Our youngest grandchild spent much of this past summer playing in lacrosse tournaments in various parts of the U.S. as a member of an elite northwest team.
Jace is a strong defensive player who gets a lot of playing time.He carries a big defensive stick.
His team won an earlier tournament in Rhode Island, quite impressive when competing against other elite teams from various parts of the country.
Grandma and Grandpa have contributed to Jace's lacrosse efforts along the way with some airline points and flights. The final tournament of the season took place in New Jersey in September.
Jace's parents were both heavily involved in September as teachers organizing and starting up their school year. The parents of a teammate kindly agreed to take him along to the tournament with their own son. They played a lot of lacrosse and enjoyed sightseeing. It was the perfect trip until they learned their return flight was canceled.
Newark (EWR) was among several major airports shut down September 21 after workers accidentally cut a telecom line. The airports re-opened several hours later, but by then the damage was done. More than a thousand flights were canceled, and more than 6,000 flights were delayed Monday.
Given the turmoil, it was fortunate the parents of Jace's teammates were experienced travelers who managed to a secure a flight out of Baltimore (BWI) Tuesday.
They rented a car to make the three-hour drive there and we volunteered to secure two hotel rooms near the airport. The Embassy Suites by Hilton at BWI looked like a solid choice, with 251 rooms and the bonus of a full buffet breakfast for hungry young lacrosse players before their evening flight home.
Kathy used Hilton points and called the hotel after booking two rooms online to request the rooms be as close together as possible before we drove to a medical appointment.
Later in the evening, when we called to ask how the hotel was, we discovered to our shock that the hotel was assigning them all to one room rather than the two for which we paid.
To make a long but somewhat boring story short, it took the better of an hour talking on the phone to two or three hotel employees before the family was assigned the second room for which we'd paid..
First, the hotel readily conceded that they could see both rooms somewhere online. They claimed, however, that it wouldn't show up in their "system." They were friendly and apologetic throughout, but claimed initially that there was nobody on site as it got closer to Midnight with the authority to override their system. Their initial suggestion was that the family crowd into one room and that we ask for a refund the following day.
Uh-uh! It was truly one of the stupidest situations we've ever encountered in our travels.
Finally, someone there either found the right link to click, or just decided to assign a vacant room and explain to the manager when he or she came on duty in the morning.
The hotel did compensate Kathy, a Hilton Lifetime Diamond, with 25,000 Hilton points, recognizing the time and grief that was caused completely at their end. They also gave the family a late checkout, which was handy as their BLI-SEA flight the following day departed in the evening.
It is still mind-boggling there was nobody on the night shift at a 251-room "full service" hotel with the authority to fix the problem immediately. At least the online reservation we'd made, rather than booking over the phone, gave us the evidence we needed.
Fortunately, on this occasion all's well that ends well.
