Creepy Bathroom at D-Lites Located At End of Very Long, Long Hallway

D'Lites Emporium
1906 S. Dale Mabry Hwy
Tampa, FL USA
www.tampabaydlites.com

Where is it?

Prepare for a trek.

From the front entrance, head to the back of the store, past the scant number of shelves housing various health foods and, further back, the order counter, where you can get your diet-friendly desserts dished up. Veer to the left of the order counter and head down the long hallway there.

That hallway will literally snake to the very back of the business -- it's a hallway that seems about three times as long as the main store's length. Along the way, you'll pass various supply closets, piles of supplies (both cleaning and food-related), and a number of doors leading to (no doubt) mysterious places.

When you've reach the place's back exit, know that this is the actual end of the hallway. You cannot go on any further down that hallway without going outside the building and ending up in the back parking lot. To the immediate right of the exit door is a white door. In there is the bathroom.

What's it like?

This humble store front, lodged into a slightly run-down strip mall in south Tampa, offers decent tasting frozen desserts (like frozen yogurt, but not) for the calorie conscious. A small, one-scoop serving of its resident dessert concoction has, supposedly, only 50 calories to it. To keep things friendly on the belly, toppings include items like carob chips (instead of chocolate chips) .

In addition, visitors can get iced drinks and shakes, cakes, bulk containers of the frozen treat, as well as items like high-fiber pasta and sugar-free dessert toppings, found on the handful of shelves in the front of the store.

I can't say it's the best frozen dessert I've ever had, but considering that it's not as bad for you as those items it's not too bad either. Worth a visit if you're in the area.

The bathroom here is not worth a visit, though.

As mentioned before, it's at the end of a very long hallway - it's very, very long, abnormally so. You don't really figure it will be that long of a hallway because the store itself is pretty small. But this thing just keeps going on and on, twisting around corners, taking you by all sorts of industrial-looking items like ladders and milk crates. By the time you reach the back, you feel like you're in another world.

At first, I thought this was due to the fitness/diet motif of the place. People are coming here for diet-friendly desserts, so why not make them walk one or two miles to use the restroom.

But then the hallway itself, and the bathroom at the end of it, aren't exactly pleasant places to be. They feel isolated and makeshift, almost ruse-like, as if they were constructed not for a purpose but as a place where lesser elements might take victims. I am exaggerating to an extent on the purpose here, but YES, IT'S THAT SCARY.

After a long journey, you expect to find a place that's at least a little bit welcoming. But instead, you find a place better suited to John Wayne Gacy. I mean no disrespect to the owners here, but it's damn creepy down that hallway and in that bathroom!

I mean, there are bars on the window in the bathroom! WHY?!?!?

The room itself is a small one-bagger chamber containing a number of pieced together parts, like a toilet that looks like it was picked up in a yard sale, a white, wood-framed mirror that looks like its frame was once another color, and a standard white porcelain sink with ugly chrome faucets.

The walls here are basic white drywall, the floors covered in basic rectangular tile, slightly off-white in color. The walls are pretty bare, save for a lone poster advertising the place's diet-friendly frozen treat. The poster reads: "Add a new twist to your lifestyle." Given the creepy setting around me, I must admit I felt pretty uneasy about the implications of that statement.

The toilet itself has some pretty sharp water stains in the basin. The unit itself sits flat on the ground but right behind it is a little lip in the floor, about two inches up, that offers a solitary home to the plunger. It's a similar concept to what I saw at Westminster Abbey, only that (and its FEMBIN can) the lip there was much larger and less purposeful.

A little strange to offer a shelf entirely to a plunger, I think, but then again I've seen stranger in a toilet, like Fixodent, hydrogen peroxide, and foot cream. And even with the oddly placed shelf/lip, it's still a more user-friendly setup than what I found at Bloomingdale's Orlando.

Also strange is the proximity in which the toilet paper holder is placed to the toilet. It's practically jammed next to it, making it all but impossible for anyone sitting down on the toilet to not slam into the thing while trying to get up. To not do so, you literally have to slide into position from the side, which is not as easy as it sounds, believe me.

The sink itself also has its share of hard water stains, and its faucets don't work correctly. The left faucet produces a spraying stream of water from the spigot (as opposed to a clean stream -- you kind of get it all over you here). The right faucet produces only a tiny trickle of water, not even enough to get soap off your hands easily.

