Which hotel was nicer?

Neither were quality both were horrendous motels lol.

Braidwood was very rundown with a lot of low level people staying there, it musta been in that world's version of Wichita the worst motel in town by far. . It reminds me of the hotels around where I live that keep the bad elements of society in them. So rundown it makes you wonder how they stay open. It may have been a real nice place in the 70's and 60's but the owner looked real tired and let it run down. He seemed to have a heart though which was his downfall with the shady people. The 2nd place looks straight up redneckish with the antlers and the Roy Orbison paintings it looked terrible. The manager there was a king Dick in contrast to the other guy. However the people staying there looks better than the other hotel.

Both were polar opposites but El Rancho wins by default. The manager while a jerk was competent and the place looked decently nice. The first manager deserved a hotel as nice as the 2nd one.

I agree the hotel employee at the El Rancho Hotel was a bit slimy and sketchy and didn't seem to be a really nice guy, he reminds me of several people who I used to know in the past.

In November of 2008 a buddy and I took a road trip from Wisconsin down to Illinois to see some of the filming sites. We got into the Braidwood, but someone was staying in the “pillows” room. We took a picture outside the door. We also got a good shot of us sitting where Dell and Neal were when Owen pulled up. By the way, the whole place was dirty and dumpy.

From there we visited the El Rancho motel. Once again we couldn’t get in a room, but we did sit in my car outside the room, just like Dell. We also had some small bottled drinks (yogurt) and Doritos while sitting in the car. Sure would’ve been cool to eat and drink those while actually in a room. The tiny lobby has a plaque/poster on the wall mentioning the movie was filmed there. This motel was also getting old and run down.

The real coup de grace was seeing Neal’s house. We filmed ourselves walking toward the house, carrying a big cooler (in place of a chest like Dell had). Believe it or not, while we were standing on the sidewalk taking pictures, the owner of the house came home and began talking to us! She invited us in and we took a few pictures in the foyer. It looked pretty much the same. I did take one picture of the owner on the steps in the same spot as Neal’s wife. (Side note: the house was for sale for a cool 1.3 million.) The Home Alone house was also somewhere in that area, but we didn’t visit it.

One more place we visited: the train station. It was old and dilapidated. I found a couple pieces of its siding in the grass, and I brought those home and my dad made picture frames from the wood. I still have it today, with a nice picture of the old station in it. It was quite a day!