They'll Leave the Light on for You (but They'll Charge You $13.95 for that Light)

It was pretty busy at home & at the office last week, which explains the dearth of updates. My sister-in-law was in town interviewing for a new job. It didn't end up working out, so she had to head back down to The Land of Crawfish Boils & Daiquiri Stands. We're hoping she'll find something around here that will be better suited to her - it just may take a while in the current climate.

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Jennifer (also known as Mrs. The Jim) got tickets to the Austin City Limits Festival for my birthday (even though the thing is in October). I had been going annually until money got tight with school & such, but she apparently saved up for a while and pulled it off. It's my favorite musical event, even beating out Jazzfest. I had to miss it last year, but that turned out OK as I heard reports that it was the most disappointing lineup in years. (Alison Krauss & Robert Plant were, as headliners, apparently quite lacking.)

I looked around at who's making the big festivals this year, and I noticed that both Paul McCartney and The Cure were playing Coachella this year. While I doubt McCartney would do ACL, I could certainly see The Cure making it there, which would be bad ass! I'll keep you posted as things develop.

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For Valentine's, we decided to skip the gift-giving deal. Instead, we thought it'd be fun to stay at a nice hotel in The Big City, have a fancy meal, and all that stuff. After scoping out potential locations, we ended up going to The Fairmont. They had a Valentine's Package, which included:

• stay in a suite for 1 night
• three-course meal for two in their restaurant, with personalized menu cards
• rose petal & champagne turndown service
• monogrammed robes for both of us
• breakfast in bed the next morning

I had saved up a little money for it, and it seemed like a good deal. More importantly, the hotel was apparently named after my first car! How could we lose?

We showed up early and went down to The West End for lunch - that's the touristy, revitalized part of downtown. We grabbed something to eat at Dick's Last Resort (which wasn't much to talk about), and headed to the hotel. Unfortunately, we were still too early, as check-in wasn't until 3:00. Fortunately, the Dallas Museum of Art was right across the street, so we walked over and waited for them to call me when the room was ready.


The museum had a King Tut exhibit going on, but the expense and line for that was prohibitive. It also seems a little lurid to walk around gawking at stuff from some dude's grave. (It's not a big deal - I certainly looked at stuff like that at The British Museum. It's just always seemed just slightly seamy to me.) Regardless, we decided to just look over the normal exhibits.


The museum has an exhibit going from an Icelandic visual artist that was pretty neat. The coolest exhibit was a room filled with yellow fluorescents, similar to the bug lights people used to use on porches. Well, this particular wavelength of light had the effect of washing out all of the colors around you, so that everyone in the room looked like a black-and-white picture surrounded by yellow. It was an incredibly cool phenomenon, although Mrs. The Jim claimed it gave her a headache. We toured around for a couple of hours, as the Dallas Museum is quite expansive. I enjoyed the Modern Europeans and the Impressionists, while Jenn's really big on Georgian and early American portraits and furniture. The hotel never bothered to call me (the first of many times they dropped the ball), but we wandered over around 3:30 and got into our room.

First thing I noticed ... no robes! We had been quasi-excited about the monogrammed robes, as they would be our only tangible mementos of this thing. When I talked to the front desk, they were initially surprised about it, and then they told me they were "working on it".

The suite was nice - very expansive. We watched some TV, took a nap, and then got ready for dinner. (Mrs. The Jim had decided that we would have dinner at 6:00, because we were trying to beat the rush or something.) The meal was nice, although Jenn was less than impressed. They had a fixed menu, so we could only order 1 of 2 items for each course. They also had a complimentary champagne thing with a hibiscus in the glass. When they asked me if I wanted another, I said yes ... not realizing that they would charge me $12 for it! I also screwed up as we left, as I put the meal on my credit card instead of charging it to my room. Of course, no one bothered to tell me that I should charge it to the room. Nevertheless, we eventually straightened it out.

We went back to the room, and they had the rose petals on the bed (whoop-ti-do!), but no champagne or robes. I went and talked to the front desk. They straightened up the bill at the restaurant, told me they were "working on the robes," and the champagne would be delivered in one hour. We waited in our room and played Trivial Pursuit. (That's right - we KNOW how to party!) Roughly 2.5 hours later, still nothing. I call the front desk, and am told that champagne wasn't part of the package. They never bothered to call me to let me know this fact - they just never showed up. I then read the package to them from their on-line description. (Internet, by the way, cost us $15 to use, but Mrs. The Jim ordered it before she realized that fact.) They managed to stop in 20 minutes later with the bubbly.

I then noticed that the valet parking, which I thought was free for guests, actually cost us $25. The robes showed up around 11 PM, as some random housekeeper walked into the front door, not waiting for me to open the door. (Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on your perspective - no nudity was on display.) Somewhere around this time, The Mrs. decided she wanted to order some room service. I was ticked off by now, and had started to approach my "boycott mode", wherein I had no desire to give these people any more money. This, of course, led to us arguing with each other, as we both took our frustrations out on each other for a few minutes.

The next morning, I ordered our complimentary breakfast in bed, for which they IMMEDIATELY charged me - even though they shouldn't. This required a phone call and a longer-than-necessary check out in order to get the issue rectified. Finally, we headed off, went back home, and watched TV the rest of the day.

So, in summary, how did The Fairmont rate? I'd say about a C+ (which, coincidentally, was about the same grade I would have given my 1979 Ford Fairmont). Mrs. The Jim thought I should write an angry letter (for which I'm well known); however, I didn't think the experience warranted it. I eventually got everything we were due, with the exception of personalized menu cards. The robes were nice, as was the meal and the room. It just seemed to me that, whether by design or ineptitude, I had to constantly watch these people to make sure they didn't overcharge me or forget to give me my swag. Maybe they're just an over-commercialized giant corporate chain that has no strong local presence. Maybe they assume people won't pay that much attention, so they know they'll get additional money out of those less attentive. All I know is that customer service was pretty poor for these folks.

I certainly wouldn't suggest anyone stay there, nor do I think we will either. There's a ton of other "fancy" hotels in the Dallas area, if we ever chose to do that again (although I don't think that's going to happen real soon).

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Well, that about sums it up. Next time, I'll manage to combine my final look back at the 2008 Christmas holidays with an insightful music review. How exciting!

Until next time,
The Jim