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Introducing the
Grand Prize Winner
of a $5,000 quiet getaway
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Andrea Spears
Eden Prairie, Minnesota
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Congratulations to Andrea Spears, Grand Prize Winner of the AmericInn® Noisy Neighbor Contest! Her story, The 3 a.m. Shower, won her a quiet getaway of her choice: a $5,000 AmericInn MasterCard® gift card, a pair of Sharper Image™ Quiet Place™ Noise Cancellation Technology headphones and a set of soothing audio CDs. Safe travels, Andrea.
Every room in every one of our 210 locations is built with AmericInn SoundGuard™ construction, so you
can avoid the bane of travelers everywhere: the Noisy Neighbor.
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Weekly Winners:
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Week 1 Winner
Story: The 3 a.m. Shower
I was on a business trip and was anxious about meeting my new client. I wanted to make sure I woke up and was on time the next day. I heard an alarm go off. Usually, I hit the snooze button. But without looking at the time, I rolled over, turned off the alarm and headed for the shower. I felt so tired. The shower was not waking me up, but I kept moving. I brushed my teeth, put in my contacts and started to dry my hair when I noticed how dark it was. Finally, I looked at the clock. It was 3:15 a.m. I headed back to bed for 3 additional hours of sleep. Luckily, I remembered to turn my alarm back on!
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Week 2 Winner
Story: Snoring Walls
Deadheading across the US from LA to Atlanta. Six to 800 miles a day, all alone. I was exhausted. Smoking or no smoking - I didn't care. Single or double - just give me a room (it was a double). It's 2 am and I'll be between the sheets quicker than a Waffle House can flip an egg. Key in the door, never touched the light switch, and the bed felt great.
Then the SNORING! Bang on the wall above my headboard. SNORING! Bang again. SNORING LOUDER! Worse than my dad. Then it hit me - the snoring wasn't next door. It was in the double bed beside me. The hotel clerk had given me the pass key to an occupied room. The lump in the next bed was every bit of 300 pounds. He (or she) was obviously off in dream land and never noticed my quick departure.
Back to the car and successfully protested the charge to my MasterCard. Priceless!
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Week 3 Winner
Story: SLEEPING IN THE LOBBY
On a trip to Boston, my wife and I stayed at a hotel close to Boston University. We were visiting our son that weekend. When we finally got to our room for the evening and settled in bed for the night, we were kept awake for two hours with a very noisy party below our room. We asked for our room to be changed since the party was to end early in the morning. When we got no help from the front desk, we appeared in the lobby, dressed in our PJ’s, with blankets and pillows. When asked what we were going to do, I told the front desk clerk “we were going to sleep in the lobby because it is quieter than our room.” Guests were coming into the hotel and were shocked. We got a new room, free breakfast, and did not have to pay for the room.
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Week 4 Winner
Story: Bubble bath blues
My most memorable noisy neighbor sleepless night happened last year while on a vacation in Florida. We were staying on the first floor of this hotel (that shall remain nameless) and our noisy neighbor was directly above us on the second floor. I don't know how to say this delicately, so I'll just say it - our noisy neighbor kept "tooting" in the bathtub, and you KNOW how that sound carries!! And it wasn't just once or twice, noooo!! This poor neighbor was having serious problems! The ones that got my family so tickled, though, were the long ones...you know, the kind that sound like a really large, lonely bullfrog. Our family had not laughed that much in a long, long time, and that sleepless night was worth it!
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Week 5 Winner
Story: Like a Virgin
My husband and I were traveling down the east coast staying at various chain hotels. When we arrived at one hotel outside of Boston, the manager at the front desk offered us an upgraded suite for the same price as a standard room, so naturally we took it. When we arrived to our room (at about 10pm), we heard terrible music and did not know where it was coming from. It turned out that the hotel had a bar that turned into a nightclub from 10pm-2am and it was directly below our room. The “contest of the night” was a karaoke contest for the best Madonna impersonator for her song “Like a Virgin”. We must have heard 50 different people sing that song throughout the course of the night. The upgraded suite would have been nice, but the music kept us up past 2am allowing us to get minimal sleep. What confused me was that first of all this hotel did not tell us about the “nightclub”, secondly why this hotel would actually have a suite built above the nightclub, and lastly why a nightclub would allow so many people to sing “Like a Virgin” on the same night!
