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At FWA... sort of.
13 years ago
General
*ahem* meeeeee... mehhhhh... mahhhhh... mawwwww... maWOOOOOOooooooo....
Actually as I'm writing this I'm waiting with all the patience I can muster for the garage to replace a flat tire I incurred just blocks from the hotel. Stupid high curbs, and stupid downtown traffic forcing me to take one last, unfortunate loop around...
That aside, mixed bag experience at FWA this year. Now being a veteran con-goer I had a good idea what to expect and was able to plan accordingly. So I got done pretty much everything I meant to get done.
The downside, and you may already have heard about this from others, but the new hotel left much to be desired. The rooms themselves were fine, apart from the refrigerator which appears to be more oriented towards charging for its use than actually being useful.
The rest of the hotel had bigger issues. Biggest of all was the parking. We arrived in time to snag a spot in the appallingly small self park lot, which stacks up ten levels and has stair access only. Talk about pushing hard for valet service! And it's not as if the self park lot was even a decent rate. $22/day for a parking structure that didn't even feel safe to be in. Ugh.
The floor space drew a lot of complaints for being spread over five or six floors, but that didn't bother me much. What was more of a bother was the elevator situation. With only 4 elevators serving the lowest 30 floors of rooms, combined with many entry points, the wait for elevators was often painful. Luckily, on the lowest floor of the rooms we found a way to cheat the system, in ways that involved ignoring warnings about alarmed emergency exits. Desperate times...
The good news is that the complaints have been heard and FWA's experiment in "going upscale" will be a one-off thing. Which means I will probably be back next year.
That aside, mixed bag experience at FWA this year. Now being a veteran con-goer I had a good idea what to expect and was able to plan accordingly. So I got done pretty much everything I meant to get done.
The downside, and you may already have heard about this from others, but the new hotel left much to be desired. The rooms themselves were fine, apart from the refrigerator which appears to be more oriented towards charging for its use than actually being useful.
The rest of the hotel had bigger issues. Biggest of all was the parking. We arrived in time to snag a spot in the appallingly small self park lot, which stacks up ten levels and has stair access only. Talk about pushing hard for valet service! And it's not as if the self park lot was even a decent rate. $22/day for a parking structure that didn't even feel safe to be in. Ugh.
The floor space drew a lot of complaints for being spread over five or six floors, but that didn't bother me much. What was more of a bother was the elevator situation. With only 4 elevators serving the lowest 30 floors of rooms, combined with many entry points, the wait for elevators was often painful. Luckily, on the lowest floor of the rooms we found a way to cheat the system, in ways that involved ignoring warnings about alarmed emergency exits. Desperate times...
The good news is that the complaints have been heard and FWA's experiment in "going upscale" will be a one-off thing. Which means I will probably be back next year.
Parking really sounds like a night mare and the elevators in the hotel too. I hate to think how well or how bad it would have been for me to get around had we come.
I do hope y'all had a good time despite the issues youve talked about. Our next and final con for 2013 will be MFM.
were with the fur con.
Upscale is fine as long as they research the hotel and give it a actual look over in person.
Tho I did hear the con staff it self was good.
Hope you did get to have some fun there.
Maybe some time me Cody and the rest can eventually meet up at a con *hugs*