a surfeit of lampreys
Bland Summit Hotel
We went up to Sugarloaf for a couple of days of skiing this week. I like the area: it's remote, fairly large, and can be challenging. We stayed at the Grand Summit Hotel, which was bad from the moment we walked through the door.
The room, though a bit tatty and dated, was spacious, with a kitchen/dining/living/area downstairs and a large bedroom on the second level. But it's the little things that really count when you're on vacation, like heat.
Since it was below zero outside, I was looking forward to a nice blast of warm air as soon as I opened the door to the room but was startled to see that the thermostat read 56 degrees. That's welcoming. Not only was it like November in the room, the wall heater was blowing cold air, right next to the windows, where I could feel the wind seeping in at an alarming rate. You'd think a hotel in the frigid Carrabassett Valley would have properly installed, insulated windows. After a few minutes screwing around with the thermostat, I called downstairs to the front desk about the heat, only to be told that I had to turn the fan down. Sure, that stopped that cold air from blowing, but it didn't heat anything up. Thankfully the second floor heat was working, so we decided to deal with the problem in the morning.
The next day is wicked cold, so we're in no rush to get out there. We came down for breakfast right before 10 am. We spoke to the desk clerk about the heat and the blown lightbulb in the living room, then turn to catch a bite in the dining room. The waitress is closing the doors as we're walking in. Not only closing them, but locking the doors. Ok, fine, they breakfast ends at 10 am. I get that. But it's midweek, totally dead, and it's not 10:15, or 10:30. She sees us walking toward the doors and comes back, opens the door a crack and tells us she can give us coffee. Is that gracious and accommodating? Is she a "dedicated" staffmember of American Skiing Company? No, she's a typical ASC employee: undertrained, underpaid, overworked and unloved. Why should she care about customers if nobody else does? As a Killington resident, I know the ASC staff profile very well. It's too bad that the quality of service is consistent at both areas. I guess I could look at it this way: given the poor food quality at most ASC establishments, she may have done us a favor.
We trudge back up the stairs, put on our gear, wait for the maintenance guy to fix the heater. The very nice young man said that a valve in the heater was broken, but rather than fixing it, he rigged it to stay open so we would at at least get some warm air in the room. I didn't really care if it stayed on all the time, since so much cold air was coming from the windows, the heater would struggle to keep up anyway. We retrieved our skis from the filthy inner city high school style locker room, went skiing and had a nice lunch a Geppetto's.
We come back to the room and housekeeping has tidied up. I don't mind one or two screw-ups, like the blown lightbulb. But not finding the parts to the coffee pot until I check the dishwasher; taking the dish towel and dish cloth and not replacing them; and drinking glasses with chipped rims, that's over the top. I don't want to have to think in the morning; the coffee pot should be totally intact, ready to pop in the ground coffee disk and push the button. I'm on vacation, damn it, I'm not emptying any stinkin' dishwasher.
Needless to say, there were no effusive apologies or attempts to make up for giving us a room with a broken heater. That would take extra effort and ASC apparently doesn't believe in that. Unfortunately, we're going back for a couple of days at the end of the month. It's booked and paid for, otherwise I'd stay anyplace (like sharing a cave with a bear) other than the Bland Summit again. I will try to think positively, about great skiing, sunny days, sweet potato fries at The Rack, Carrabassett Ale, and no wind.
Labels: bad service, skiing
it's too stinkin' hot to stay home, so I'm going skiing at 
