I stayed at the Westin at Times Square last time I was in NY. I was nice enough, nothing special, good location, I think around $200/night, but we had a weddingblock so I'm not sure what the normal pricing is.

It seems like all the likely places are sitting at around $250-$275 all through midweek that week. I'm just running budget numbers for my trip and last time I was able to do rooms at close to $200 but it looks like this time they'll have to pony up for more.

The one time I stayed at a midtown hotel, I stayed at the Paramount. The decor was great -- Gary Panter designed the kids common room! Doing a quick check online, room are also $250-$275.

t edit A better link: [link]

Looks like rates are just high that week. I sent the quote off saying that my lodging will be running $275 a night for the trip. Once the final green light is given then I'll see what I can do. I'm going to call The Library Hotel again once I'm ready to book and see if there's any chance of a room again.

Try "Dream"? It's on...57th or so, between 7th and 8th, I think? I got it for about $190, last time I went, and it was super nice.

Bad news -- due to inability to find kitty-sitting, it looks like we won't be going to the NOLA F2F this year.

OTOH, we visited a boarder that's trying to find a home for an abandoned pair of 6YO Himalayans. So we may become a 3-kitty home in the very near future.

ND, I'm sending a contrib., but you can just put it towards whichever fund is in most need.

Have fun, ya'll. Wish I could be there, too. No muffaletta for Jen this year, though.

F2F Update

Here's where we currently are:

Main fund $780 (minus some PayPal fees)

Travel fund $40

We need to have close to $2500 for our expenses for the weekend. We are now 5 weeks away from the event. I'm not sure where we are on the hotel room bookings, hopefully Kristin will post that information soon so we can find out if we're in trouble there.

Cutoff date for our block of rooms is April, 20th.

That means you have 10 days left to get room reservations at our rate, and it also means that we only have 10 days left to fill the block of rooms that we signed a contract on.

I'm starting to get a little worried about our funding situation. We've had very low numbers of folks donating so far. And by low I mean less than 15 people so far.

No matter what I'm really looking forward to seeing folks in N.O. and I know we're going to have a good time. However, if you've been procrastinating on reserving hotel rooms or on sending in a donation, now is when I ask you to please stop procrastinating.

I don't know if I am alone in this, but Paypal doesn't want to let me send money. It gets stuck on the step where it asks me to verify my information, and won't go to the final step. I had this problem the other day as well.

Not that it helps you, exactly, but mine went through fine, Perkins.