Hyatt: Survivor Hotel Addition

Competition Championship Event
1

It was a long four nights of Survivor Hotel Addition, and I outlasted, outwitted, and outplayed to Survive to tell our story.

It all started on a cold night when we first reached the Hyatt after a long day of traveling. With only peanuts and a turkey sandwich in our stomachs we trudged up the steps to the Hyatt to be astounded by the beautiful atrium and pretty elevators. However, it was not as it seemed–we had no idea what was ahead of us.

The first night was normal enough; the room was nice, but even smaller than the hotel room in Silicon Valley at the Clarion Inn. We were also expecting bathrobes like it said in the brochures, but there were no bathrobes (PacificSunChica was quite distraught). But the beds made up for this minor set back. The beds were definitely heavenly–very pillowy.

One night down three more to go. The second night we get back to realize that the Hyatt rooms do not have refrigerators or microwaves…I mean even the Clarion had them. This meant no burnt popcorn and no where to put our left-overs from the Spaghetti Wherehouse. This was a problem. We thought for hours on end to solve this major problem. Answer: we took our ice box, filled it with ice, and ta-da instant refrigerator–oh yeah, future engineers here :smiley:

Two nights down two more to go. The third night was definitely a crisis. We get back to the hotel around 9:30 and to find we have a huge urge to go to the pool. I mean we all brought our swimsuits and even had one of those fun blow-up balls that team 364 (i think) gave us. However, we encounter another problem: the pool is not working!! I mean come on, it’s almost summer and the pool isn’t working–is California the only place where pools function year-round? LOL…so we are back in our rooms playing a bit of crazy taxi and a really cool shooting game on our dreamcast, when I’m overcome with thirstiness. Now, the Hyatt does have water bottles on the table, but they are for sell… and guess how much? FOUR DOLLARS–yeah right, like I’m going to pay four dollars for a water bottle. Answer (or at least we thought): just drink tap water from the bathroom sink; however this posed an even bigger problem. Yes, the water was definitely not clear… it was more of a cloudy white… i mean if it was more white it could have past for milk. So I flop down in the chair about to die from thirst when (I’m getting pretty desperate here) I come up with the idea to pour the water from the water bottles into a cup then refill the water bottle with the tap water. At first this was a good idea but one of my fellow survivors said they’d probably notice the seal is broken…so that idea was scratched. Final Solution: boil the tap water. Yes, we actually boiled the tap water because we had one of those coffee makers…so, yeah, that kinda worked. Noticed later that we could have just melted ice Awertygraut!

Three days down one more to go. The fourth day was the most frightening day of our lives. I fall asleep to be awake by a fellow survivor, PacificSunChica, screaming, “There is a cockroach in the bathroom! Kill it! Kill it!” By this time, I couldn’t believe all these happening… I mean this is the Hyatt! So I sleepishly walk over to see a humungous cockroach this big l____________________l OMG! It was huge. Now, I’m not a bug type person so we wake up the other survivor (whom hates bugs about ten times more than me). I suggest just closing the bathroom door to lock it in but they are totally freaked so alphagrl2 picks up a coat hanger and PacificSunChica picks a water bottle (*side note: Where was this water bottle when I needed it? hmmmm…) So by this point the cockroach had disappeared and was hiding somewhere in the bathroom. So they went searching, when after a few minutes I hear a scream and the two of them come running out of the bathroom. So seeing at this rate we were never going to get this bug out of our room, we ran out into the hall to find our fellow 692 teammates. They got a shoe (what a concept ) and smashed it about ten time before it wasn’t moving anymore…I mean this was one fast cockroach. Also on the fourth night, PacificSunChica’s bed was taken over by someone who shall not be named, so she was forced to sleep at the end of the bed. Two hours later at 2:30 am we awoke to leave for our flight back home.

We survived: outlast, outplay, and outwit. Too bad we didn’t get all this on tape since CBS denied us of our wonderful version of Survivor. Well, until next year!
Hermione

(any other Survivor Hotel Additions?)

