Atlanta April 2008
The seminar was at the Holiday Inn Select Atlanta Airport. We have been going to this hotel for years and for good reason, the banquet facilities and personnel are great.
I flew Delta into Atlanta and I guess I should get use to it, Northwest and Delta got the ok to merge while I was in Atlanta. The jet was the oldest airplane I have been on in a long time but me made is so I am not going to complain. I actually had a 10:00 am flight so I slept in compared to the normal 4:30 am wake up time for a 7:00 am wake up call.
Karen gave me a GPS for Christmas and it has been worth its weight in gold. It proved its self again. In the past the hotel has been hard to find, even though I have been there before. This year I left the Hertz lot and the GPS had me at the hotel in about five minutes. In the past I think I went via the highway to the hotel. If you take the road out of the rental lot and go to Riverdale Road it will bring you right to Airport Boulevard. I was amazed when I picked up my rental car that it was a bright yellow Mustang. I liked it but I am sure Mike or Tony would have gotten another car.
They usually had me in the Intercontinental room but this year I was in Express 1. After grabbing lunch at Burger King on Old National Highway, I came back and started setting up. I immediately saw that the room was not going to be large enough. Luckily the banquet saw all of the equipment when it arrived and saw there was going to be a problem. Their plan was to remove the dividing wall, which they did, and the room was more that large enough. The banquet people are really on the ball, both Michelle and Angel stopped in to see if everything was ok while I was setting up, the banquet people that took care of lunch did a good job of communicating and when I was tearing down the maintenance person came in to see when the equipment was going to be picked up and we had a conversation for about fifteen minutes, nice people.
Food at the Holiday Inn is the only week point. The food is not bad but it is just average at best, that applies to lunch and dinner. I had room service twice, ribs and chicken one night and steak the other, again not bad, it was the usual hotel food. My other two dinners were at the Ruby Tuesdays that is behind the Hyatt just across the parking lot. I am not a Ruby Tuesday's fan but the food was better than at the Holiday Inn. The really nice thing about the restaurant is it services the five or six hotels that are in the immediate area so there are a lot of singles (people eating by themselves). I hate being the only single person in a restaurant.
Since this is a Holiday Inn Select it is more the equivalent of a Hilton than a Holiday Inn. The room was not unusually large but it was nicer than your usual Holiday Inn. It had both wifi and cat5e highspeed internet. Not that it matters but the bathroom was much nicer than most. It had a huge walk in shower and the toilet was in a separate room.
The only downside was the hotel is located so close to the airport that you get airport noise.
Comments