This is going to be a bit of a story so hang with me if you can:

TLDR at bottom

I arrived at Doubletree at the Colonnade on Monday Nov. 4, 2019. I had a long drive in and wanted to take a bath since I had booked a room with a "Jacuzzi Tub". Once I unpacked I began getting the bath ready when I noticed that there wasn't a stopper for the drain in the tub. It was getting late and I didn't feel like going through the trouble of requesting one, so I just went to bed.

In the morning I went down to the front desk on my way out and requested a bathroom stopper for my room. The man at the desk shook his head and said he would have one brought to my room - though I could tell he didn't seem to really care or even understand what I was saying.

When I returned to the hotel later than night, I checked my bathroom and of course, no stopper. So this time I called down to the front desk. When the phone was finally picked up after 10-15 seconds of ringing, I asked "Is there supposed to be a stopper for the bathtub?" (In case I was being naive and there was a stopper built in somehow.) The woman that answered quickly said "I'm not sure let me check on that for you." She then proceeded to put me on hold.

After about 10 minutes of being on hold I figured she had forgotten about me so I hung up the phone and called back. "Hi, I called about the bathroom stopper a little bit ago, did you check on that?" "Yes I have maintenance coming up to put one in for you." She said. Before I could say much else she quickly hung up the phone - somewhat rudely, without apologizing for keeping me on hold for the past 10 minutes.

Another few minutes went by and a maintenance man knocked on my door. He came in and installed the stopper and left. At this point I was just happy this was over since I had plans to meet colleagues for dinner soon.

I hopped in the "Jacuzzi Tub" (which is just a regular bathtub with a few holes that shoot water - nothing special at all) and set the timer for the jets to 15 minutes. The timer is located over on the wall above the sink, so if you had wanted to turn off the jets or extend the time, you'd have to get out of the tub to do so - a pretty dumb design in my opinion.

After a few minutes went by, I began to notice some discolored greenish brown bubbles floating around the tub. At first I figured it was just my eyes adjusting after having closed them for a couple minutes trying to relax, but as the minutes went by there are more and more of these bubbles starting to clump together. It almost looked like some type of pond scum or something of the sort - certainly not something you'd want to see surrounding you in your bath tub.

Well, that's disgusting, I thought - but at that point I had worked so hard to get a damn bath going that I decided to finish whatever was left on the Jacuzzi timer then shower off whatever the hell these green bubbles were.

After another 5 minutes or so the timer ended and the jets stop making noise. This is when I heard a faint voice yelling "Hello??? Are you there?" At first I had thought I left the TV on, but I then realized it was coming from the other direction outside of the bathroom. I yelled back "Yes? Why?". The anonymous man at my door yelled in "Is there a leak in there?" I looked around the inside of the tub briefly and say "No, I don't think so?" But then I looked outside of the tub (duh) and saw that my bathroom floor was completely covered in water.

"Oh.. Yeah there is, let me get dressed and then you can come in okay?" I said to the man at my door. He agreed and I began to dry off and wipe off the green slime. I stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around me and the same maintenance man who had installed my stopper was standing at the door staring at me. I repeated myself: "Let me get dressed, then you can come in, okay?" He said okay, promptly left and closed my door.

I finished drying off, quickly got dressed, and went to the door to let him back in. He was no where to be found... I waited for a few minutes and when he eventually came back he told me that the person below me had reported water dripping into his bathroom, going all over the place. He then told me that he would have to move me and the person below me into different rooms. "I guess that's why there was no stopper in the bathtub to begin with..." I said. He didn't have an answer to that one.

Before he left to retrieve keys for my new room, I told him about the green/brown bubbles that were floating around the tub. I even took pictures and showed him. He said "Oh that's probably just because people don't use the tub that often and rust builds up in the pipes - I guess I will have to run the tubs like once a week or something to get everything out of the pipes." That's disgusting, I thought to myself. Not only were the bubbles not rust colored but all you're going to do about it is flush it out every once in a while? Yikes.

On his way out the door I told him that this experience hasn't been the greatest and I'd appreciate an upgrade in rooms. He said he would see what he could do and headed down to the front desk.

Waiting for him the return, I packed everything up (drawers and closet full of clothes, bathroom amenities, electronics, charging cables, devices, food, drinks, etc.) Once packed I waited around for him to return for about 10 minutes.

"Okay we have you all switched over to a new room and I definitely got you an upgrade." He said. Cool, I thought, at least I would have an upgraded room after all this trouble.

