Actually its not that bad!

We booked the candy hostel last minute and didnt know what to expect. to begin with it has a pretty good location. Its one block from braodway, which has subway stations, restraunts and bars.

We arrvied early and the reception staff were helpful in storing our bags, and gave us a tip that if we arrvied at 3pm when you were able to check in, we would get a good room, as they were given out on a first come first served basis. We did as instructed and recived a room on the 7th floor.

I have to add some of the other reviews said that the reception staff were unhelpful and rude, I have to disagree completely. We had to change our booking because of of our friends couldnt make it. They were very helpful in changing the booking, and polite throughout.

We got to our room and were so surprised. There was four of us sharing, and the room was large and airy. We even had a view out onto the river! It was spotlessly clean, and the beds were really comfortable.

One thing I could complain about is the bathrooms. The one nearest us flooded, so water came into our room, and some of our stuff got wet. Nothing was damaged or that, but it was serious enough that water leaked down onto the floor below. We contacted the hostel manager, who immediately got maintenance up who dry-vac the floor and got all the water up.

Overall the hostel is better than we expected, but then again we might have just been lucky. A tip is to get there at the check in time on the dot, and request one of the top floor rooms.

Nothing sweet about this hostel!

Staff were appalling, they wouldn't give us any extra pillows or blankets and were most unfriendly. We paid $88 for a room you couldn't swing a cat in and the shared bathrooms were dirty. There didn't seem to be any security either. I would not recommend this hostel to anyone.

HOSTEL OF HORRORS!

Little did I know that death would stalk me at THE CANDY HOSTEL. It is a truly bizarre place that inside is a cross between Count Prospero's castle in MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH and the dorm in SUSPERIA. Most of the staff was about as scary as well. All that was missing was Joan Bennett and the barbed wire room.

Every floor was painted a different saturated color (we stayed on the CHARTREUSE floor) Six flights up, with a teensy elevator and loooong wait between rides.

Fresh horrors awaited around every corner, as well as comedy. We managed to muscle open the screeching metal door to our room, only to be greeted by a half-naked man! Whoopsy! Apparently the folks at the front desk neglected to mention to us that our 4 person room was co-ed! Luckily the guy was nice and not creepy. An additional delight was the fact that they had no secure lockup for luggage in the rooms themselves - you had to rent a locker in the scary badly lit blood red BASEMENT room. No in and out privilege on these suckers - it was five dollars every time you opened the locker! Yikes!

The common room was a tiny sweat box where no one seemed to feel comfortable communicating with anyone else. Kind of sad how hostels have changed. Instead of being a place where you could chat and have a chance to meet new folks, everyone was isolated in their own little worlds with their ipods, laptops and the big screen TV.

After I went to bed, the night was repeatedly torn asunder by the banshee screeching and slamming of the bathroom door down the hall, along with the whoops and screams of various other inmates/guests. Slept fitfully on the top of the rickety IKEA bunk bed, and awoke pretty early the next morning to try to get a turn in the common bathroom. Trying to be graceful and quiet as I swung around to lower myself down, I of course failed miserably at both attempts. Turns out the bed wasn't SECURED to anything and it TIPPED OVER!! I scream, the BED OF DEATH FLINGS ME off and my head slams into the wall. I hear my neck POP and snap like bubble wrap, then JUST managed to catch the bed frame on my arm before it smashed down onto my neck! Nearly a month later, the bruises are just starting to fade.

The gal in the other top bunk screams too and manages to heft it up enough for me to escape. What a way to make new friends! Needless to say, I could barely turn my head or even lift it after that, and had to sort of TWIST my body around to look up at things, which in Manhattan can be a problem.

Have to agree with most of the other reviewers - although the bathroom was reasonably clean, the bedding fresh (if skimpy) the price reasonable, and wifi was available, the staff was uninformed, unhappy, and unhelpful, (with one notable exception - a really friendly, smart, professional gal named Nafisa who knew what she was doing.) and the whole experience was fraught with discomfort. I wouldn't recommend this place to anyone unless they were desperate.