Another oddity is the paper towel dispenser: It hands on the wall in the back left corner, beside the creepy poster for the business and above a lonely looking stainless steel trashcan that's maybe about a foot high. The dispenser itself is a large, translucent plastic cylinder in which you tear off bits of paper from the bottom. On it, you'll find a homemade sign reading: "Please help save the trees."

Now, I'm not sure why it says that. Is it implying that I should not dry my hands? If so, then what other alternative to I have? There is no air dryer here, only toilet paper, which, if I use, is the same as killing another tree, isn't it?

And then I thought: Perhaps the sign was a bit of advice, implying that if I left the bathroom with wet hands, I could use that water for sustenance on the long trip back to the front of the store. I wasn't sure. I used a towel regardless and then hurried back, for fear that someone might burst through the bar-covered window if I lingered too long.

Easily the creepiest toilet -- much more so than others I've been in, like Teramok in St. Petersburg, Russia, Holopaw Restaurant and Kappy's.

Marks out of 10:

3. Very, very creepy.

Comments to the Management:

My first priority here would be to make the bathroom a place that welcomes visitors more. Put some fun decor on the walls, paint the walls friendly colors (like the same colors as some of your friendly looking diet-friendly treats?). If you can't remove the bars from the window, then cover the window up -- we don't need to see that.

Then start working on making the passageway more friendly to wall through and not such a wasteland of cleaning supplies and other forgotten trinkets. If you can, bring the bathroom closer to the main store so as not to make it feel so detached from the rest of the place. And clean the place up some -- lose the water stains, get the sink working properly.

Boogers Found on Wall of Bathroom at Cinemark Festival Bay Movie Theater

Cinemark Festival Bay Mall
5150 International Drive
Orlando, FL USA
www.cinemark.com

Where is it?

There are several bathrooms located inside this movie theater. This one is located in the far right (eastbound?) wing of the theater itself.

To get there, enter through the lobby and, after handing your ticket to the usher, veer off to the right and down the main hallway there leading to the theaters in that end of the establishment.

As you go, you'll immediately pass the main concession stand on your left, as well as the entrances to one of the the theater's larger stadiums (there's another, similar one on the other end of the concession stand) then a small hallway leading to three or four smaller theaters (which will be on your right). Keep going straight, until you hit the back wall (you'll pass a smaller concession stand on your left as you walk, though this one is often closed), which itself places you dead center in another longer hallway, which has six or so theaters to each side.

Go left and you'll see the restroom sign hanging from the ceiling. Turn left when you reach the sign and go right for the men's room and left for the women's.

What's it like?

This is a decent, standard multiplex theater slapped at the very end of Orlando's International Drive, the city's primary non-Disney-based tourism strip. The theater itself is one of the cornerstone businesses in the Festival Bay Mall, which has several worthwhile stores and eateries (my favorite in the mall being Fuddruckers) but also houses a number of empty storefronts, which makes shopping there a touch on the unsettling side. (The mall itself is across the street from Texas de Brazil and Orlando's Prime Outlets -- formerly the Belz Outlets -- which covers several blocks of real estate with various stores.)

The theater complex itself is dimly lit and filled with golden hues and old-movie-parlor touches, even though you can tell it's a very new building in every respect. Seats are comfortable (though have a shorter back than what I would prefer) and all theaters themselves are setup with stadium seating, so you don't have to contend much with people blocking your view. Picture and sound quality are pretty good, and usually matinees are not very crowded (unless it's the opening weekend of a major release). It's also a good place to while away a few hours if you're in the area and don't feel like shopping but your friends, out-of-town visitors or guests do.

The bathrooms, upon first impression, seem pretty classy -- though that impression is ruined upon closer inspection.

At first, they are classy looking, with beige tile covering the lower wall, a wavy, textured off-white tile covering the upper wall and an ornately carved bronze-like tile forming a mid-wall divider between the two. A large-squared contrasting off-white tile covers the floor.

It's a large environment, long and stretching but not too narrow, and well-spaced. About eight or so urinals hang along the left wall (if facing the back wall), and a stretch of four or so toilet stalls stand opposite them in the far corner of the place. Brown metal dividers separate the stalls but the urinals have no privacy barriers between them, which leaves you a bit open to peepers if you're standing at them and someone comes in.

