All right, so the weekend was pretty busy and although I did get the wireless to work somewhat (I wound up connecting to the 3rd floor’s wireless instead of the 4th floor’s to get it to work) I found myself unable to find enough time at the hotel to actually do any pertinent updates besides…
“Going to bed, I are teh sleepiness!”
…or…
“Oh god, the Cheesecake Factory has poisoned me with deliciousness!”
This should be the Cheesecake Factory’s motto.
So instead of an actual update/review of Otakon itself, let us first talk about Hotels. I went for a simple little hotel called the Rodeway Inn on St. Paul Street in Baltimore. It wasn’t a very fancy room but it had all of the amenities you need on a trip: Comfy bed, several power outlets, a shower, a toilet, towels, a coffee maker (which we didn’t even use), and a few non-essentials that we enjoyed such as the forlorn Wi-Fi internet and a complimentary continental breakfast every morning.
I paid roughly $250 for four nights. If you don’t include the sleeping we did in the room, we spent a total of about six hours in the hotel in those four days.
A few friends of ours who also went to Otakon were being organized by one of their group, we’ll call him Tom. Tom has different motivations than I do. My motivations are very utilitarian: I need a place to sleep, shower, and poop; if I get food and internet out of the deal that’s extra-fantastic. I don’t care if the room has its own kitchen, or if the bathroom has a tub, or if the hotel has a pool that I’m never going to use. I want the cheapest assembly of the things I need, with a minor emphasis on my hotel being within walking distance to my destination (i.e. the Baltimore Convention Center).
Tom, on the other hand, has very different motivations in mind. His motivations are very materialistic and egotistical. Tom’s motivations in life are material goods and esteem; in other words he wants nice things and the admiration of his peers.
He got a two-room suite, with a kitchen, in a hotel that had a pool, a fitness center, laundry services, and a sauna. He also skipped half of the convention to practice his routine for the Masquerade: Something where he would be up on stage in front of everyone. And after the fact he acted rather coldly to us when we managed to find some time to get together because we had decided to go to something else we found more interesting than the masquerade; so we didn’t get to see him and slather him in the attention he so desired.
Now I told you about Tom to make you understand his motivations in Hotel choice. He stayed at the Embassy Suites on St. Paul Street. He stayed in a room with three other people, and each person paid $150 for three nights. That’s a $600 room for three nights. I paid $250 for four nights. We both had complimentary breakfast and Wi-Fi (that didn’t want to work), we both had 1 bed and a desk, we both had two chairs in our room, but he had a pull-out sofa.
Tom is also a totally different personality than myself. I plan things out, everything I do. I pre-registered for Otakon and got my hotel in March, I got my bus tickets in June (and that was just because I had to arrange my schedule with somebody else to drop me off at the bus station so I didn’t have to park my car in a $13 a day garage).
Tom waited until a couple weeks before Otakon to book his hotel and didn’t even pre-register. So he paid $80 a ticket, $600 for a room, and then skipped half of the convention; he also paid $45 for a one-way Greyhound bus ticket to Baltimore. I, for the record, paid $70 per pass into Otakon, and $48 for a round-trip bus ticket on Greyhound.
He paid for a fitness center he never used, a sauna he didn’t use, and a pool that he didn’t use. If I wanted to work out I would have just walked to the convention center instead of taking the free shuttle buses that went right passed my hotel (Charm City Circulator, a wonderful thing for tourists!). If I wanted to swim I would have paid a taxi to take me to a local neighborhood public pool (and still saved money). And if I wanted a sauna…I would have just not used the AC in Baltimore.
~RCS
Richard C. Shaffer 