MY WORST TRAVEL EXPERIENCE/Transcript


 * Chilly: I'm going to be talking about my worst travel experience I've had. When I say travel, I don't just mean the flight experience. We're talking the entire hot-wire bundle. And by that, I mean just the hotel and flight and minus the car rental, because apparently you have to be 26 to rent a car..which I am not. Anyways, so this summer I got the opportunity to go to E3 in LA. For those of you who don't know what E3 is, it's basically this huge convention where new video games are introduced, and there's usually demos to play these games. My friend also got invited to attend so we planned on going together. We were invited sorta last minute so most of the hotels close by were already booked up. My friend however did find us a place to stay that was only a mile from the convention center and booked it under her name. We were all set to go. This was my first time attending something like this and I was super excited for it. Something you should know though is whenever I get super excited about something, something always has to go wrong. Fast forward to the day of traveling, my friend and I were flying at different times because I had a class to go to in the morning so I was taking a night flight, and she was supposed to fly that morning. After class I made my way to the bus to get to the airport, and at that point my friend should've been arriving to LA by then. I got to the airport, got to the gate, didn't hear anything from my friend but didn't think much of it either. I'm sitting at the gate on Reddit and playing Notice Me Senpai. Don't judge me, it was really addicting for a while and I just wanted Ninja Senpai's attention....which I never got. I guess I'm not good enough for Ninja Senpai... 20 minutes before boarding, things started to go downhill. My flight got delayed 2 hours because of technical issues which wasn't a big deal but it just meant I wasn't getting to LA until 11 or midnight. Still hadn't heard anything from my friend until I was about to board two hours later. You know you're waiting for someone to send you a short message along the lines of "Oh I'm on my way now!" or "Oh, I'm here!" Something sweet and simple but instead you get this long message and without reading it, you already know the gist of it; an apology and an excuse. You know, when you plan a lunch with a friend and you expect a message that says they're there but instead you get this long message with an excuse to why they can't enjoy Olive Garden's unlimited soup and salad lunch deal with you. My friend had a family emergency and didn't actually fly to LA that morning. She was really apologetic and said she would still cover her half of the room. Now if you paid attention to the story, I mentioned that she was the one who booked the hotel for us under her name, which meant I couldn't check in our room. Even though she called them and explained to them the situation, she ended up being forced to cancel the reservation, and I was now with no hotel and couldn't do anything about it because I had to get on the plane. Not only was I now traveling alone to LA, but now I also had no place to stay. The panic meter started going up. My friend said that she will take care of it and by the time I get to LA, I'd have a place to stay. So I trusted to find a decent safe hotel to stay in downtown LA close enough to the convention center the night before E3. So I got onto the plane, and of course what's a flight without a lot of turbulence almost the entire flight to LA? Let's make Chilly panic some more, shall we? Once I landed, the first thing I did was check my messages. My friend had found me a hotel! YAY!! I'm still alone in this big city, but yay! Now I have a place to stay. I looked up the hotel. The hotel kinda looks sketchy and none of the reviews were reassuring. ("Loud ghost couple next door" "Cockroaches everywhere!!" "Murder Heaven") The only thing what was appealing about it was the name of the hotel. Like when you find a tin of those Danish cookies somewhere in the house but when you open it up, you just find sewing stuff instead, we've all been there. Buuuuuut since I didn't really have too many options, I decided to take the lift there and check it out. It took about an hour to get there and as we got closer, the area seemed nice. But of course, we all know Chilly's luck! As soon as we turned to a different street, it was about 1 in the morning. I just sat in my seat staring off the window at this haunted-looking hotel you only see in movies or in American Horror Story. And I literally just sat there for about five minutes, hoping I would wake up in the hotel I was originally supposed to stay in...but that never happened. Two guys walked past the front of the hotel. One of them was sitting in a wagon while the other guy was dragging him around and I kid you not, his head was tilted back as if he was possessed, while the guy in the wagon was just giggling like a little kid.
 * Driver: Uh, are you sure you want to stay in this hotel? This doesn't seem like a safe place for a girl to be in alone.
 * Chilly: Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope. I spent the next hour in the car trying to find a new place to stay but everything was completely booked. At this point, I was seriously just considering flying back home and forget about E3. I just wanted to sleep because I was 100% done with that day. It seemed like this was a moment to put my adult skills to the test, but I was definitely failing at that point. I finally decided to find a hotel near the airport just for the night and just figure everything out and I got some sleep because I was seriously done. I just wanted to sleep without worrying about tilting heads walking around outside my window. The lift driver was super nice about waiting until I found something and driving me to my new hotel. Shout-out to Silvan! Later that morning after finally getting some sleep, I decided to try my luck again and look for hotels that were close to the convention center. Oh look, a hotel that's a mile away from the convention center, and it's the last room left! Is this a dream?? The hotel looked much better than tilting heads suites, and the reviews were good for the most part. What I didn't release until I actually got to the hotel is that the hotel was originally the Cecil hotel which was re-branded but they never actually removed the original sign. For those who don't know about this hotel and are into places with a dark and gory history, then I suggest you look up this hotel's history. Does Elisa Lam ring a bell? Yep, I have terrific luck, I know, and I had no one to enjoy this amazing moment with. I ended up reassuring myself every minute I was on hotel grounds that the hotel was filled with geeks and nerds like myself who are just there to play some video games. No murderers, no bizarre deaths, no paranormal activity, nothing. The hotel overall was actually really nice though and I probably won't be staying there again. I also made it back home safely! Or am I just a ghost making lame animations? Oooooh..... Also I nailed that adult test besides the panicking and crying on the first night.

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 * Chilly: The trip back wasn't any better. I ended up being stuck at the airport for eight hours with nowhere to go, but E3 was pretty awesome, and I even got to tour Riot Games. I also ended up paying for the entire trip and my friend never replied to me, nor have we spoken at all since then. Have you ever had a terrible traveling experience? Any haunted hotels or crappy flights? I wanna hear about it! Let me know about it in the comments below and like always, leave a like, subscribe, share this with a friend. Also be sure to follow me on my social media which is linked below. I'll see you guys next time!