Conventional Wisdom: Hotels, Am I Right?

Okay, we talked about con roadtrips last time, now let's talk about the destination.  Not the con itself, but the place the con lives: the hotel.  What's the best hotel I've stayed at for a con?  What's the worst?  What third thing can I ask to balance out this paragraph?

Looking back, I've actually stayed in some weirdly nice hotels thanks to convention going.  The nicest, from a fancy/luxury standpoint was probably the Omni Shoreham, site of my first Katsucon.  The Omni... Let me put it this way, The Omni is the kind of place that has a full museum exhibit about its history by the front door, just to make sure you appreciate how fortunate you are to be staying there.  It's a gorgeous hotel, with big chandeliers and mirrors in every hall, shiny, expensive accoutrements everywhere you turn, and a sprawling park/garden/thing out back that is any cosplay photographer's dream come true.  It's also way, WAY too nice a place to host an anime convention.  I dunno if you've notice, but we're kind of messy babies, and there are a lot of places we probably shouldn't be allowed to cut loose for the weekend.  So I don't think you'll be seeing Katsucon or any other cons at the Omni again for a loooong time.  Ironically, I think the second nicest con hotel I've stayed at is the Marriott Wardman Park, which is literally right next to The Omni.  Seriously, ANime USA's current digs are directly across the street from Katsucon's old ones (especially ironic since the year before AUSA moves, Katsucon had to move BACK into the same hotel AUSA was in the process of leaving)  It's not QUITE as upidy as The Omni, but there's still a prevailing sense throughout Wardman Park that we shouldn't really be touching anything  This IS a place that has a massive white chocolate sculpture of the Capitol just sitting in one of the halls.  You gotta respect a place with landmark-based confections on display.

So, neither of those are the "best" hotel I've stayed at?  Probably not.  Where conventions are concerned, there's definitely peak level of fanciness that shouldn't be exceeded, or things just get uncomfortable.  Really, the stuff that impresses me the most where rooms are concerned have nothing to do with glitz and glamor, but basic convenience.  Like, any time the hotel I stay at turns out to be a suite is gonna be a good weekend.  I still remember the first Animazement where I couldn't get a room at the con hotel.  I was all sore about the fact that I wasn't actually in the Sheraton Imperial like everybody else... right up until I got to SpringHill Suites and it dawned on me that, oh yeah, the place with "suites" in the name has FRIGGING GIANT ROOMS!  Extra beds!  Our Own Kitchen!  Space to not step on other people!  NOT HEARING DRUNK PEOPLE DOWN THE HALL AT 3AM!  Yeah, that was well worth the extra minutes it took to walk across two parking lots.  There are limits, though.  The Sheraton Suites I stayed at last AWA was nice on its own.  I mean, they folded the paper towels.  Like, straight up origami folded.  Who does that?  Buuuuuuut it was also kinda sorta on the other side of the Interstate from the con.  Lane after lane of screaming Atlanta traffic.  That's a bit of a deal breaker (at least until they build the new Braves stadium over there and put in that pedestrian bridge)

Which brings us to the part everybody ACTUALLY wants to hear about: THE BAD HOTELS.  Like bad con trips, everybody's got at lest one bad con hotel story to wow their friends with.  I don't think I can top the tale I heard of finding a severed human toe in a room, but I'll try my best.  It's a bit tricky, though, since I think a lot of people allow their "worst hotel" stories to be influenced by things that really weren't the hotel's fault.  Like the Otakon I had to stay at the Hampton Inn on the other side of the Orioles Stadium.  It's not a bad little hotel at all.  A bit cramped in that "stacked on top of itself to fit into downtown" sort of way, but otherwise fine.  The problem was the craaaaaaazy long walk in the hot Baltimore summer through crowds of noisy sports fans to get to the Convention Center, which really wasn't something I could blame the hotel for.  Similarly, it's really tempting to tell tales of the Red Roof Inn outside of National Harbor, which we only stayed at because looming snow forced our crew to leave for Katsucon a day early.  Between someone other room getting the cops called on them and the fact that the hotel seemed to be next door to a meth lab (actually a lot somebody obviously bought as a place to park buses, and just never bothered to tear the house down, but it still LOOKED like a meth lab), oh, and the fact that I started a fire in the microwave, it's definitely a bad hotel story.  Buuuuut, I can't really blame the hotel itself for the crap other people do in or around it.  In terms of stuff the establishment itself could help, it honestly wasn't any worse than most cheapo motels I've stayed at in my life (In fact, I've stayed in some VASTLY worse ones that are disqualified for not being con-related)

If I had to pick a absolute worse con hotel experience, though, I'd have to say the Radisson I stayed at my very first Otakon, which I'm actually having trouble finding the name of, since I'm pretty sure it's not a Radisson anymore.  That weekend had pretty much every problem I usually excuse as not being the place's fault: we brought WAAAAY too many people for one room, it was too far a walk from the con, bad stuff was going down all around, all that fun stuff.  But even if you got past all that, there were also plenty of strikes against this hotel that absolutely WERE its problem.  Everything about the place felt old, the room was way too cramped & poorly laid out, several things were broken, up to and including THE CLOSET, and other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting.  Oh, and I'm pretty sure it was the same hotel where the "I found a severed toe in my room" story went down.  So there's that, too.  Again, I feel like I'm judging those parts on top of the poor planning of our own, which probably isn't fair to the place, but there you go.

And before someone else says it, I'll go ahead and end on the note everyone is expecting: As bad as some of these hotels were, at least they were better than sleeping in the back of a van!

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