After our original flight was canceled we got into Oakland two hours late, but I didn't mind because it let me sleep in longer. We then drove about an hour from Oakland to Santa Rosa. Santa Rosa is in Northern California wine country, so I was hoping for a pretty resort hotel. Unfortunately that is not what we got. Our hotel is called the Flamingo Resort and Conference Center and the word "resort" is used quite losely but "flamingo" is accurate because that's about what it smells like. The hotel is located in the parking lot of a Longs drugstore and looks like a nursing home. You get two keys, one to your room, and one to open the glass security door to your hallway. There are no elevators so you have to haul your bags up the stairs yourself. I think from now on when I source hotels I'm going to ask if there are elevators, because in my experience a lack of elevators is directly corrleated to a crappy hotel, and as my team knows website hotel pictures often are very misleading. (I have actually heard of hotels bringing in furniture just for the day the photographer comes to take pictures for the website). I think this hotel may be the reason our registration for this event was so low; if I was a local I would probably avoid it if I could.
My poor coworker was originally given a room that was under construction and did not have a door, and then when she got another room, they gave her the wrong key. So about a half hour later, after she finally got another room, we went to go set up. I was surprised because our ballroom was already ready for us and our equipment was already there waiting for us. Needless to say that was not what I had expected based on my initial impressions of the hotel. They did however have much of the set up that I ordered incorrect; skirts on the tables, wrong size tables, too many tables, etc. And the banquet staff is dressed like they just woke up. Our banquet captain was a very large woman whose shirt stopped just under her boobs and literally had half of her stomach hanging out. This blatant lack of professionalism and the fact that when I asked when our AV person would be here in the morning and I got a weird look really makes me nervous for what kind of event I am going to be able to pull off in this facility. I hate when I get people giving me weird looks when I ask for things that are normal. I can always tell when I'm in a hick city when I ask a hotel for a latte and they don't know what it is. Tonight I got a weird look from this "resort" staff at the front desk when I asked if the gym was complimentary. They told me it was 12 dollars, but apparently I didn't ask the right person because Rob got a free pass from someone else who worked there.
We had dinner at the hotel. The service was really great and the food was pretty good too. Our banquet captain bought us dessert, so that was nice. Also, tonight there was karaoke in the restaurant and apparently last night was salsa dancing. We figured out that this place was probably the really hot place to be like 40 years ago. Michelle has a hair dryer in room that we're also pretty sure hasn't been updated in 40 years.
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