Morning Dee! You touched a nerve there for me�although a humorous one. I spent part of my life in and out of Marriotts ..to the extent that I literally stopped staying in them for several years. I just got burn out from them. I used to keep people in the Marquis, especially the year they opened. But the hotel is predominantly a convention hotel. Yes, the atrium is interesting. However, with over a thousand rooms, it hardly appeals to anyone who wants an �intimate� hotel. And, being smack on Times Square, the noise and shoving, etc, just don�t appeal for me.
Many years ago, the Marquis made two terrible errors in a row on the same night with me. I was given a four room suite with a beautiful dining room. The airline, as usual, had lost my luggage. But I had a United States canvas mail bag, where I collected post that had been forwarded to me in New York ( I had just come off a ship). I spread all the post on the dining table and went out to dinner and theatre.
When I returned, it was all gone! The housekeeper dumped ALL of it down the rubbish shute.
I have lovely photos of six staff, wearing ecology outfits, climbing in and out of the largest dumpster I�ve ever seen in my life! Now, it�s funny. I wasn�t back then. The second �boo boo� they made was with a car I brought from England to New York. It was the car�s first day in America and I drove it from the port to the Marriott. The following morning, the valet, when delivering the car, wrecked it. I had warned him that it was a right hand drive and he swore he could handle it. Nope!
The repair costs was in the thousands! Exasperatingly, about ten days later, a valet at The Pierre hit the car against guard rails, removing the paint from the entire left side of the car. After that, whenever I took it out of the garage, the doorman at The Plaza just let me leave it out front.
You brought back a great memory!
08:11 Thu 08th Nov 2007