An Alarming Waiver

For our fifth anniversary, Suz and I travelled to Erie, PA and paid a visit to Splash Lagoon, a super-cool indoor water park similar to, but way tons more crowdeder than, the one we stayed in last year.

We stayed in one of the connecting hotels, a Residence Inn Marriott. Our room was neat. It had a fully equipped kitchen, a fireplace, and a separate bedroom.

But when we signed in, we had to sign an unusual waiver. It stated that if we made too much noise we would be evicted from the hotel with no refund.

At 2:15 a.m. on the 2nd night, the noise rule was broken. Broken by the fire alarm. But it was no ordinary alarm. I am quite sure it caused hearing damage to everyone in a ten mile radius. And if that wasn’t enough, there was an ocular offense as well. Optical grenades were lobbed at my eyes via the high-intensity strobe light attached to the alarm.

When I peeked into the hall, I was alone. Nobody else opened their doors. The alarm fell silent and as my heart settled down, I did my best to fall back asleep.

At 3:00 a.m. I had a nightmare about the alarm, and woke up in a panic. Everything was quiet. I fell back asleep.

But things were different at 6:55 a.m. Barely recovered from the first alarm, the piercing sound again drove us from our crotchety slumber. The girl at the check-in counter was amazingly unhelpful stating simply, "there’s nothing we can do about it."

I phoned and asked for the manager, and was put through to her voicemail. I told her we were having a rotten time on our anniversary because of their alarm, and that if we were required to sign a no-noise waiver, then we expected the hotel to abide by the exact same rules.

So what happens when the hotel doesn’t abide by their own rules? I'll tell you. You get a supervisor as well as a manager apologizing to you, you get an explanation of what happened with the malfunctioning alarm, a useless verbal guarantee that the alarms will not go off if you stay there again, and a discount on your room rate the next time you decide to stay there.

I’m still waiting for that letter in the mail.