Nation

No matter how tireless your dream-hotel research, your four-star experience can still be demolished when your room comes with an expansive view of alley-dwelling winos. Find out which pads are hot, and which share wall with the boiler room, with TripKick.

Kick catalogs relative room worthiness in 10 of the US's more-visitable cities; just pop in a hotel name, or use their "Help me Find" tool to sort by city feature and type (business, golf resort, hip and trendy, romantic, historic -- combine the last two for vibrating beds that only accept doubloons). For each hotel, Kick'll spit out nuggets like which numbers = corner/oversized rooms, which have views and of what, and if any are particularly quiet or house exceptional bathrooms, two things you can kibosh in about, oh, six minutes. You can also eye extended room-specific user comments and photos, and use the "Compare Rooms" matrix to easily see which have the best of all worlds -- invaluable if you're too important to read.

While Kick links to booking sites, the best way to secure your ultimate pad's still to call the hotel and request your preferred number(s) -- because Expedia still doesn't have a checkbox for "must have bum fights".

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