Howard Johnson Florence/Cincinnati Area

Negative 10 stars! We arrived thinking it would be a nice place to spend some time in the pool with our little one, and enjoy a relaxing few days. When we pulled in we though «this is not like the brochure»… And it only got worse. The parking lot was empty but we checked in anyway. The staff was terrible, there were NO CLOSETS at all, and we were told there were no suitcase stands by the manager, but then the owner said they did have them. Not a good start.
Anyhow, we booked the pirate ship room, thinking our son would love it! He did think it was neat, but we noticed the sticky floor right away. Upon pulling the sheets down we found hair of all sorts in the bed. There was a Cheeto in the bed as well. I was looking for somewhere to safely store valuables and found a pirate’s chest– however when I opened it there was trash of all sorts, cans, burger wrappers, etc. We went upstairs to the «lookout» and it the floor was covered in dry soda, the jacuzzi did not fill with water, the lights were burnt out, and the room was generally eerie with no natural light. We had no access to the outside world and it creeped my wife out, but hey– it was a pirate ship! Ha– the bathroom was decent, missing some trim but well lit. The toilet, however, hair from the nether regions of possibly multiple pair occupants. It was disgusting.
We had already walked through the «waterpark» which was nothing more than a broken down pool rusty gates, broken tiles, and peeling paint. The pool tables were rotten and old like they came from a vacant bar. The sauna was broken. Everything was dusty and dingy (a simple cleaning would do wonders for the atmosphere). The «tiki bar» was closed down and stuffed into a room near the pool. The baby pool did look decent, but it was too late! The waterfall was a hose running water into an oversized flower pot 20 feet above the pool. I can’t say enough about how horrible this place was! It looked like an old «abandoned hotels» photo from the Internet.
At that point we immediately loaded the car and went to the office and asked to leave and for a refund (we had been there 2 hours) and we were told our cars had already been charged and we could only get a refund for 50% of the total trip cost! What a joke– they charged us when we booked the room because they knew once we arrived we would want to leave, but they’d already have our money! The owner was yelling at the ONLY employee on site via telephone about no refunds. I did feel bad for the girl at the front desk, she was polite– but was put in a horrible position to deal with the surely irate customers and the wrath of disappointed fathers! Not to mention the fact that she was literally the only employee in the facility, very unsafe. All in all, I rate this as the worst experience I’ve ever had in a vacation. Anthony from «hotel impossible» needs to pay these people a visit. And Howard Johnson has their name on it, which should be embarrassing to them.
DO NOT STAY HERE! It is every bit as bad as the reviews say, there is no «maybe it’s not that bad»… It is. It probably was nice at one time, but it needs to be Bulldozed!

I would give this place a negative 5 stars. WTF Formally kknown as the Wildwood Inn the tropical dome is a disaster. My family has had Christmas eve here many times in the past. It has probably been 3 years since we’ve been. The pool was closed. The floors were all water. The pool tables had covers which also had water standing on them. The sauna was out of order. The front desk girls did open the pool once we asked about it. Our room was moldy, carpets wet, gnats everywhere. My aunt had the room next to ours and it smelled like an elephant was in there. We tried to have our party in the dome area and constantly getting dripped on from the leaking dome or condensation. The pool itself was gross. tiles falling or cracked, paint peeling from the bottom. the so called waterfall — was MIA. don’t go here… disgusting.
This is so sad because everyone knows about the Wildwood Inn and the themed rooms in Florence. It’s a shame that Howard Johnson chain would let something like this go. I’m shocked that it hasn’t been condemned. I’m going to write to Howard Johnson’s corporate. This makes them looked terrible and it hurts knowing such an awesome place with so many memories has been treated so poorly.

What is not to love the staff is friendly and the accommodations are great the best in the city!!!

HORRIBLE!!! My sister and I checked in at 6:30 and went to the room to let my daughter change into her bathing suit only to have an employee unlock the door and walk right in to see if she left her mop in there since she just «cleaned» the room before we checked in (Mind you, check in is at 4:00 so she had PLENTY of time to look for it beforehand) Anyway, we shrugged that awkward moment off and went on down to the pool… only to discover a nasty used bandaid stuck to the ledge of the swimming pool. Dismissing yet another turn-​off we let her enjoy the facility with the other children who were playing there. At around 9:30, we decided to go back to the room where I made my daughter shower immediately (I say shower, because there was no stopper to our tub so she couldn’t sit and enjoy an actual bath)… While she was cleaning up, my sister and I were getting settled in to our beds and not only were the comforters and blinds straight out of 1970, so were the cigarette burned sheets and chairs that went along with them. The sink wouldn’t drain… The hallway reeked and was hotter than a sauna. the air conditioner outside of our window was leaking (This problem was resolved via a cat litter box that was also being used as a trash receptacle.) How convenient! So after overlooking ALL of this… the 3 of us still decided to lay down to go to sleep for the night … It only took around 20 minutes for the first bug bite to appear… and then another… and another – and the itching worsened to the point we felt it necessary to pack up and talk to the front desk clerk (who we found out later was the «manager” – WHAT A JOKE! Not only did he dismiss our concerns, he absolutely would not budge on accommodating us to a «NICER» room. He instead, said he would give us a room (right down the hall) that had a pool view! Wow! We could look out our window at the disgusting bandaid infested pool now! No, we declined his offer and asked if we could be reimbursed since we had only actually been in our room for about 45 minutes. He wouldn’t comply so we told him to use our $ 100 that we put down on the room for new blankets and a visit from the ORKIN man. WE WILL NEVER GO BACK!

Terrible, just gross, everything is dirty and it was a crime how expensive it was, I would only pay five dollars at the most to stay here again, they deserve nobodies business unless they do something to fix these old rooms up.