There is a multi-station vanity, with a bland brick-colored granite counter and some white porcelain embedded sinks, in the front right of the room. Three automatic hand dryers hang on the wall opposite the vanity. The vanity itself is nothing special, the same sort of setup as I've seen (most recently) at places like Animal Kingdom (at the bathrooms near the Flame Tree Restaurant, for example) and (on a smaller scale) Whole Foods Winter Park. This one has manual faucets and soap pumps though.

Spend a little time at the vanity and that classy first impression starts to waver. While I didn't find it waterlogged (perhaps because I attended the first screening of the day on my visit and seemed to be one of the first to enter the facility), I did find that one of the soap dispensers had become unglued from the stretch mirror behind the vanity and was laying dead on the counter, alongside bits of plastic that had broken off in the fall. Certainly this needs to be fixed.

The toilet stalls were clean, but the walls of the stall I entered were speckled with bits of goo, which I can only assume are boogers flicked on the wall from a previous visitor. Pretty gross.

If that weren't enough, the latches to the stall door I found myself behind was pretty greasy on the edges, as if years of finger grease has accumulated on it from people sliding it back and forth so many times.

These little things, I'm sorry to say, made the experience less than savory and made me hurry with my business, for fear of what other items the cleaning crew had overlooked might appear here.

Marks out of 10:

6. Would be an 8 if it were not for the greasy latch, felled soup dispenser and boogers on the wall.

Comments to the Management:

The soap dispenser is an easy fix -- just mount it right and move on. But the greasy latch and boogers make me think that your cleaning crew just focuses on the main target items (toilets, vanity, floor) and not the rest of the place. Time to do a head-to-toe scrubbing of the place.

Hard As It Tries, Bathroom at Encore Las Vegas Doesn't Quite Match Grandeur of Bathroom at Neighboring Wynn

Encore Las Vegas
3131 Las Vegas Boulevard S.
Las Vegas, NV USA
www.encorelasvegas.com

Where is it?

This bathroom is just past the Lobby Bar and is off the hotel's main drag. To reach it, enter the hotel through the main entrance, pass the check-in desk and walk onward, towards the hotel's casino. Along the way, you'll see the pool on your left (through windows) and the elevated Lobby Bar (a swanky cafe/bar environment filled with deep reds, plush patterned carpets and intricate glass work) on your right.

Pass the Lobby Bar, continuing in that direction (which leads to the hotel's Atrium). You will cross a pathway on your right that is just beyond the Lobby Bar; it leads to a sundries shop and the hotel's guest room elevators. Just past that is a sign for the restrooms.

At the sign, turn right and go down a hallway, about 50 feet. At the back, you'll find the bathrooms, men's to the right, women's to the left.

What's it like?

Encore Las Vegas looks very much like its sister property, the Wynn Las Vegas: Although not as tall or wide as that establishment, it boasts a similar-looking exterior composed entirely of copper-colored glass. Inside, those thematic similarities continue, especially in the place’s emphasis on curved walls, lengthy esplanades and elegant chandeliers.

But where the Wynn Las Vegas' décor takes a modern approach to art nouveau, Encore’s design takes many cues from Eastern cultures, primarily China and Thailand. Stepping through the place, you stroll under intricately carved ceiling and chandeliers containing hundreds of pieces of sparkling colored glass. You walk over floors covered with plush carpets and mosaics of dragonflies and butterflies. You pass Siamese statues, modern art paintings and found art, which pack the corridors, corners and enclave of the place. Even the staff (dealers included) come dressed in Chinese-inspired uniforms.

Encore Las Vegas itself carries a sense of intimacy that most other Vegas mega-hotels seem to lack. This is best seen in the hotel’s casino. It’s smaller than most of the gambling floors in town (it houses approximately 65 tables and 860 slots) and has been designed with high ceilings, square spaces, straight lines and natural light (let in through windows and skylights) -- a far cry from the typical Strip casino, which usually features a maze-like design, low ceilings, dim lighting and loud noises.

As a result, walking through the casino to get to the hotel’s other hot spots becomes easier and feels less stressful than expected, which in turn lets you admire the design and artwork around you all the more.

