Funny that this thread hit my feed last night. I don’t have a special story to tell, but every summer my buddy and I go to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin to Road America to watch some racing. We used to camp but we’re in our mid thirties now so I’m a bit over sleeping outside in the summer. We’ve stayed in some cheap hotels before because that’s really all my buddy can afford. No big deal, don’t wanna break the bank for him so I’m down staying in a subpar hotel.

Cue me reading this thread last night and remembering I booked at the Super 8 Motel in Sheboygan. I go back to my booking and look at the reviews. Reports of bed bugs, holes in the walls, broken AC, ground level windows without locks, all that. Also reports of sketchy people hanging out in the parking lot all hours of the night, drinking and yelling. I find a slightly better place nearby but not that much better. Then I decided to expand my search radius to include Fond Du Loc. I find a place that looks fancy as fuck with an average review score of 9.4/10 on Hotels.com called the Hotel Retlaw. It’s $20 more each per night (4 night stay).

At this point I have 3 hours left to cancel my Super 8 Motel reservation before I can’t get a refund. I call my buddy, send him a link to the Hotel Retlaw, and said dude, I will cover the difference for you ($80 extra each if you are down for me to switch it up). He agrees immediately, I cancel the reservations at the shit box motel and book these. I’m out an extra $160 total but that’s SO worth it for a nice place to stay, especially when we’re outside sweating all day. The whole weekend ticket is only $160 so it’s not an expensive vacation.

I leave tomorrow morning so I’ll report back about it if I remember, but if you read all this, look up those two places and tell me how different they look for an insignificant price increase. I have a feeling if I didn’t read this thread and go search again, I’d be posting here after this weekend about getting bed bugs or some shit.