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Week 6 Winner
Story: Bad Night In La La Land
My husband and I decided to spend our 20th anniversary with a simple observance. We would have dinner and spend the night at one of the down town hotels. At the hotel is when the "fun" starts. We get to our room and soon after start to here pounding like a bed hitting the wall. So immediately we think what we think. Anyway it continues harder and then we hear strange screaming. Now I'm scared my heart is beating out of chest and my husband's worried. So we call the front desk and tell them that someone's being assaulted next door. We lay on the floor until desk manager comes up. She hears it. She's scared too so she lays on the floor with us. We call police. Police arrive. They knock on the door no answer and the noise never stops. Police open the door and what do they see. Not one but two monkeys. Someone sneaked not one but two monkeys into the hotel room next to us and left them alone. The room was a mess which I will not describe. Well thats my story and I'm stickin to it.
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Week 7 Winner
Story: The Cats Next Door
After ten long hours of driving, we finally stopped to rest.
Not an nice hotel in sight...
The hotel clerk had half his teeth...toothpick dangling from his tongue.
He coughed and sputtered with such force, I thought he'd "lose a lung"!
We set our bags on the carpet-worn floor and flopped down on the bed.
The mattress, hard, felt as if it truly were made of lead.
Drifting off to sleep, a sound wailed in my ears.
I thought I'd dreamt of Halloween, awakening to real life fears.
Cats howling in the next room sent chills up and down my spine.
I looked at the clock and realized... it was 3:09!
A call to the desk clerk did no good...no one picked up the line.
The meowing continued in different tones, from shrieks to screeching whines.
At 5am we'd had enough, packing our bags in haste.
The key we left on the front desk counter...the clerk snoring on the chaise!
There's a lesson to be learned from my story...I hope it made you "howl."
The hotel with Sound Guard is the quiet place to stay...others can be quite foul!
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Week 8 Winner
Story: We Thought We Had a Ghost Visitor
We were spending the evening in a small hotel chain and had reserved two rooms, one for the boys and one for me and my husband. I always used a baby monitor just to make sure I would wake up. Almost immediately we heard strange sounds coming from the hand held device. It sounded like "ghost" sound. I was immediately worried about the safety of my children. I went to the other room and there were n noises to be heard. I went back in my room and still heard the very strange noise. Now I was scared. My first instinct was to get the boys up and go to a different room. But being the investigator that I am, I took the hand held and started walking around the room. The noise became louder closer to the windows. I ended up getting dressed and went outside of the hotel by the windows and again the noise became louder. I continued to walk in the direction where the monitor was clearer. It ended up I was picking up a conversation from a nearby home that had the same monitor. I have never been more freaked out in my entire life.
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Week 9 Winner
Story: Brace for Impact
After an endless day of meetings and interviews I checked into my hotel room to catch a few precious Z's before my early flight home. I was well on my way to a peaceful state of relaxation. Suddenly, outside my door, I heard a loud voice shout, "Brace for impact, brace for impact". Seconds later, the same voice shouted, "You, out of those seats; you, out of those seats!"
Stunned, trying to regain composure and clarity of the situation, the next set of commands followed with, "You, open that exit; you, open that exit!" Certain this was an evacuation of the hotel I proceeded to gather personal belongings. I heard the final command of "Sit, jump; sit, jump!" Finding this peculiar, I opened my door for further investigation. The outside hall was lined with a training class of fresh-faced, flight attendant hopefuls. Apologizing for shouting, they explained the practice of emergency drills for an exam in the morning. I didn't have the heart to call and complain about the noise. The next morning I was the most equipped passenger to handle any predicament on the flight and requested the emergency exit row upon seat assignment!
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Week 10 Winner
Story: My honeymoon soap opera
My husband and I stayed at an older hotel in New Orleans for our honeymoon. The room was "charming," a small room with basic furniture. The highlight of the room was the bathroom because the air vent in the wall provided an ongoing soap opera. When we entered the room, we thought someone was in the room because we heard voices loud and clear. First, a wife confessing to her husband about an affair she’d been having with his father! Later, the same confession from the wife to her mother-in-law. There was screaming, crying, confessions throughout the evening. It was fun for awhile, but it drew into the night. Would these people ever go out or shut up? My husband and I went out for awhile and toured around the French Quarter. We got back to our room but the saga continued. The wedding, the French Quarter, and the soap opera tired us out and we went to sleep. At 4AM there was a knock at our door. It was a hotel employee telling us that the people next door (aka the affair) had complained that my husband was snoring too loud and they could "hear it through the air vent"!
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