2

Melting the ice was my idea…AWERTYGRAUK!

3

What floor were you guys on the 19 floor owned. My room was huge. yeah you had to buy the water yeah there were no robes but hey those elevators ruled.

4

Hmm, just a few things I’d like to add about Hyatt.

  1. The elevators wait was insanely long on wednesday when we arrived. It was literally faster to run down the stairs (we were on the 8th floor so it wasn’t THAT bad)
  2. The breakfasts? hmm, do they really call those breakfasts? Ok, you get there are 6:15 am and all they have are a few weird muffins and boxed cereal (2 selections: corn flakes and something else… whatever happened to the rest). At 7:15, the hotel ppl start cleaning up the food and if you come at 7:25, there won’t be anything left in that room. Compared to where we stayed last year (Disney New Orleans Resort), food at Hyatt was atrocious.
  3. Rooms: the rooms weren’t too bad. I was lucky enough to have a double room at th end of the hall which connected to another team room. However, our bathroom door lock was BROKEN! Now, nice rooms, walk in closet and broken bathroom door? That was pretty sad.
  4. Room structure. Is it me, or did everyone go to bed at 9:30 pm. We get back to the hotel at 10pm and everyone’s door is closed. I understand that some teams have early curfew, but this hotel just was not the right place if you wanted to meet people. Why? You can’t see who is on each floor above you, nobody knows which team is staying where. What’s worse is that there’s no common space on any floor.
  5. The “infamous” piano. I don’t know how many of you actually tried out that piano at the lobby, but it’s pretty random stuff. If you play on it, some hotel dude will randomly kick you off for the dumbest reasons. “oh, you can’t play here.” Why you ask? “you can play anytime before 10pm.” So you walk away and a minute later they turn on the recording and the piano goes autonomous. Hypocrites! In the morning, some guys were trying out the piano and in the middle of a piece (it was played well too) the piano goes bezerk and starts playing by itself. What kind of respect do these hotellies give us? Geez!

It was fun. Could have been better, but it was Hyatt Regency Houston for all of you.

Did you guys notice some HS’s prom in the hotel on saturday night?

5

A crazy piano that randomly goes insane? DANG i wish i was there…

6

see hotel horror stories… it was pretty bad…and ours came with instant cofee packets instead of $4 water bottles.

7

yea elevators rocked and the spindle top kicked butt, we got out for some time caus we were drivers… long story… but yea the rooms suxed.

we had food and drinks caus we stole like 15 sodas and like 20 bags of pretzles and chips and stuff from the autodesk nite!! :stuck_out_tongue:

the guy was totally awesome giving stuff out there.

uh what else… not much to do, gift store was empty, as was the pool, if you saw it, there was no water in it.

people there were cool tho, specially everyone who engaged in the 200 handshake-a-thon! o and some ppl from another team that suckered my friend into buying a pizza :stuck_out_tongue:

8

I think it was thursday morning or something, I went downstairs and sat down b/c we were gonna be leaving in a minute. The lady sitting behind me was talking to the people at the hotel. Apparently, her elevator had malfunctioned, and while I couldnt get the whole story, apparently she got on the elevator, pushed the button, and it moved to the target floor without the door every closing. Also, it stopped about 5 inches above the floor.

Other than that interesting story, I felt that the hyatt was an ok place to stay. We didnt get nearly as much fun in as we had planned b/c of team decisions to go out to eat and such, and team rules about leaving the hotel, but I think it was an alright hotel. Did anyone go up to the spindletop restaurant? Jeez, If our team didnt go out to eat, I probably would have eaten there. It was an insane view.

I was also pissed about the lack of bathrobes…or many other amenities that we had enjoyed at the embassy suites in chicago. Outside aesthetics were awesome, but the rooms were average. It wasnt really cool when we had to pack about 9 people in our room friday night to decide who to pick the next morning, only to have our VCR not work with our tape of the competition, but thats not really the hotels fault. I do wish the pool had been open, it would have been fun to swim, and the only other teams I really talked to at the hyatt were 75 and 128.

