Day 30 Summer 2011 Road Trip

Well we didn’t get any sightseeing done in Washington DC today.  Instead we spent the day changing rooms, not once, but twice. 

The story begins around 10pm last night when a loud pulsing vibration could be felt throughout the hotel.  Our room is on the 3rd floor of the hotel.  It was obviously music being played too loud and the bass was turned up much much to loud.  I went down to the lobby at 11pm to investigate what was going on.  Dozens of other guests were already there voicing their complaints.

It turns out that the hotel had booked a private party in their lounge/bar and the DJ was playing the music as loud as possible.  I asked to speak to the night manager, but after 5 attempts by the desk clerk to page him/her and never getting a response, I asked how much longer this racket was going to continue and pointed out that the hotel has a quiet policy starting at 10pm.  I suspect the night manager was hiding not wishing to deal with the situation.  We were all told that the party would be over at 2am.. 

I managed to fall asleep but Karen couldn’t.  At 2am, I awoke and at 2:05 I called down to the front desk and voiced my complaints again because the music was not stopping.  I told the clerk to make a note in my file that I would be filing a formal complaint in the morning with the hotel manager and that I would be demanding a full refund for the night stay.  The pounding music continued till 2:45am and then the honking and rowdiness in the parking lot continued for another 30 minutes.

So this morning at 9:30 am I went to the front desk and there was the manager behind the counter.  I asked her if she had a good nights sleep last night and she said that indeed she had… I told her that we didn’t have a good night sleep.   She had been briefed on the situation so she knew of what I was speaking about.  I asked her if there were going to be any more parties like that during my stay and if so, I would be checking out.

She assured me that there would be no more parties during our stay, but she wanted to move us away from that part of the hotel anyways, just to be sure.  She offered to reimburse me half of the cost of last nights stay, but I said that was unacceptable compensation and said I wanted a full refund.  She didn’t argue the point and gave me the full refund.

So we packed up our stuff and moved from the 3rd floor up to the 6th floor.  By this time it was 11am and we decided that at this point it wasn’t worth bothering to go into Washington DC and that we would just hang around the hotel and have afternoon naps to get caught up on the lack of sleep.

Well no sooner had I laid down for a nap after lunch and I started hearing kids yelling.  My first thought was that they were outside, but I couldn’t see anyone outside.. then I realized the noise was coming from the room next door.  It sounded like there was a day care center in that room, and I thought that perhaps all the hotel cleaning staff brought their kids to work each day and left them in the room next to ours while they cleaned rooms.

I got back on the phone and called the hotel manager.  I asked her if she was running a daycare center next to our room and she said “No” So I told her about the noise and she checked her records, there is a family of 6 in the room next to us and they have been there for 41 days with no departure date scheduled.  Who can afford 41 days at $100.00 per night, well it turns out that an insurance company is putting them up in the hotel.  The manager said she would tell them to be quieter, but I said that it wouldn’t work.. kids who are noisy don’t know how to be quiet because their parents allow them to be noisy.  The quiet would only last for 5 minutes and then slowly increase again.

We didn’t want any part of being next to this noisy family for the rest of our stay.  So once again the manager found us another room in the hotel and we packed up our stuff again and moved to the 5th floor.

So far, so good, the only noise so far has been the thunder storm that rolled through a few hours ago.  Hopefully we are here in this room for the duration of our week long stay.  If we have to pack up and move again, I will be loading the car with our belongings and heading on down the road. 

If we get a good night sleep tonight, we will get up early in the morning and take the subway into Washington DC for some sightseeing. 

Stay tuned.