If you're gonna call it Happy Hour, at least serve beer.
But aside from that, my wife asked me to pull into the Sonic by our house on our way home from grabbing some shirts at the new Alamo Ranch JC Penney. So ordinarily, I would have pulled into the drive-thru line, because I really hate the whole set-up of ordering from the Sonic pull-in bays (if that is what you call them), but the line to the drive through was long.
It isn't that the drive-thru is supposed to be any faster, I mean, technically, if you have to wait behind a few cars, you could have pulled into the pull-in bay and placed your order right away. 
But what I don't like about the set-up is that if you pull in close enough to reach the order button, you really aren't leaving a lot of room for the person to deliver your food, say in the case that they are overweight. So I find myself routinely parking a few feet from the ordering thing, opening my car door and reaching out to push the button. Thus, if the line isn't long, I go to the drive thru.
Okay, so to be clear, the drive thru lane had about 4 to 5 cars in line, and I decided to go to the awkwardly designed pull-in bay. Fair enough.
Ordinarily, when we do this thing, my wife just gets the medium sized lemon-berry fruit slushy and I just have a sip of hers. But hey, it was happy hour, so I decided to order one for myself - a large in fact. My wife also ordered one of those little mini-banana split things, and since she was splurging, when the girl on the other end of the speaker suggested I get a chili cheese Coney, I went ahead and got one.
So I have this issue whereby I have historically picked the wrong line, regardless of where I go. It could be the wrong teller at the bank drive-thru, the wrong lane driving down Culebra, anything. I always get it wrong. But in the case of Sonic, this was a sure thing. The drive-thru was backed up and we placed our order within 20 seconds of pulling into the place.
And this is where things go wrong. I'm sure that in other places, it would be a wise decision to turn off your vehicle when you pull into the place while you wait for your order. Here, it is a hundred degrees in the shade. So I'm sitting in the truck with the engine on, window rolled down and the A/C blasting. And within a few minutes, I start getting that little twitch that my wife recognizes as I start to take note of the vehicles in the drive-thru that are pulling away. It is at this very moment that a little Al Gore voice in my head said, You might want to go ahead and turn off the truck and live with the global warming at hand, because this is going to take a few more minutes. But I knew that if I listened to that suggestion, I'd jinks myself, and it would take even longer. Hmmmm.
My wife was encouraging, she pointed out that there were only two Sonic Girls running in and out of the store, and she said they were literally running, not taking their sweet little time. You gotta appreciate that.
And then I started to notice that at least three of the cars that had been in the drive-thru when we pulled up, had already left. WTH? Oh, get this, a car pulled into the pull-in bay next to ours, ordered, and were served multiple bags full of food in less than five minutes. At this point, I'm starting to reconsider the whole thing and either turn off the vehicle or simply leave.
My wife even started to get ticked. She looked at the clock on the truck radio and reported that we had been sitting their like dumbasses for 20 minutes, all the while watching more people pull into the drive-thru and leave with lemon-berry slushies, all manners of banana splits, an no doubt, endless buns filled with cheese and chili Coney dogs. Cover your ears kids, but you have got to be shittin' me! I was starting to think I was in the Twilight Zone and Alan Funt was going to rise from his grave and point to a camera any minute.
Now, my wife suggested that perhaps I should push the ordering button and ask if they had forgotten our order. I had a better idea, I was going to push the button and order the entire thing again, just as a test to see if they knew we had already ordered.
But then there was movement. My wife noticed a lady of considerable size pounding on the door to inner office of the Sonic, seemingly wanting to speak to someone in charge, or at least get her food. I attempted to get a picture of the incident, but the lady moved right when I snapped, and my wife wouldn't let me get out of the truck like some sort of National Geographic reporter and film the engagement.
With this new excitement, it was clear that we were not the only wrong-lane choosers, and in fact, my wife began to speculate wildly that employees had walked off the job or that some manager had locked a few unruly employees in the walk-in cooler. Finally, after at least a gallon of gas, and twenty-five minutes (or more), the frazzled Sonic girl came out with our order. Poor little thing started apologizing about the long wait before she even got to the window, and I simply handed her the money and a tip and told her not to worry about it.
My wife mentioned to her that we had ordered one medium and one large lemon-berry slushy but both were mediums. Again, I said don't worry about it, just keep the difference as a tip. Then, seeing that we weren't going to take out crappy management on her, the Sonic girl told us the banana split was messed up and she would go get a new one. It was clear, not just because of the 100 degree weather, that the banana split was made and set on the counter seconds after we placed the order - 25 minutes earlier.
My wife (who knows a thing or two about running a restaurant) told the Sonic girl she needed to tell her manager to shut down the drive-through until the surge of the happy hour was over. Just put a sign on it that says temporarily closed and concentrate on the customers in the lot. Sometimes, when you don't have enough people to run a store, you have to make do with what ya got.
In the end, I inhaled my chili cheese Coney dog before the girl returned with the large lemon-berry slushy and the new mini banana split. And to be real honest, it wasn't that good.
As that Chinese guy from Six-Flags says, "One Flag!" Or in my case, No Tasty Treats for Sonic.
Like most Texans, I tuned in for NBC's Sunday Night Football this evening and caught the pre-show with Bob Costas and Chris Collinsworth. Toward the end of the show, they announced that the NBC network was doing some sort of Green is Universal kind of gimmick where they would dim the lights on the set resulting in enough savings to provide electricity to a home for a full month or something.