9

I am truly terrified. Your stay must have been terrible. perhaps next year your team should look into staying at the Holiday Inn off of Kirby. My room included a kitchen, living room, a and small dining room. Attached at either end of this space were two rooms. We also had 3 beds and 2 bathrooms. It was bigger than the average Boston Apartment I think. But alas, we had no time to use our pool. The food was edible, and the elevator waits were generally not too long…just so long as there wasn’t anyone screaming AYYYY in my ear. I’m not a hypocrite, I just don’t think its appropriate in hotels Anyway, I hope your future visits are much more enjoyable. (At least your maids didn’t “liberate” things from your rooms)

10

*Originally posted by David66 *
**I am truly terrified. Your stay must have been terrible. perhaps next year your team should look into staying at the Holiday Inn off of Kirby. My room included a kitchen, living room, a and small dining room. Attached at either end of this space were two rooms. We also had 3 beds and 2 bathrooms. It was bigger than the average Boston Apartment I think. But alas, we had no time to use our pool. The food was edible, and the elevator waits were generally not too long…just so long as there wasn’t anyone screaming AYYYY in my ear. I’m not a hypocrite, I just don’t think its appropriate in hotels Anyway, I hope your future visits are much more enjoyable. (At least your maids didn’t “liberate” things from your rooms) **

Holy crap…I sooooo wished we stayed there…thats insane.

11

I whish I know where all you guys were!!! I roomed with Dave up on the 19th floor and , again, we had a HUGE room! It was one of the corner rooms, what can I say, I tend to get lucky on these trips? Yeah, the lack of bathrobes and the lack of water in the pool really sucked, but other than that, I was quite pleased. The tap water was a little odd, but if you let it sit for a minute or two, it cleared right up. As for the bottled water, we had one bottle that was $4 and one that was $5!!! The same water, the same bottle, I’m sorry but what the H*** is up with that?!?!?!

Oh, and here’s a good one for ya…
BadBrad and I thought the beds were a little stiff…so…we figure 'ahh, let’s jump on 'em and soften ‘em up a bit.’ Well, mind you I wheigh about 275, I took about two jumps on the thing and CRACK the boxspring breaks and wedges itself off the frame. OK, ez fix, just lift it back on to the frame, the dip in the matress is gone, nothing more said.

The eleveators were definately cool, as long as you got on the express up to the SpindleTop. No, I never really ate there, but the ride was awesome!!! Trying to get from my floor to the lobby really sucked though. Since I’m up on the 19th floor, everybody was below me and the elevators would stop every floor:ahh: !!! They were really cool elevators, but they weren’t very efficient, especially since there were 7 of them!!!

12

I am truly terrified. Your stay must have been terrible. perhaps next year your team should look into staying at the Holiday Inn off of Kirby… Anyway, I hope your future visits are much more enjoyable. (At least your maids didn’t “liberate” things from your rooms)

wow, that sounds like a really nice hotel. The Hyatt was actually okay because I found all the happenings to be more humorous than anything else. I mean who would expect a cockroach on the 14th floor…lol. And i dont think the maids took anything that i’m aware of:yikes: but u never know, i did notice that most of the purples had disappeared in the huge bag of skittles that i brought, but then again it could have just been alphagrl2:D later,
Hermione

13

there were quite a few teams who did not express any amount of professionalism at the hotel. i.e. Someone throwing a waterbottle off the balcony into the lobby… another throwing paper down there… a student asking me and my teamates “are you 21, I need to get some alcohal into my system”… a couple running around with toy machine guns ‘shooting’ them (basically being loud).

I have no clue how many times security came and talked to us over other teams being rude and unruly. (The Hyatt crew would look up, and see our team hanging around the balcony after an incident, and assume our involvment)

14

Yes i remember hearing all of this, even though my team was on the 18th floor. I remember those terriorists, with their fake machine guns, we chased them into an elevator because they were annoying our 1am conversation. All of that was ok and all, but the breakfats’s were no good, crappy juice, muffins, and dry cereal, i mean come on. One of our mentors and myself ended up saying this place sucks, so we walked one block, at 6:30am, to the doubletree, to be surprized by a real breakfast set up for FIRST teams. I mean there was real food, sliced fruit, eggs, bacon, potatoes, and really good muffins, not to mention Tropicana OJ, you guys missed out.

