[Kitsa]

I barely...barely...remember hotels in certain tourist traps that were vaguely like The Gobbler, although nowhere near as incredibly Gobbler-y.

There was one in Niagara Falls that had windows in the walls of the swimming pool. You walked past the hotel at street level and you could look in and see the swimmers' legs and butts. Sometimes that was a good thing but usually not.

The bf used to live near Wisconsin Dells and we went through a couple of years of trying out all the kitschy theme stuff when we were in town. The little cinderblock motels with the giant pink fiberglass elephants in the pool might have been just the thing in the 50s, 60s and 70s, but they're quite shitty and run down these days. We stayed in one that had a 1-inch gap under the room door and we could hear everything going on in the next room. Also, it was filthy.

The worst was a medieval castle-themed "resort". It was around $100 a night, and they gave you a free roll of quarters and shuttle to the local reservation casino. You'd go up the drive to this big floodlit castle only to see that it was a crumbling, stuccoed facade that only housed the front office. It concealed the fact that the real "hotel" was a run-down little building in the back.

We had to step over rolls of dirty torn-up carpeting and piles of laundry to get to our room. It was a "jacuzzi suite", according to the front desk, but all that meant was that there was a large bathtub in the middle of the room that shot someone's black hair out the jets when it was turned on. Felt like being in The Grudge. We skipped the jacuzzi.

There was some of the shag carpeting plastic-fantastic aura, but there were big holes in the sheets and the whole room was lit with eerie green fluorescent light that only enhanced the whole horror movie vibe. When the AC was on, the curtain blew inwards and everyone in the parking lot could see into the room.

The icing on the cake was when we were in the room with the door locked (supposedly) and some random woman on her cellphone walked right in before realizing she was in the wrong place.

It would have been great if they'd maintained the kitsch and...oh, I don't know...cleaned, but as it was the place was filthy, uncomfortable and gross. Eventually it was sold to a national chain, who turned it into a generic hotel, and I hear it's much better now.