We're back from our trip to Dallas and it was honestly a bit of a roller coaster. We had a great time ringing in the new year with our friends, but we had a nightmare of an experience with the hotel. Here's what happened.
When we came back from our New Years Eve festivities, we noticed that the toilet wouldn't flush. We got changed to a new room that had a broken thermostat (it was 80 degrees in the room) and then we finally got switched to another room that had a filthy bathroom. What a great start to the new year, right? After switching rooms for more than an hour, we ended up staying in our first room with the broken toilet because we were so mad, frustrated and tied. The Holiday Inn comp-ed our first night stay and we checked out the next morning. Because of all of the New Years Eve festivities and the Bowl Games in Dallas, the hotels were 100% occupied, but we were grateful to find a room at the Marriott Suites, which was about 10 minutes away from our original hotel. The customer service was superb and everything worked properly. I would definitely stay here again. The only downfall to our stay at the Marriott was they ran out of hot water on Friday morning. Apparently, I tried to take a shower at the same time as everyone else in the hotel, so hot water was limited. It started to warm up slightly, so I took a quick shower and got on with my morning. About thirty minutes after the incident, I received a telephone call from the manager apologizing for the inconvenience and she ended up compt-ing half of our room. Once we arrived back home, I had an e-mail apologizing again. So, as you can see the experience between the two hotels were night and day. Even though we felt that we were compensated for our troubles at both hotels, we would have preferred to have paid full price and had a flawless stay.
Other than the hotel fiasco, we had a great time. It was really nice to celebrate New Year's Eve with our friends. We shopped at the outlets and got a few great deals, ate at Pappasitos for our hump day dinner (which was delicious!), celebrated the beginning of the new year at Victory Park, discovered Ikea and stopped by Sprinkles, a cupcake bakery, on the way out of town. All in all, everything was fantastic and we all came back talking to one another, which was definitely a plus. Andrew and I can't wait for our next trip.
Here are some photos for you to enjoy.
New Years Eve and Hump Day Dinner at Pappasitos. This was our entire group. From left: Jenn, Nick, Eric, Matt, Andrew and Me.
Victory Park, Downtown Dallas. This was right in front of the American Airlines Arena. They made it into a mini-Times Square, had bands playing and a fireworks display at midnight.
There were thousands of people there.
Here is a picture of Andrew and me on NYE.
A picture of me, Jenn and Eric.
Nick and Jenn
Jenn and I.
Here are pictures of our room at the Marriott Suites.
Sprinkles!
The cupcakes were delicious. My favorites were the vanilla and the black and white cupcakes. Yum.
I hope everyone's year is off to a good start. May 2009 be the best year yet!
-N
