I love SOG. As you can see by my sig, I go at least once a year. Did I mention I love SOG?
So here's my rant. We went last week, arrived on 8/31 at a pretty early hour - 10am. I fully expected that we would have to wait until 3-4 for our room and I was cool with that. We checked in and made a request for the old section, adjoining rooms, preferably 201-203. We like the old section and this was our first trip without a stroller, so little legs =shorter walk if possible. My thought was, this was pretty early and hopefully they could accommodate. The front desk person seemed put out by the request(s) and asked me to prioritize. I told her I had to have adjoining since we had little ones in the second room. She told us to come back at 330.
We went to the pool, ordered some beer and pizza and had a great time. At 3 I started back toward the lobby and when I got there, the keys were waiting. New section, 5th floor, as far from the lobby as you can get. Different front desk worker, said he couldn't do anything as we needed adjoining rooms and there were NO adjoining rooms left in the entire Magnolia section of the hotel (say what!?) Not only do I find that hard to beleive in general, but I'm certain that wasn't the case at 10am when I checked in and was probably one of the first check ins of the day. But, I smiled nicely, said thanks for checking and proceeded to hike to Timbuktu to our rooms. We arrived and promptly noticed - no adjoining door!
I went back to the front desk in person and found our friends who were meeting us (totally separate check in) were having issues as well and once she cleared up her stuff (rate related) I co-opted the manager from her. The manager took one look at room inventory and gave me connecting rooms directly across the hall from 202-203 the rooms I originally requested. So it would seem that the first two front desk workers are liars. I don't mind not getting my room requests fullfilled, I'm not that entitled. But I REALLY mind being lied to.
It's really disappointing because I love this hotel and I think it's a great benefit for our community and normally, I feel that it's just as magical as the onsite hotels.
But this really sours me toward the front desk staff. If you can accommodate people on their vacation and it's no skin off your nose, why would you begrudge them that, just to be a grump?
Anyway, the manager was great, really saved the day, and the rest of the vacation was awesome as ever. But the take home is, if you feel like you're not being listened to, requesting a manager is the way to go. Not my normal modus operandi, but it will be from now on.
