This is a part horror story, part guide to hotel roommates.
Whether you’re staying at a con hotel for the first time, or you’re looking for roommates for your hotel to cut costs, you need to be VERY picky about who’s staying in your hotel room. It only takes one bad roommate to ruin your entire con weekend. Take it from me.
A few years ago, I booked a hotel for a small Anime convention. It was the con’s final year and to celebrate its finale, I stayed for the full weekend. It was an out-of-town convention, so my immediate friends couldn’t make it to the event. I wanted to cut costs, so I decided to ask for roommates online on the convention’s Facebook group. I was able to get three roommates for the hotel; so there were four of us. This isn’t bad considering there are rooms I’ve seen with 2x the amount of people. Two of those roommates were pretty good, and I had a decent time spending the con with them.
However, the third roommate was absolutely the worst roommate I’ve ever had. During the entire convention weekend, he did a lot of things that pissed off all of us, including:
-Waking us up at 7 am by playing his music and talking on the phone in our room
-Inviting countless people into our hotel room throughout the convention. Last time I remember, there were at least 10 different people that walked in and out of our room
-Allowing a bunch of people he knew to use our washroom and showers for HOURS on end
-Not only was he generally rude to us, the “guests” he kept bringing in our room were rude as well. I remember one girl paying no attention to us while she was getting her cosplay ready in our washroom. I was trying to walk out of the room, wondering what the hell I got myself into. Then she finally turned around, only to tell me my cosplay sucked. Damn. I guess I was only worth attention when I’m feeding her ego. The narcissism is real.
-Telling that same girl that she can sleep over in our hotel room for the night. Umm, no. I told her unless she pays up, she’s not staying in our room. Especially after being rude to me earlier in the day. I promptly kicked her out.
-Taking a break from the rave on Saturday night, my friend and I went back to my hotel room. I open the door, and there’s some random dude on my bed screaming at both of us, saying how we “tried to kill him in Texas.” WTF? I don’t know what drug he was on, but by that point I was so tired of that stupid roommate bringing over people, and I couldn’t wait for the con to finally be over.
-Lastly, he didn’t even give me the money until MONTHS later. My other roommate had to remind him constantly after the convention to pay me up.
Needless to say, I didn’t have a very good time at the convention due to the lack of sleep and the amount of craziness I had to deal with. I’m sad because it was the last year of that particular con, and now I only have bad memories of that final year. On the plus side, I met a video game dude at that Anime convention and he’s a really close friend of mine now. I wouldn’t have met him if I did not attention that convention.
So after that horrible experience, I’m very strict with my hotel room. I won’t allow anyone to stay if I don’t know them personally. I also try to minimize the amount of people staying in my room. No +1s ever, even for get-togethers in our room. Because all it takes is one bad person to enter your hotel. They could things like pass out, do drugs, or cause trouble to make your con weekend go sour. Treat your hotel room as if it’s your own home; don’t let just anyone in!
Ever since I implemented these rules, I’ve only had great hotel roomies and positive experiences staying at a con.
In a future post, I will discuss the ideal amount of roomies for your con hotel.
How have your hotel roommates been? Have you had good experiences? Bad experiences? Let me know in the comments section!