Naturally, given that this is the upscale cousin of the already upscale Wynn Las Vegas, I expected to be blown away by the design-based wonders that would no doubt be found here. I mean, Wynn Las Vegas to this point has some of the best bathrooms I've ever stepped foot in.

But while Encore Las Vegas' restrooms do offer much elegance and sophistication, the "wow" factor here falls somewhat short. More than anything, these bathrooms seem like they've channelled Wynn Las Vegas through Caesar's Palace. Pretty damn good in the scope of things, but still not earth shattering, as you might expect. The hotel itself is literally jaw dropping in its over-the-top-yet-elegant decor and design. The bathroom tries to exhibit those excesses to the same degree here, but a few missteps keep it from achieving that goal.

This is a good sized room. You enter, take a quick turn past a ceiling-high framed mirror in an entrance hallway, and find yourself facing the sink stations -- two-person vanities on each side of the room, which is long and rectangular. Think of what was at Amway Arena, scale it down to about 1/3 of the size, and you get the basic set-up of this place.

Beyond the sinks, in the main section of the bathroom, on the respective sides of the room, are lines of urinals and toilet stalls, about six or so of each. What's unique here is that the urinal stalls are floor to ceiling in height and as such provide maximum privacy. They, like the floor and walls and stall divider walls, are made of brick-red-colored granite with gold trim and are quite beautiful. A floor-to-ceiling length mirror, like the one in the room's entrance passageway, stands at the far end of the room, a sort of counterpoint to the entrance mirror. The toilets are your standard white porcelain but clean and new-looking. The urinals are also white porcelain but they also have that thick mesh in them to absorb urine and limit unintended splashing and spraying (like what was seen at the beautiful bathrooms at Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare).

The stalls are roomy and secluding, though to a slightly lesser degree than the stalls at the Wynn Las Vegas. Those, set in a very noisy bathroom, made you feel like you had the world to yourself. These, set in a slightly less noisy bathroom, let in a touch of noise that isn't quite disruptive but also isn't quite expected.

The vanity is very nice but not show-stopping like the marble wonder at Wynn Las Vegas. While I liked the copper spigot-like faucets and the dark marble vanity counters, I found that by placing a box of tissues in the vanity itself (for the sake of convenience) made people want to use the tissues as towels instead of tissues, which of course causes them to disintegrate too fast and create a globby mess on the counter itself. The paper towels were located nearby to that, but at the same time the designers need to realize that people will almost always go for the easiest solution before them -- in this case, it's the tissues, not the towels. Sadly, it's one of the bathroom's major missteps -- a small little throwaway detail that seems nice at first but falls flat upon execution (reminded me a lot of the faucet SNAFU at J. Alexander's in Orlando).

The place's other big misstep is in the urinal stalls. While the dividers offer much privacy, the choice to place the automatic flush sensor on a reflective gold-chrome plate pretty much destroys that aspect. Sure it looks nice, but it's also like peeing while looking at a mirror focused entirely on your giblets -- and anyone who's walking behind you at that moment and decides to peek over can, at one angle or another, get a solid look at your goods. (You know this because you will be able to see them in the reflection off the plate.) It's a little uncomfortable, to be honest.

Yes, it's a beautiful bathroom, and very clean, spacious and elegant, but those few hold-ups keep it well short of what was experienced at Wynn Las Vegas. I was expecting a location that might equal, even top, that one, considering the brand positioning of this hotel. Sadly, I left greatly disappointed -- a real hard thing to admit considering how much I've championed Wynn Las Vegas.

Marks out of 10:

8. Missteps and all, it's a beautiful bathroom, but I just can't raise the score much higher than this, given those fallacies.

Comments to the Management:

Outside of putting a little more "WOW" into the design, and even some technology and showstopping design pieces, the least you can do is move the tissues away from the sink and replace those plates behind the toilets with something non-reflective.

Bathroom Doubles as Supply Closet at Memories of India

Memories of India
7625 Turkey Lake Rd
Orlando, FL 32819

Where is it?

From the front entrance, head inside. This places you at the front of the restaurant's small dining room, which contains about 20 or so tables.

