hotel has friendly staff and fun and unusual bar(Doc's). rooms were large and very comfortable. particularly liked the fact that you could get a massage on property

I've stayed all around this world, in some pretty awful places, but no hotel is worse than the Holiday Inn in Totowa, NJ. Had the displeasure of staying here over the weekend (for a wedding), and couldn't have been happier leaving that dump. First, they allow smoking right in the lobby. Is it like this in all NJ hotels? We walk into our non-smoking room to the smell of bad cologne, which saturated the entire room. WTF?
Tried to change rooms after spending 30 seconds in there, but the hotel was apparently full (big surprise). Where the room didn't smell like bad cologne, was the bathroom. Instead, it had the smell of stale cigarette smoke, which comes up through the bathroom air ducts (there is no exhaust fans in the bathroom, just a small vent). This left the towels on the rack below it, smelling of the delicious scent of Marlboro country. Called twice for new towels, housekeeping never showed. The heating/AC/vent unit in the room barely worked, and the windows do not open (throughout the hotel, to keep people from jumping, understandably). Hence, the room was a comfortable 95 degrees, with the AC on High, in the middle of the winter! My suggestion to anyone considering a stay at this "hotel:" AVOID IT! Not worth $10/night, let alone the $100/night they charge. We got 1/2 off one of the nights after speaking with the manager. Rating this dump 1-star is being very generous....