Looks like the Mayor's office is coming down on this and a few other hostels for safety violations - hopefully the BUNK BEDS OF DEATH won't claim any other victims after this!

By Any Other Name...it would still be bad.

If you like elevators that brake down or are slow to arrive, itchy and uncomfortable beds, shared room keys, bunks that tip over, $5 locker fees, squeaky, off-the-hinged doors, a maze of angled hallways, doors and staircases that would delight a gerbil but confuse a traveler, no coordinated activities (as in other hostels) as well as no interaction between guests (because of the free Wi-Fi), and if you like incompetent/ultra-shady staffers...then, perhaps, this is the place for you.

We've found after a weeks stay, that the "Candy" Hostel shares its building with the Mount Royal Hotel, another lowly rated hostel, which when you run through the building from 316 95th St. to 315 94th St. is really one in the same. It depends on what side of the street you prefer to enter--the one under construction, "Candy", or the one with the hallway painted in garish colors with the shady staff (Mount Royal). I've heard that there is a third name they go by too...but does it matter? Better to just call it the Three-in-One Hostel. However, aside from the confusion in names and locale, no matter what name this hostel calls itself, it is not a place I would recommend nor stay in if you wish to enjoy yourself in New York City, Manhattan.

There is a room key situation that would baffle any experienced traveler: no matter how many people you travel with, you receive only one key per room! e.g. three people get one key.

If you bring a laptop, you either can carry it with you or deposit in a basement locker room that takes $5 each time you store an item, regardless of the size (Other hostels provide individual lockers--you just need your own lock. Or, varying priced lockers according to the size of the article. e.g. $2 for briefcase; $4 for carry-on's; $5 for large rolling luggages.).

You can lock your goods in your room (a private room), however, at your own risk, because the staffers leaves you with an 'uneasy' feeling.

What the "Candy" offers is free Wi-Fi. Clean bathrooms, good location, and thin linen. But you can look elsewhere for these things and have a better experience because all in all, if you don't feel secure because of the shady staffers, no matter how clean or cheap a place is, the "Candy" (or Mount Royal Hotel), will not beat a place where the security and well-being of its travelers comes first!

And by the way, if you decide to cut your stay short, don't expect any refunds--there isn't any. And also, expect the "Candy" staffers to tack on the extra "room tax" with your booking.

Rat infested pit !!!!!!!!!!

DO NOT EVER EVER GO NEAR THE CANDY HOSTEL! ITS GOT RATS, IS VERY DIRTY & THEIR POLICY IS "NO REFUNDS".

316 West, 95th Street, NYC.

It was infested by rats, the staff were disgustingly rude & unhelpful. We were ripped off by $1354! We handed over cash on arrival, as demanded by pushy staff. According to some this is not the way a proper business is run. Also it has 2 addresses, 94th and 95th street. This is dodgy dodgy dodgy!

We were shown a print out which meant we had to pay an extra $100 tax each and were told we had not read the small print when we questioned this extra charge. What small print?? The confirmation we received said we had all paid for.

We stayed for 3 nites and heard & saw rats 2 of these nights.

The first night a male staff member told me i was hallucinating and there were no rats.

I saw it for myself at 5am and immediately packed up with nowhere to go.

We were sucked in by the "newly renovated" pics online, false advertising as backed up by 2 other travellers who stayed there as the rooms are crap. The lobby was the only newish part. There are also extra guests. ie. RATS.

When we demanded a refund on checking out we were talked down to by the very rude staff.

We have been given the runaround by them who wont give out details of when the manager was in to talk to him. They kept telling us to call back the following day when we were asking to speak to someone about a refund due to the rat infestation.

To date we have not and probably will not see any of this money again.

Very angry & disgusted that this place is allowed to have humans staying in it.

