I promised a followup on the good, the OK, and the ugly of accessibility on our last few legs of the trip. Between staying with friends in Massachusetts and Oregon, we stayed in fine motels in Cleveland, Davenport, Rapid City, Billings, and Boise. The overall score — Good: 3, OK: 1, Ugly: 1. We start with three places below with easy parking, flat thresholds, and roll-in showers. None had doors that stayed open on their own.
Red Roof Inn, Cleveland, Ohio — Good
Each room had dedicated parking and a flat path up to the room. This one gets the top prize for the spacious bathroom.
Super 8 by Wyndham, Davenport, Iowa — Good
A close contender for top honors. Though we didn’t partake, note the pool had accommodation for the disabled.
Super 8 by Wyndham, Rapid City, South Dakota — Good
One unusual aspect — the accessible rooms were not on the first floor, but down this lovely ramp. Note also the extra shin-level phone in the bath!
Red Lion Hotel, Billings, Montana — OK
This was just ok because of the standard bath, which is of course fine for a range of abilities especially with the added grab bars.
This feature would have elevated it back up to good — had it worked!
Inn America, Boise, Idaho — Ugly
OK, we booked an accessible room with accessible bathroom a month in advance. They sent us to this room, clearly not even close to accessible.
Back to the front desk, where we were assured we got an accessible room … see, it says “Communication assistance”! This means a room for the deaf. First, even that was untrue — such a room would have have an exterior bell with a flashing light inside, a similar visual fire alarm, etc. This room had nothing.
Back to the front desk … to paraphrase: “oh, well, you see, all the accessible rooms have Queen beds and you booked a room with a King and the one thing we can’t change in assigning a room is the type of bed”. I checked; the listing says “King, accessible”.
I got a printout from the computer they worked from, where the accessibility requirements were clear. But there was simply nothing they could do for us, and they were so very sorry. There was at least an accessible bathroom in the hallway, sigh.
I felt sorry for a late night shift that were clearly unprepared and unable to do anything, but that didn’t stop a poor review, and I reported it through hotels.com where I did the booking. It was taken seriously — I got a formal response, a refund, a future voucher, and a belief they will work with the hotel on standards; who knows. I will likely avoid Inn America in the future since I know of others with poor experiences with this chain.