With your back to the door, head along the left wall of the place, to the back left of the restaurant and down the corridor found in that corner of the establishment. Down that corridor is (in order of appearance) the waiter station (on the left), entrance to the kitchen (on the right), entrance to the bathrooms and -- further back -- more storage room.

The bathrooms themselves are off to the left a little, in a little enclave set off from this main passageway.

If you head too far back or get lost, just ask one of the friendly staff for help.

What's it like?

On the outside, this restaurant blends a little too seamlessly with the sterile facade of the strip mall in which its found. If you're not sure it's there, you might pass by it, thinking it was just a regular business. Inside, the place is filled with Indian art, soft lighting and smells of toasted spices. Which is what you expect from a decent Indian restaurant -- and this one is certainly one of the best in the Orlando area.

The food is well prepared, fresh and very vibrantly and evenly spiced -- few other Indian restaurants in town match it for its complexity of flavor, in my opinion. Some come close, but most tend to miss the mark, creating dishes that are too strong in one flavor and not substantial enough in another, thus ruining the balance of the cuisine. Here, there's a balance, at least I think so, and you taste it with each bite.

Prices are decent (about $15 per plate on average) and service is friendly and attentive. Plus it's one of the few ethnic restaurants in town where the waiters remember you from your last visit, even if you haven't been in a few months, and even if you have different waiters. I enjoy coming here.

Highlights include the fiery vindaloo lamb, the luscious chicken korma and the tandoori items, which come to the table perfectly grilled and moist (most places get the first part right but tend to dry out the meat).

The bathrooms here are a bit amusing in contrast to the careful preparation of the food. While they are located down a long hallway that contains many storage shelves and some storage rooms, the toilet here still double as a place to store items like cleaning supplies and toiletries, which makes me wonder how much storage space does one place need. Perhaps a lot?

Of course, we've seen bathrooms doubling as storage spots before, like at Pizzoodles (where the centerpiece of the bathroom is its storage cabinet) or the Holopaw Restaurant (where the hallway outside was filled with boxes, crates, canisters and more).

But I've never seen such an overtly high concentration of stored goods in a single public bathroom before. And there's a lot here: Cleaning liquids of all kinds, towels, a mop and bucket, a ladder.... in many ways, this is more a garage than a bathroom, if think about it.

Of course, at the same time, I must commend the place for keeping the environment organized -- not like what we saw at the awful CVS Pharmacy, HWY 80 in Savannah, which was just a bloody, smelly mess despite all the cleaning items found there. The place remains clean despite its duplicitous nature. On my first visit in one evening, I found the bathroom trash can loaded with paper towels; upon my second visit, those towels were gone. That means to me that they police the place well, and that's worthy of my admiration.

Still, because of all the cleaning fluids here, the place lacks a certain level of comfort you might expect from a regular restaurant bathroom -- especially from one where the dining room is so welcoming. While inside, you often get the feeling that if there's a major spill in the dining room or kitchen, someone will burst through the door and grab whatever materials are needed to solve that problem, no matter if you're busy or not.

Amenity-wise, the place is okay, though also a little piece-meal in assembly: This is a one-bagger, well-sized but also very sectioned, with a single toilet in the back, a sink in the middle and a urinal up front (all white porcelain). A dark blue with gold-trim linoleum tile covers the floor and part of the lower wall near the urinal (no doubt done to compensate for misfires). The mirror about the sink has a brown wood frame and looks like it was picked up at a garage sale.

Marks out of 10:

6.

Comments to the Management:

If possible, try storing those items elsewhere. If you can't, then perhaps you can shove everything into a more discrete spot -- no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't hide the impression that I was going to the bathroom in someone's garage -- so it feels more like a bathroom than a supply closet.

While this is, in my opinion, the best Indian restaurant in town food-wise, the toilets found at other Orlando Indian restaurants I've visited have an edge over this place: Ahmed, for example, is plain but singular and not as multipurpose (more in line with the bathrooms of Indian restaurants I've visited overseas, like the Monsoon in London, which I consider a standard in this category), and Anmol is just downright regal compared to this.

Toilet Out of Order? Not a Problem for Greens and Grille

Greens and Grille
4104 Millenia Blvd. Suite: 114
Orlando, FL USA
www.greensandgrille.com

Where is it?