Good for them. I trust they will also be eliminating the door to door limo service or that big bus John Madden rides on. Give that fat bastard a moped and an iPod, and see you next Sunday night as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, after some stupid report by Matt Lauer who promoted Nobel Peace Prize wiener Al Gore, they flash back to a giggling Chris Collinsworth who is obviously hip to how stupid it is to sit there on national TV in candle light, talking about football.
I'm all for the environment and despise litter and waste of resources. But seriously, can NBC get anymore ridiculous?
On our recent trip to Wichita Falls we used Expedia to locate a hotel to stay at. The bad thing about using the Internet to find a hotel is, what little information you get rarely includes pertinent details like, "Nearby homeless people and vagabonds will hound you for gas money" or "Kind size bed was not large enough to share with roaches in room" or other such descriptions that would give you a hint. So, all you can do is look for the things that you specifically want or need, and hope they are on the list.
I won't make reservations in a hotel that doesn't offer free high speed Internet. In this, the information age, I view free Internet as a required amenity at a hotel no differently than I do air conditioning or little soap bars on the bathroom sink. It isn't even something you should have to ask for, it should be assumed.
I also believe that the majority of hotel rooms should be no-smoking and that in fact, it should not be on the non-smoker to ask for a no-smoking room, but the opposite - if you want to breath-in some stranger's second hand smoke in your cozy hotel bed, you ought to have to ask for that privilege (and perhaps pay extra). This paragraph brought to you by a former smoker.
So, with all that stuff in mind, I probably sound pretty picky, but then again, I am a self-admitted cheapskate, and though if the going rate for rooms is $129, I don't mind paying it; I'll definitely look closely at one I can get for fifty bucks. Which is what I did when we found the Crescent Plaza Hotel in historic downtown Wichita Falls.
A little background is surely in order. Apparently, back in the late 1970's, there was a huge tornado that went through downtown Wichita Falls and created some serious havoc. When the dust cleared, a lot of federal grant money and insurance and such made way for business owners to rebuild in newer parts of the city which, as you might imagine, left the downtown area full of empty old buildings. One such place was a Holiday Inn that was housed in the Petroleum Building on 8th and Scott Street. This hotel was pretty old to start with (mid to late 60's I'm guessing) and when it went out of business, supposedly, it stayed vacant for years - I think until the late 1990's. It was opened again for a brief time as a Ramada Inn but never made a come back. According to staff, the hotel was reopened earlier this year by a new group and as part of a bigger effort to bring businesses back to the downtown area, the Crescent Plaza is open for business. Hence, our $50.00 rate when all the other hotels in the vicinity were significantly higher.
When we first checked in, the lady at the front desk was extremely helpful and seemed ready to bend over backwards to help. The hotel lobby looked like an old hotel lobby, but very clean and some really nice furniture and such in the lobby. What gave us a slight twinge of concern was the fact that, even though there were four elevator doors, only one worked. I learned later that two of the elevators go to floors above the hotel rooms (office spaces for rent) and the second elevator for the hotel was being renovated.
As we walked to our room on the second floor, my wife commented on the fresh smell of Fabreeze and I have to admit, that gave me a little twinge of concern. Don't get me wrong, Fabreeze is a great product, but if it over powers you, there is usually some awkward smell being hidden.
Thankfully, the room was pretty nice by old hotel standards. It was spacious, the TV was new and probably 36". Limited on channels, but good reception. The Internet worked, the bathroom came complete with soap and little shampoos, and the bed was clean and comfortable. Plus, we had a refrigerator and a microwave oven. Hey, for $50.00, this was great.
I'll never forget staying at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago about 10 years ago. The room was easily the cheapest, government per diem rate of like $225.00 a night, in a tiny 8 X 8 closet of a room, on a twin size bed and not even enough room to change your mind. It was one of these really fine, swanky places with real art work in the spacious lobby, attendants everywhere, and I kept thinking to myself, "I wonder if they would mind if I slept in the lobby?"
I'll take clean and spacious over swanky and cramped any day of the week.
So, I would be lying if I didn't say we had more than one miscue at the hotel. Nothing really so major that I was ready to check-out or anything, but I have to tell you that my report on this blog (and later when I do a feedback on Expedia) was almost a lot different. I even took some pictures of really silly things (like the return air vent in the room that was really just an air filter glued to the open hole in the wall), but it is so easy to look for flaws in things and not get the bigger picture - the fact that the place is still a work in progress and the cost was only $50.00.
I mean, sure, they did forget to send a maid the first day. So, we did the environmentally friendly thing and hung up our towels, not unlike what we do at home. I feel like Al Gore already. Except for the private jet.
We learned later (about 10PM at night to be exact) that our room was located right next to the hotel ball room. We found this out when some people from the party next door kept running up and down the hall yelling "Marco?" quickly followed by "Polo!". WTF?
The next day, before I could even think about complaining, the nice lady at the front desk asked me if we would be interested in moving to a different room because they were having a dance in the ballroom that evening. We definitely took her up on the offer.
On Saturday morning, we were treated to a parade on the street in front of the hotel. (I'll write about that later), and Saturday afternoon, we went swimming at the pool located on a deck above the parking garage. To their credit, not a single person yelled "Beached Whale" when I emerged from the awesome water and found a lounger worthy of sustaining my girth and weight long enough for me to relax and enjoy the afternoon sun. I told my wife that I hadn't felt this relaxed in quite some time. And in spite of the few flaws we could easily point out, the price and quality of the people we dealt with at Crescent Plaza prompted my wife to say that she would be happy to stay there again.
So, if you are in Wichita Falls, need a place to stay for a lot cheaper than the regular brand hotels but not nearly as seedy as the similarly priced hotels in the area, try the Crescent Plaza Hotel.
