Holiday Inn Express Madison Square Garden New York

We had reserved a non-smoking 2 double bed room for 3 days, all pre-paid on my credit card weeks prior to our trip.

Upon arrival at the hotel, we found out the only room available was a smoking room with one king size bed. They had overbooked. We slept 4 people on a king size bed that night! They did not even have any extra blankets to provide us, nor were they very apologetic about the situation. Upon speaking to the manager the next day, we were told that the room type is only a 'request' and is not guaranteed, and there was no compensation b/c the king size bed room is the same price as 2 double beds. All of it sounded pretty unreasonable to me, epecially since I had already prepaid the whole amount, but we let it go so as not to ruin our vacation.

The next day they switched us to a 2 double bed room. As we were getting ready for bed that night, there was a knock on the door. My mom went over to the peep hole and saw 3 men standing on the other side. She was about to open the door when to our surprise the door began to open. They had a key to the room! The door was opened halfway before the man saw my mom standing there, he said 'sorry' and hastly shut the door. We were pretty freaked out. We talked to the front desk and they were concerned as well, after calling around they found that some workers had been instructed to enter to 'clean the room' by mistake. Mistake or no mistake, what kind of hotel does housekeeping at night? Night time is exactly when hotel guests would be in their rooms rather than out. It was already past midnight at that time, we could have been sleeping and 3 strange men were coming into our room. I shudder at the thought.

The key cards kept on malfunctioning and we had to get them reset at the front desk multiple times. Probably we put them too near our credit cards or what not, I heard that older key card systems are sensitive that way, but it was quite annoying. The other 2 hotels we stayed at during our trip did not have this problem.

Pros about this hotel:
1)cheap
2)good location, convienent and good shops/food closeby, safe, close to subway
3)breakfast included and tea and water available all day
4) a couple parking garages right next door at a reasonable price (for NYC)
5)Clean and updated rooms and bath. not very big but it is NYC.
6)internet cafe and workout room in the basement was nice

You get what you pay for, take a chance if you will. This hotel is hit and miss.