Norwescon 1—Supplemental

I attended Norwescon, the largest science fiction/fantasy convention in the Pacific Northwest with an emphasis on writing.

First, about the hotel. This was the Doubletree Inn in SeaTac. Yes, the city was named after the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, otherwise known as SeaTac. This is the only city I know of that was named that way.

This was my worst experience at the hotel, which I have been to several times, or any hotel at all. This may sound petty at first, but my key cards would not work. My room was at the farthest end of the hotel, so I had to walk outside all the way back to the front desk. Since this has the most conference rooms in the Seattle area, it made for a long walk, there and back again. I was given a new pair, but only one of them worked. I noticed a woman down the hallway was having the same problem, since she was pressed against her door and muttering under her breath about her stupid key card. This kept happening, so I was eventually issued a total of eight.

I didn’t realize it at first, but my door would not close all the way and lock on its own. The Thursday night of the convention, I was lying in bed and watching the TV’s channel guide scroll.

Someone opened the door.

We couldn’t see each other because of the room configuration. I said, “Hey.” I didn’t yell it because I was trying to fall asleep. The person didn’t try to enter, and I think it was just a case of someone opening the door to the wrong room. But at the time, I was somewhat antsy. I was in a less than dressed state. After a few seconds of nothing happening, I ran to the door and slammed it shut with both hands as hard as I could. That probably scared whoever must have been retreating down the hallway.

No matter how widely I opened the door, it never fully shut on its own, as the image above shows.

The windows outside the elevators I used were filthy. There were so many streaks of who-knows-what, when the cab went up, it looked like it was raining. This was really bad.

From the elevator at the far end of the hotel, I could see one of the massive wooden posts that held the hotel up from the nearby lake was split badly. I should have taken a picture to show the hotel management. It was that way when I was at Norwescon two years ago. In all that time, no one noticed and took action?

When I checked in, I was told that parking was free for the convention, and I just had to use a key card at a parking gate. You can guess how well that worked. I tried my last two working key cards, but they were rejected. I pressed the Help button repeatedly, but no one ever answered. Finally, I had to use my credit card to get out of there. I was charged $57.60.

 That night, I called the hotel and explained what happened. When I said I had pressed the Help button several times, the person interrupted me. She said very tersely that a buzzer or something goes off on her desk when that button was pushed, so that could not have happened. She wasn’t much help.

To be fair, the hotel restaurant has a good breakfast buffet. And when I called the accounting department the following Monday, they said they would refund the parking charge to my credit card.

Next will be an account of the convention itself.