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What a horrible hotel experience!! |
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The first day went alright. We left around 11:30am after a brief walk and dropping the dog off up at my girlfriend's house, and in about 40 minutes, we found the hotel with no problem, really.
On McGavock drive or whatever road it was on, there was this BREATHTAKING hotel right before the one we were actually staying at, and it made me wish I had made a reservation there instead. Now that the trip is over, I really wish I had.
I had made up a schedule, I made sure we had everything we needed, and I probably went overboard since I've been waiting expectantly for this anime convention for more than six months.
So when we got there, we discovered that we couldn't check in at 11:00 or 12:00 in the afternoon, like we wanted (And what the hotel staff told us when we called the day before). But we bugged and bugged the people at the front desk (The official check in time was 3:00pm, and they said we could be in at 2:00pm at the earliest) until they cleaned out our room real quick and let us in at around 1:00.
So we relaxed for a while and went to the dealer room. I bought a Soot Spirit Shirt, lots of Asian snack food (Koala's March & Pocky), and some copic markers later on (I was out of skin tones). Then we went to the Copic fan panel thing and I learned some pretty cool techniques.
We couldn't go to half the events we wanted to because it was so frickin' crowded, and there were some members of the MTAC staff being really rude to us (concentrating on Ashli in particular). So we just went around the first floor taking pictures of people and making videos. We actually managed to fill up our card, somehow. xD Ashli is really a different person behind the camera, and after a while I felt a little ignored. But I managed to pull her from her possession a bit. Apparently, the limit of pictures on the camera are 100-ish. But I'm not sure because we made alot of videos and those take up alot of memory, most likely.
Anyway, we attended this band's concert (The Man Power) and they were really amazing. Ashli fell in love with their music, as I thought she would. When I read about them "bringing back classic rock", I knew she would like them. And I was right, she was gushing over them the entire rest of the evening. At the concert, it was really fun. We got to go up on stage to dance and sing along with them, and they were great showsmen. Involving the audience at every opportunity. They had some great songs, such as "I wanna have sex with you" and "Jackie Chan" and stuff like that. Crazy s**t.
Afterwards, I was frickin' exhausted. And not to mention hungry. On the way to the hotel we saw that there was a Jack in the Box at the bottom of the hill, and we thought we could walk there. (What we DIDN'T know is that it was a 15 minute walk one way). We got yelled to by these guys whose car was broken down on the way there, and once we actually got there, we were told we couldn't order because the main store was closed and since we didn't have a car, we couldn't order from the drive through. So we walked all that way for nothing. D:
I was pissed off, to say the least. And on the way back we had to avoid those guys. Ashli got really nervous.
We got back in the hotel room and I dug out the Yellow Pages, like we should have done in the first place, and Ashli called Papa John's. Thank god, I thought. We finally would have something to eat.
So after eating our pizza, we went to another concert of this band called Peelander-Z. But we didn't stay long because the music was so loud I thought I was going to go completely deaf.
After that, we rested a bit before going out and attempting to go to the 4chan panel, but on discovering the huuuuge line, we decided it was best to go back to the hotel room and rest until it was time for this Rave/dance party called Club Kitty.
Club Kitty was pretty awesome, I danced my a** off and waved around some pink glow sticks for about 30 minutes. But at that point, we were both way too tired and decided it was best to go back to our room to take a shower and go to bed.
{THE NEXT MORNING}
After a fitful sleep and waking up about five times, I woke up at 9:00am with no problem. The bed was comfortable enough, but the bazillion slices of pizza I ate didn't agree with my stomach. So I was feeling a little sick.
At ten o'clock or so, we got a knock on our door, Ashli wasn't even able to get to the door before a woman opened it and said in a sing-song voice "Housekeeping~" biggrin
Then she was all "Are you checking out?"
And we were all "No, we're leaving later today."
Mind you, the check out time was 12:00 noon, and at that time I thought it was going to be even later than that. But still, it felt like they were trying to kick us out of the hotel. It was very rude.
So at that point, we were scrambling to pack up our things, and to call my friend Anna to see if we could keep our things in her room while we went off and enjoyed the convention. We managed to get everything together in under 20 minutes, but we couldn't get ahold of Anna. So we decided to call the front desk and find out about the baggage lockers. How they can hold your stuff for a while?
Anyway, we did, but as we went down there, we found our friend Jay who happens to be staying with Anna in a nearby hotel. We went into the dealer's room and got a keycard from Anna. So we took all of our stuff and went around to the front desk to check out. *huff* THEN, THEY SAY WE HAVEN'T PAID!!! D:< But I know I did, it was on a bank statement of mine. I brought the hotel confirmation, but I didn't think I would need the statement. *rolls eyes*
So we go back up to the room and ask the cleaning people if we can stay there to figure things out (We couldn't check out until we paid anyway. *dies*) So we called my dad, but he didn't pick up. Then we called the bank, but it happened to be closed. D: At that point, we tried calling her parents as well, and they agreed to pay for the room for now, but we would have to get our money refunded later. But then upon consulting the front desk again, we found that they wouldn't accept checks over the phone and since they didn't have enough gas to get down there, that option was out. At this point, we were reaaaally getting worried (Not that we weren't already), and then my dad called, yes!! We explained the situation to him, and at that point we were just wanting to go home. So we did, after my dad came down and paid the balance for us. ; n ;
On monday, I have to go to the bank and get someone to print out my January statement. I don't care what it takes, I AM going to make sure I get my money back. *growl*
And not only that, but I'm going to go to every hotel reviewer site I can find and give the shitty Sheraton a bad review. I can't believe they were rated four stars! Half of the features & amenities that the website boasted weren't there. (No DVD player, no coffee maker...), and for the most part, the hotel staff treated us as if WE were serving THEM. As I said earlier to Ashli's folks, they had to kiss some MAJOR a** to get those four stars. I would really hate for anyone else to have to go to the episode we had to endure.
But we're home now, and I'm feeling much better.
Over and out.
~Sarah.
 Pandiecakes · Sat Apr 26, 2008 @ 11:56pm · 0 Comments |
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