replaced by a two stop flight leaving Sacramento at 5:30 AM.

Comfort Suites (Thumbs Down)
The hotel we've used before at CMH is closed so I made reservations at the Comfort Suites, just past the Hilton and Hampton Hotels all of which are only a half mile from the airport ticket counter. We checked in and the clerk directed us to carry our bags up the broad sweeping staircase to our second floor room. I asked, don't you have an elevator? And the clerk said, "No." End of discussion. No offer of help, no Bell Cap, no anything other than a "if you don't like it, lump it" attitude.

So I lugged six weeks' worth of luggage up to our room and literally had to kick the door like a cop on a drug bust to get it to swing open once the key had unlocked it. It seems the door has dropped out-of-square by over half an inch and they need to shave off even more of the upper right corner of the door than they already have.

No in-house restaurant of course, but they do have a call-out room service the details of which, once you read the fine print of the timing and cost, helps you quickly realize hotel management doesn't want you to eat here any more than they want you to sleep here.

So we used the toilet in our room and went to the only restaurant at the Airport (outside of the airport terminal), McDonald's. (Note: when we returned from McDonald's an hour later, the toilet in our room was still flushing.)

Also our door butts up to the main entry from our hallway into the hotel lobby so every time ANY of the guests in our wing of the hotel leaves or enters...We know it as the door slams closed.

McDonald's, Port Columbus Airport (Thumbs Down)
As the ONLY publicly accessible restaurant outside of the airport terminal we felt McDonald's would be a safe alternative to the Comfort Suite's "call out" room service.

No problem there until we sat down to eat our food. Karen's chicken snack-wrap had a portion of chicken the size of a rejected McNugget. My Ranch BLT with Grilled Chicken had a similar sized piece of meat in it. The entire chicken piece pulled out of the bun on my third bite and all I had left was 3/4 of a bun with wilted lettuce and a smashed tomato slice. The bacon strips tasted like fish.

There were two catchup dispensers in the restaurant, one of which was broken/empty and the other one was pumping its remaining last drops. The manager (he wore the tie) kept mopping the floor in front of the drink bar and main entrance making it rather risky to enter/leave the restaurant or to get the beverages/condiments/napkins required for a civilized meal. We each tried a McFlurry for dessert but the staff couldn't decide who was going to make them, then once they made them they couldn't find the caramel to finish them, and then they had to send someone to find the guy they sent to find the caramel.

There's a reason we've only eaten at McDonald's twice in our ten years of marriage.

At least our room at the hotel has a window facing the runway so I can watch the airplanes taking off...

Stay tuned. Lord willing, we'll be posting from Grass Valley, California tomorrow.

Now, where did we put the Tums?