Dissatisfied with Candy Hostel

Candy hostel has very bad customer service and the manager in the front desk was very unfriendly. The linen was not clean and had yellw spots on it. Do not recommend others to stay in this hostel.

Lo peor de New York!

Viendo las fotos de la web, no pintaba mal, pero al entrar a la habitación me quedé sin palabras, pedí que me dieran una habitacion mas grande porque en la 1ª no nos cabían las maletas, la cama ocupaba casi todo el espacio, la 2ª habitacion era casi igual, entre la cama y maletas no tenias casi espacio, las ventanas no se pueden abrir, el aire acondicionado hace muchisimo ruido y las puertas no se cierran del todo por lo que escuchas todo y cuando digo todo es "TODO" estuvimos 3 días y no se lo recomiendo a nadie, hay cosas mejores por el mismo precio, este hostal es una verdadera Mier....!

Si buscas algo mejor y un poco mas caro, en la misma calle esta el Hotel Alexander y es muchisisisimo mejor.

Down and out in Manhatten at 3am

This hostel is terribly managed, completely disorganised, with rude and untrustworth staff - do not stay here.

On the first night, we arrived at 3am to be told that they did not have our booking. This was despite, not only booking on line and having a print out of the confirmation, but also having contacted the hostel twice personally to ensure that they where aware of our early morning arrival. Not only where we left homeless for the night, we received absolutely no apology from the member of staff who simply said there was nothing they could do and it was someone elses fault. They made no effort to find anywhere for us to stay and told us we could not use their facilities until we could check in. They told us to come back at 10am the following day to talk to reception about the rest of the stay. Livid, we eventually managed to negotiate sitting in their common room until the morning and luckily they were able to fill the rest of the nights accomondation.

In the six days we stayed, our room was not cleaned once (we have been travelling in hostels for 10 months and this has never happened before). This hostel may be new now, but in a year this place will be a mess the rate they're cleaning it. They also fail to mention in their literature that it is so new, that it's still being built. For two mornings we were woken up at 7.30am to drilling and hammering. Luckily we were up early and out late so it did not bother us too much, but other travellers said it continued throughout the day.

Daily we saw new people check in either in tears or in anger because their bookings had been 'lost'. There were also rumours of peoples belongings going missing from rooms, but we didn't have this problem as we always used the lockers in the basement as we had assumed this could be a problem given the shady staff.

The location isn't great being on the upper west side, but if you're booking late like we were then it's not awful. However, you're better off travelling up to 106 or down to 86 where there is much more happening than where we were in 104.

Private room was robbed!!!!!!! Don't trust them

I stayed at Candy Hostel for 5 days from the 25th of July 2007 until the 31st. On my final night (in a private room) my ipod and my cell phone were stolen from my room. In the morning after I realised what happened I spoke to the front desk who did not care at all. I finally got hold of the manager who said he would call his insurance company and "sort it out" Because I was going to Montreal I had no time to go to the local police station. (The manager told me his insurance company would file it - they didn't) Turns out you can't open a police incident report over the phone or on the internet. (You can in the UK) The front desk staff would give me the managers phone number or pass on my messages when I tried to call. So stay at your own risk (or just don't leave anything in your room, private or not because the cleaning staff are dishonest!!! ) Apart from that the location is good, airconditioning worked well and its easy to find.

Not as sweet as it sounds

the rooms were not bad at all. the price was resonable especially in NYC. i cant complain about the cleanliness because the place was spotless. what i didnt like was the staff at the reception. they had no idea of what they were doing. i especially did not like the woman at the reception with the long blonde curly hair. she was very pushy, rude, unprofessional, and made me and other guests as well feel very uneasy. i know this is a brand new hostel and it takes time to get things in order but having this person at your reception will give your guests a very bad first impression and have them ignore the good that the hostel has to offer. candy is the right name to call this place, because the reception is run by a bunch of sour patch kids