15

Oh please… was the hotel really “that” bad? Bathrobes or a pool are trivial, and overall, the room was pretty comfortable.

My only complaint is the overcrowding in our team’s rooms (5 people per room?!). That’s our advisor’s fault though.

Oh yeah… I had over $40 in phone charges. $14 for a long distance call is excessive.

16

5 people in a room isn’t bad, we had 6 people in ours one night because we were playing Monopoly and everyone just crashed after the game. (Which I won:))

The breakfast wasn’t that bad, it was more than I usually eat in the mornings so I was happy. Fruit, Cereal, Milk, Bread, Juice… Tony the Tiger says it’s a balanced breakfast, you should too.

17

*Originally posted by Kane_da_slayer *
I remember those terriorists, with their fake machine guns, we chased them into an elevator because they were annoying our 1am conversation.

OMG! I remember them too. We were attacked Saturday night. Since we had an early flight, we figured that we would avoid sleeping and just sleep on the plane. Well, a group of us wanted some place to talk, since one of the girls in the room was sleeping. We ended up staying in the corridor that leads out to the pool on the sixth floor.

It was sometime after midnight when these guys came up from behind us and started shooting. That pretty much ruined the conversation, and I was the one talking too. grumbles So a couple of us chased them around, one was taken hostage but managed to break a gun, another tried to retrieve the hostage and managed the steal the gun while gaining a battle wound in the process, and myself and another girl stayed where we were and acted as pacifists. It was really funny at first… but when they came around for another shot, it got annoying.

18

anybody stay at the Radisson Astrodome? Powdered eggs, crumbly biscuits, and bacon for 4 days. But on the 4th day, they actually served fluffy pancakes! Our rooms were ok I guess, we got a balcony, no kitchen or fridge though.

19

*Originally posted by hacksaw692 *
**OMG! I remember them too. We were attacked Saturday night. Since we had an early flight, we figured that we would avoid sleeping and just sleep on the plane. Well, a group of us wanted some place to talk, since one of the girls in the room was sleeping. We ended up staying in the corridor that leads out to the pool on the sixth floor.

It was sometime after midnight when these guys came up from behind us and started shooting. That pretty much ruined the conversation, and I was the one talking too. grumbles So a couple of us chased them around, one was taken hostage but managed to break a gun, another tried to retrieve the hostage and managed the steal the gun while gaining a battle wound in the process, and myself and another girl stayed where we were and acted as pacifists. It was really funny at first… but when they came around for another shot, it got annoying. **
Those guys with the guns were really annoying… What was worse was the stupid security guard who enforced the hotel curfew ONLY on my team… Sure he mentioned it several times to us, but it’s not like we were being loud, when he went and got our teachers, the reason he did was because we were standing in the hall. That was it, we were quietly talking, and he’s blabbering on about the curfew… When questioned as to why he wasn’t rounding everyone up, he came back with a response along the lines of I can’t get everyone.

Now I understand the curfew, but I would have figured talking while leaning on the wall beside the room would not be cause for concern…

The only other complaint I have about the hotel was that we didn’t get ESPN2… but I really only wanted it on Friday night… (As any of the Canadian teams will tell you, there was a hockey game, and ESPN decided not to put it on a channel we got, which meant there were a lot of us who weren’t happy…)

20

151 stayed at the Radisson, All in all it was good, nothing really went wrong with my room, becides the fact that the closet didnt shut, but we never used it anyways. Food = Bad, I ate at that place around the corner the last two days. We were on the first floor so we never had to deal with the elevators, The one time I was on the second floor was when I climbed up the side of the hotel to someones balcony and then jumped off:D, yea I know it was stupid, but it was also fun, I got a good leg work out from all the walking I did, but that was good to.