No Mas Fiesta!

This makes me so sad - I wrote notes for this post and totally threw it away! Does anybody else do that? Make notes for a given post, I mean - not actually throw them away.

Yesterday, when I started this entry, I would say we're all still recovering from last week...well, maybe the weekend. For the last three weeks, Fiesta has been going on. I've never actually been but from what I can tell, it's an extended party downtown...must be since it lasts for THREE WEEKS...actually, I think that's a first time thing and years past it's only been two weeks.  Which really? That's an awful long time for a street party to last. I know there are parades, notably, the Battle of Flowers which apparently has every school district (except for the girls) either on an early dismissal or out for the entire day.  There's also tons of music, a carnival and some sort of...I don't know if it's a clam bake or scallop fest...who knows, a college puts it on. Anyhow - it brings in tons of people.

Last weekend marked the culmination of activities AND there was a regional track meet nearby so as you can imagine, we were hurtling towards a crazy weekend.  I'd say by Thursday, we were well on our way. We had fairly gnarly ratio of teens to real people...ok, I kid, I kid - teens are people too...when they're not stampeding the place like a pack of elephants. That's practically the call that came down to the desk that night:

Irate guest with a 4am wake up call: "Excuse me, Miss, did you just check in a herd of wild elephants for room upstairs?"

Local Friendly Front Desk Clerk: "Oh no, Sir, sorry about that - we have a lot of HS track teams staying with us and one of them have just gone up and should be settling for the night. If they continue to be a disturbance, please let me know so I can notify their coaches."

Honestly, they had JUST gone up, so I thought it was fair to give them a moment to disperse to rooms and since I didn't get a call back, I think I was right.

A couple friendly tips and ideas came to mind while working this weekend:

A 3pm Check In does not mean that you must absolutely posolutely be here right at 3pm. I promise, we're not going to be counting noses and taking names and promptly DROPPING your reservation.  Can you imagine the hell it would be checking in if we required everyone to be around at the same time?  That would be crazy!!! Where do people get this crazy idea??

On that note, though, do pay attention since some hotels WILL drop your reservation if you're not in by 6pm.  Personally, I think that's crazy. There is no harm in calling to let a hotel know that you're going to be late coming in. I always make a note if someone does that so any clerks on duty know not to drop them.

If you don't make a reservation directly with a given hotel and want, say...a top floor room, call them up to make sure they know about the request. I know, extra work for a traveler but I've found that these special requests don't always get conveyed to the desk.

Now this is probably repeat from any major event or holiday - if you're going to a major tourist area during these times, plan ahead! Yes, you and everybody else wants to be at Fiesta or Spring Break so don't be surprised if every room is taken up except for some fleabag hotel that has their last room available for the low, low price of $700 for the night.  Think I'm kidding? Ha!
Omg...so happy it's over!