a tarot card reader on Saturday.

Did you two get the name of the tarot card reader? I wonder if it's anyone I know.

You had to mention the tub! So. Much. Impending. Trouble.

The hospitality suite was exceptionally nice. It was large, but a good large, not over-sized and cavernous. It looks like a very comfortable space.

Guitar Hero was indeed Friday in the lobby, but it seems to be for one hour only.

Yup, the small ballroom is a little too small unless the extra lower lobby that was offered to us (with bar) works for the people who want to hang out and be further from the music. The real question is how private that area really is. Not very I suspect, but it may have very few people actually traveling through it on a Saturday night.

The two rooms adjoining the Hospitality Suite are their high-end Club Monaco Kings which run maybe 50 bucks above the norm (Meara, do you have the exact price?). Each of the Kings came with 2 TVs though on top of the one in the Hospitality Suite itself.

Oh, the Monaco had a very nice restaurant with an award-winning chef, yet they were offering cheap eats like Happy Hour's $3 "funky pizza". No idea what the funky alluded to. They also had a couple of secluded sections of the restaurant for groups too.

Purely my opinion but I think either of the downtown hotels are better options than the Nexus up in Northgate. Two reasons; The Nexus's worrying caveat of 2nd noise complaint and you're done warning for the Prom, and the fact that they couldn't give us anything more than a couple of adjoining rooms for the Hospitality room. Yeah, the Nexus is cheaper but since its shuttle wasn't what we hoped for being downtown seems like a much better option for dining and entertainment.

The Monaco was 50 yards from a Starbucks and a Seattle's Best Coffee, FWIW.

Did you two get the name of the tarot card reader? I wonder if it's anyone I know.

No name, just that the reader was Native American.

I think the rooms on either side of the hospitality suite were $219 and the regular rooms were $189 (for kings and doubles) and $169 (for a queen). BUT, it's possible they may lower the rates...she's the one who on the phone was all "well, what's the rate that would make you CHOOSE"

Those rates ARE pretty high.

Seattle hotel taxes are 15.6%. Just FYI.

BUT, it's possible they may lower the rates...she's the one who on the phone was all "well, what's the rate that would make you CHOOSE"

Though I note she never alluded to that when we met her. I was waiting.

Do we have any sort of head count yet for negotiating purposes?

It's a chicken & egg thing, isn't it? We can't get anything more than a guesstimate head count until we know which hotel - and thus what price - we're picking.

It's a chicken & egg thing, isn't it? We can't get anything more than a guesstimate head count until we know which hotel - and thus what price - we're picking.

Exactly. I said 20 rooms when I started the negotiations with the hotels, though.

Yup, 20 is what we've been sticking to.