GASP was last weekend, and if you didn’t go, you really missed out. I’ll have some more posts about it coming soon, but for now I wanted to mention something I rather enjoyed about the host hotel. Not only did my room have a walk-in shower, but it also had a shower wand that I could use for more precise cleaning. More hotels need that.

Y’know what else more hotels need? Free breakfast. Do you remember when most hotels included breakfast? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Did hotels ever have good pillows? I don’t know. But Pepperidge Farm remembers when hotel rooms were big enough to move around in comfortably… and had decent-sized bathrooms… and had beds that weren’t so low that you could spank someone on them without hurting your back. And y’know what else Pepperidge Farm remembers — although, admittedly, Pepperidge Farm may be misremembering? When hotel rooms with two beds had two queens, not two doubles. A double bed is not big enough for two average-sized Americans to sleep in together (Americans are larger than they used to be).

GASP took place at a rather nice Marriott hotel. Rooms were $120/night plus taxes and fees — fairly reasonable. But on my way home from TASSP last summer, I stayed in a Super 8 Motel in Mississippi that had two queen beds, a decent-sized (not “mini”) fridge, and a microwave, as well as enough room to move around. That room was $50 plus taxes and fees. If a Super 8 can have bigger fridges, microwaves, and beds that I can easily share with another person, then so can Marriott, or Wyndham, or Hyatt, or Hilton. And they can do it for the same price that I’m paying now. I’ll forgive the lack of a free breakfast because food is expensive and the hotels have to pay the cooks and the wait staff, but that would be nice too.

Oh, and $24 for a breakfast buffet? That’s a little outrageous, Marriott. Sure, the food was good, but was it $24 good? Probably not.