HotelChatter

I booked the anniversary package at the Gaylord National for Dec. 25-27. When making the reservations in early November, I was advised by the reservationist to reserve an exterior view room ($139) instead of the atrium view room ($179) which I asked for. He told me I would be upgraded to the atrium view at no cost. I asked him at least twice if he was sure an upgrade would be available since it was the holiday weekend. He assured me the hotel had lots of vacancies and an upgrade would not be a problem. Upon arrival, I waited in line more than 30 minutes to check in. While the desk was manned by 6-7 desk clerks, each check-in took an extremely long time to complete. Of course, when I finally made it to the desk, no upgrades were available. The desk clerk tried to charge me $219 to upgrade to an atrium view room--meaning atrium views were available, but they weren't going to upgrade me unless I paid signigicantly more--a nice little scam the hotel is running. When I protested and told her I would pay $179 (as I had originally intended), but not $219, she said the best she could do was give me a "courtyard veiw." Upon arriving at our room, I discoved the "courtyard" is a small traffic island between the hotel and the parking garage. We kept our drapes drawn for the entire weekend!

Intending to celebrate our anniversary in style, I brought along a nice bottle of champagne and champagne flutes from home. I made the mistake of leaving the flutes on the desk when we went out to explore on Saturday. When we returned, the glasses were gone. No problem--I would just use the "Consider it done" button on the phone to get immediate service as touted in the hotel's marketing materials. After waiting on hold for more than 35 minutes, I finally got a surly cleck who said she would check with the housekeeping supervisor to see if any champagne glasses had been turned in. I got no apology, nor did I get an offer to send up replacement glasses so we could enjoy our champagne. I never heard from anyone in the hotel again about the glasses. Thank goodness I took some cheap ones and not my good crystal!

After the bad luck we had had so far, we decided to skip our dinner reservations in the hotel and walk down the street to see what we could find. We decided we'd rather take our chances elsewhere. Thankfully, we had a nice dinner outside the hotel. However, when we got back, there was no water in the hotel. We got intermittent bursts of yellow water throughout the evening. Not until the next morning did we get a note slipped under the door telling us about a watermain break in the area and warning us not to drink the water. Of course, extra bottles of water were available by using the "consider it done" button on the phone. No thanks!

Although the anniversary package included a late check-out (3:00 p.m.), and I had made reservations for the Sunday brunch in the atrium, we decided we just couldn't take it anymore. We arrived at the front desk at 10:15 a.m., but waited in line for 45 minutes to complete the process. The desk clerks were handling complaints from many irate guests and were comping rooms for most. Apparently, we weren't the only ones who had problems. Many were complaining they had pre-paid for the holiday packages but the hotel was trying to charge them again. We thought our problems were over when we finally got to the parking garage, but it took us more than 45 minutes to get out of the garage. It appears the parking garage attendants are as incompetent as the desk clerks.

There are a lot of nice places to stay in the DC area. Don't choose the Gaylord!