There are two entrances to this restaurant. The first requires you to walk through an outdoor seating area to reach and puts you closer to the bathroom than the second entrance but further away from the order counter; here, you are placed in the center of the dining room, with the order counter to your far right and the bathrooms just a short walk to your left.

To reach them from this entrance, simply turn left after entering the dining room and head into the little corridor in the back of the business -- the bathrooms are there.

The second entrance places you at the back of the order counter queue -- great for ordering and viewing the menu but not so good for reaching the bathroom easily. Here, to reach the toilet, you need to cross the entire dining room, heading towards that same corridor in the back of the business.

What's it like?

This chic, terrific neighborhood salad joint, located in the strip mall in front of the Mall at Millenia, takes a little bit of effort to figure out. The menu hangs on the wall at the back entrance (see above) and features a slew of options, which essentially let you put together a sandwich or salad of your choosing. But there are so many combinations, both pre-set and make-your-own, that you feel a bit overwhelmed standing there.

Worse still is the fact that the menu is placed in a small half-wall corridor behind the dining area, and as you stand there, confused by all the options, other people come in and often there's a pile up, which of course causes more confusion.

However, once you figure it out for the first time, subsequent visits become much easier to handle -- and this is a place worth visiting multiple times, believe me, the food is that good. After selecting an order, you head to the end of that line, where you give your order to a cashier. From there, you proceed through a series of cooking stations, in which an attendant fills your order. There's a salad station, where salad ingredients and dressings are selected by the customer and hand mixed by an attendant, a grill station where your meats are prepared, a bread station, a bar and more.

Almost all the ingredients used in the food here come from local organic farms, and you can really taste the difference between the salads here over, say, the salads at a buffet like Sweet Tomatoes. The meats and breads and greens too taste very clean and full of flavor, even invigorating. And most dishes cost an average of $10, making the place affordable for both lunch and dinner. A true find. I stop by every time I'm in the area, I like it that much.

The restaurant's decor is pretty modern, with several industrial touches thrown in. Divider walls often carry a facade of pounded sheet metal, the tables and chairs are metallic, the counters black and sheen, and the walls pretty bare, save for the menu posters and a few pieces of art here and there and some decorative signs indicating the organic roots of their ingredients.

The bathroom -- two one-baggers, one of men and one for women -- extend that motif, but with cozier implications. The colors here are softer, with brown-orange upper walls, matted sheet metal lower walls, and a simple white porcelain sink (very bare bones, very standard), white porcelain toilet and metallic trash can. The sink features copper/bronze-metal faucets (a nice elegant add-on). The floor has large off-white tiles on it.

Across from the toilet is a small dark wood chest of drawers, on which stands a can of air spray (apparently, the people here aren't afraid of asking people to keep their own smell quotient down -- a similar idea we've also seen at places like Hale Groves, Pearl Restaurant and Polk's Fresh Market, among others), a box of tissues and a roll of paper towels. (Unfortunately, I didn't look inside.) There is also a dark wood square stool in front of the sink. These pieces were nice add-ons, I thought, some of the nicer pieces of furniture I've seen in a bathroom since my visit to Shiki at the Beach, which had a slew of Japanese woodwork in its one-bagger.

The walls have some framed paintings on them, which accentuate the cozy factor here. And the ceiling has a speaker built into it white pipes in the house music -- another nice touch since when I visited the corridor outside got a bit crowded because the men's room was out of order, but thanks to the music I felt like I had more privacy than I did and enjoyed myself more. It was a very good experience.

Also worth mentioning: When most places have one bathroom out of order, and are pretty busy, the remaining bathroom becomes an utter mess of spills and filth. (Heck, in some places, that's a given even with all the bathrooms are working, like my experiences at Sleuth's Dinner Theatre's Sherlock Theatre toilet, or at Maurice's BBQ in Santee, SC).

But that wasn't the case here. Despite the hordes of people, many of them who lined up the use the one toilet that was working here, the facilities themselves were very clean and odor free. Quite an accomplishment, I thought.

Marks out of 10:

8.

Comments to the Management:

Outside of fixing the other bathroom (which I'm sure has been done already), I've got nothing negative to say. This was a very good bathroom that was made all the more impressive by the way you successfully maintained it during a busy stretch and kept it very clean. Kudos.