La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Palestine, Texas

 We stayed at the La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham in Palestine, Texas at the end of September when we went to Palestine as part of a vacation trip.  We went to Palestine for the purpose to ride the train there.  I will review the train in another post.  As always, we reserved an accessible room.  We checked into the room and I stayed in the room while my husband went down to the van to get the rest of our things.  I went to the bathroom where I discovered the first major problem with this room.  The bathroom door was located right by the room door.  It opened out into the hall of the room.  Because it is an accessible room, which requires a wider doorway/door,  the door took up most of the room in the hall.  My wheelchair didn't fit between the wall and the door.  If I did a lot of maneuvering, I could manage to get past the door eventually, but I did damage the wall with my chair.  It might have been possible for a smaller chair to get past, but my chair is an average size, so it would have had to be a really small chair.  Getting out of the bathroom was even more difficult than getting into the bathroom.  

My husband went downstairs to complain to the clerk about the room.  He came up to the room to see the door.  He commented, and I quote "other people have complained, but I didn't know what they were talking about".  There had been other complaints about this door!!.  Nothing had been done!!.  There were no other rooms available as all the accessible rooms were just like this one.  We asked about taking the door off, but he said there was no on sight maintenance.  My husband said he would do it himself.  The clerk said we could do what we needed to.  There was no manager on sight now, so we would have to speak with her tomorrow.

Bathroom: the rest of the bathroom was barely accessible.  There was a toilet with bars around it.  There was a regular tub, although it did have bars inside it.  There was no shower bench in the tub.  We had to ask for one.  The shower had a regular shower head in it, not a hose at all.  There was no way to direct the water onto my body except to move the shower chair, but each time you move the shower chair, the legs that are inside the shower have to be adjusted to keep the chair level.  My husband was with me, so he was able to adjust it for me.  

The room: The bed was too high.  This seems to be a common problem with hotel rooms.  I was able to stand on this trip, so not as big of an issue for me this time, but if you cannot stand, this may be an issue.  I am never fond of the height of hotel beds in general though because even when I can stand, I am only 5' tall, so they can be challenging for me.  The rest of the room was spacious.  There was a table, a couch, and 2 TVs.  From an accessible point of view,  the table was a problem.  There was a power strip between the table and the couch that was ideal for plugging in a laptop while using it at the table, but it was unreachable from my chair.  The  only plugs I could reach from my chair were the ones on the night stands, and on the left side of the bed (as you lay in the bed)

Parking: There were 3 accessible parking spots, with 2 of them being van accessible.  There weren't a lot of people using them so we never had too much competition for them.

Pool:  They had an outdoor pool.  We noticed there was a chair lift from the parking lot, so we inquired at the front desk to see how to use it.  We were told the battery was in place and it should be working.  We went down to the pool only to find out the lift didn't work at all.  There was no controller at all.  We reported it to the front desk, but she didn't know anything about it.

Now, back to the issue about the door.  After my  husband and I returned from our train trip, I asked to speak with the manager.  I reported to her the problem I had with the bathroom door, along with the issue of the shower not having a hose.  The manager told me the hotel was like that when the owners bought it and there was nothing they could do about it.  She was not apologitic at all.  She was actually rather rude about it.  She did say she would report to the owners about the shower head and see about getting it replaced.  I told her I thought it was pretty disgraceful that a hotel that had had many different complaints about an accessible room had done nothing to try to fix it.  At this point she sort of gave me an apology, but it came with an eye roll.

I would not recommend this hotel for someone in a wheelchair due to the problem with the bathroom door alone.  Add in the problem with the tub/shower, and this makes this hotel's accessible rooms not accessible at all as far as I'm concerned.  They definitely are not accessible for someone in a wheelchair who is by themselves.  Our stay would have been a nightmare had my husband not removed the bathroom door.