We then exited my room and went straight across the hall to my "upgraded room". When I walked in, I noticed immediately that it is literally the exact same room, just mirrored opposite - and with a TV about half the size. "This is the exact same room - just opposite" I said to him. "Oh, maybe, I'm not sure I haven't been here that long and I haven't seen all the rooms." "It's fine" I said, just trying to get this over with since I had to leave for dinner in a few minutes.

Once he had left, I started to think on it a bit more and decided that I really did deserve an upgraded room for all this trouble I had been put through. I called down to the front desk once again. The woman at the front desk immediately put me on hold for about 10 minutes. Once she finally picked the phone back up, she started off by saying "Sorry about the wait, it is so busy right now and I'm the only one working right now." Side note: That sucks for her, but it's not an excuse for poor service in any way (management take note to create better shift schedules).

"Well, I hate to say I'm not going to make your life any easier right now, but I really am disappointed with the room I was just put in after my bathroom was leaking and I would like to actually have an upgrade in rooms." I said. "I did upgrade you, you're now in a queen suite" she retorted. I replied by telling her that my room was literally identical in every way to my first room, it was just flipped the other way. She said that she would check her system to make sure there wasn't an error about the room type and that she would call me back with an upgraded room.

At this point I was about to be late for dinner so without being able to shower off whatever I had bathed in earlier, I changed into my dinner attire and waited for her to call back. After another 10 minutes go by my phone finally rang. She requested that I go down to the front desk to get my new room keys - then promptly hung up.

So I again packed everything up then dragged it all down to the lobby to get my third set of room keys. I exchanged my previous room keys for the new ones. During the exchange she barely looked at me, obviously very flustered and overwhelmed. I looked at the number on the paper key folder and saw that my third room was literally the room right next to the others I had been staying in. Meaning I had to drag all of my stuff down to the lobby, then drag it all back up just to move over one room.

When I opened the door to my third room I felt a little better seeing that this was an actual upgrade in rooms - about what I was expecting from the first "upgrade". At this point I was already late for dinner, so I quickly threw everything inside the bedroom and left.

When I returned later that night I thought that I would finally be getting the Jacuzzi bath that I had been longing for. When I went into the bathroom I noticed that once again the tub is just a regular bathtub with some silver holes. This one was a little deeper than the first, and had a golden colored faucet (as if that resembles high-end hardware or something?). Disappointed, I decided to just shower off in the morning and promptly went to sleep.

My alarm was set for around 7:00 AM, but unfortunately another alarm in another room was somehow set to a much earlier time (I did not set this alarm, despite being in two rooms close-by - I only use my phone for alarms). At around 6:00 AM I was awakened by the sound of a beeping alarm in an adjacent room - apparently one with no occupants as it took an hour for someone from maintenance to come in and shut it off - very much a rude awakening.

Annoyed and tired I went to my work conference for the day. When I returned that night I was incredibly tired and frustrated - all I wanted to do was take a bath in my "upgraded" room. I filled up the tub and turned on the jets - trying to finally relax. I closed my eyes and just as before, right on cue, my tub was infested by floating green bubbles.

Unbelievable, I thought. This time my tub seemed to be less porous than before - so at least the water stayed inside the tub. I went ahead and showered off the pond scum and dried off. I hadn't had the will to unpack anything, as this was my last night in this godforsaken hotel so I just went to bed feeling bewildered and disgusted. I left early in the morning - never to return.

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I did get a survey/rating form sent to me about my stay. After an extremely poor rating, someone had called me and left a message asking to talk, but I didn't have the energy at that point to articulate everything in this post.

If someone from DoubleTree/Hilton would like to reach out to me, I stayed in room 336, 337 (briefly), and 338 during the first week in November.

In summary, if you do a lot of lake/pond swimming, you'll feel right at home here.

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TLDR; Jacuzzi bathtubs exude green/brown bubbles/slime (2 of 2 tubs tested), bathtubs leak everywhere (1 of 2 tubs tested) - draining into other guests' bathrooms, hotel is understaffed and staffed by people who don't know what to do in certain situations, changing from one room to the exact same room is considered an upgrade, alarms go off in other rooms with no one in them that take staff an hour to shut off.

Nice people, this hotel has probably seen better days. Wifi doesn’t work in the rooms, restaurant is nice, breakfast is great, crab cakes were questionable. Liked the staff a lot. Great location - across from Johns Hopkins.