Shit show in the "City of Gold"

The ElDorado is a fuck story. It's so bad even the fake flowers in the rooms are wilted. As we begin this little journey please allow me to excuse one Mr. Marc Anderson (Front desk manager). Seriously, somebody hire that guy away. Now, you must be asking yourself why anyone would take the time to go to a shithole like Reno for a vacation. Well, it all goes back to a clusterfuck during the "Elvis' birthday pub crawl". I wont go into the details but they were bad. As a result, we were graciously offered a free nights stay in one of their suits on our next visit, along with tickets to their new show "Benise" at my request. By all accounts, it seemed the ElDorado had undone the nonsense from our first encounter.

Now, for our return to The City of Gold. We decided to come down a night early and stay at The Sands 2 star hotel spectacular. I had stayed there on the way back from the Burning Man 2012 and enjoyed their clean, no frills approach to a room as well as two dollar Sierra Nevadas 24/7. $31 + a $2 fee and we are in our spacious room with a great view of the Sierras. They even put us on the floor we requested at the last minute. The Sands is cool like an old dude storytelling who smells more like whiskey and smokes then piss, but everybody seems to catch the faint whiff of urine and miss out on all the culture. I'm glad I stuck around past the first impression. We slept soundly on the surprisingly comfortable bed and enjoyed the view in the morning. Check out at 12 leaves us with a few hours to kill as the ElDorado's check in is at 3. We decide to stop by at 2 to see how its coming along. We approach the front desk and are helped by the worker at the time. "I am moving you to a better room because the one they have you in is not clean" This comment strikes me as odd, I am certain that Mark would have put us in something quite nice as he understands the situation. I can't help but feel I'm in a shell game (though I was informed later that she had technically upgraded us). I choose to believe her and check in. My mistake.

When we come to the door of SP109 at the very end of the hallway on floor 10 (Surprising considering there are 28 floors) I am uncertain rather I should use the door key to jimmy it open through the gaping hole between the knob and door jam (You can see me through the crack in the picture, taken a foot away) where someone has broken into the room in the past or try the card apparatus. We open the door, to our surprise the suit is barely larger then our room at the Sands and sports a lovely view of the ass end of the Sands itself, our view literally obstructed by the room we were staying in the previous night. Between the miss matched wallpaper, terrible carpet work, four different types of bargain marble, spray painted silver (slightly broken, and isn't this the city of gold?) TV pop up box complete with 90's style standard def Zenith (ironically we had a flat screet hi-def in the regular room we stayed in here last time), miss matched knobs on the spa (of which 5 out of 6 were broken), broken base board on the spa, mismatched silver and gold screws (some stripped), exposed wiring on curtains, and a lovely secondary view of the kitchen stacks and parking garage. I have become certain that they have given us this room as a fuck you for complaining the first time. To think, we haven't even seen the show and I'm ready to go back and rent another room at the Sands, I can see the room from here.

Why don't you suck a "Benise" out of my asshole. Nough' said. But then not really, though I don't know there are words to explain the fuck job that is the next 40 minutes of our lives. We are, as we find out, the youngest members of the audience as well as the only ones dressed up for the show. No shit, beautiful Chilean dress and knit Pancho on H-bot (My lovely girlfriend), loose fitting slacks, tailored shirt, square tip boots and fedora on me. To our horror, we are lead like a fucking side show act to stand in the far corner of the stage while they fish out extra chairs; which they lovingly place in the handicapped section (At least one of the seats. The other was, as were rudely told by the showroom manager, in the way of the performers). Our faces beat red with embarrassment, we sit and immediately begin talking over leaving before the show starts while covering our faces in mortification. Are these people fucking serious? Just as we are about to stand up the manager comes over and moves us to better seats. They must have realized their mistake I think, until we are informed that we are only being moved because we blocked the performers access to the audience. The manager literally made me feel like an asshole for having those tickets as if I had picked the shittiest seats in the house on purpose. Then there's the show. I never knew you could lipsinc a guitar, or for that matter every instrument in the show. From the super cheese video presentations of who I'm guessing is Benise 20 years ago, to the out of time dancers running into each other and laughing through the performance. This may be the most pretentious and badly strewn together live performance I have ever seen. Seriously I've seen Scott Wieland of STP so fucked up he couldn't stand and had to lay down for half the performance, I'd pay for that show over this for free any day. After about 20 minutes of this nonsense we quickly follow a couple in front of us as they walk out.

Back at the room we discover the right side of the spa is the only one with working jets and most of the knobs are broken, not to mention the cracks in the tub. We decide the steam room/shower may be a more promising idea. I open the door to the shower and double over from the loud screech it makes in the echo filled space. To our shock the next morning we discovered the toxic avenger was growing wildly in the drain. We had sat inhaling fungus/mold for hours in the steamy space.

This is enough to make me slightly ill in the morning when the maid walks into our room at 8:30am after a short knock. That's right, who the fuck rents a suite and checks out before 9? I'm not certain, but I imagine even our damned president does his business from the room and checks out at noon. And yes, you read that right, she opened the door to our room. H-bot was barely able to wrapped up in a towel (we had to use her supplied robe to hang over the hole in the door) and stop her from walking in. We attempted to go back to sleep but could not. I figure a quick call telling the front desk what happened will garner a late check out. To my surprise I receive negative attitude and am told I will be charged extra if I stay any later than 1. "Have Marc Anderson call me the minute he gets in" I reply and hang up the phone. 10 minutes later she calls back explaining housekeeping has approved a late check out of 3. Did i hear that right, they take their orders regarding costumers staying in suites from the housekeeping and not the management? I decide to get dressed and go down when Marc comes in. As usual, he is the ever pleasant customer service anomaly in this decrepit building. How did they get this guy? Seriously, somebody hire Marc Anderson away from this shithole. He's wasted on a place like this. In short, "Benise" is shit and if your coming to Reno, skip the "City of Pyrite" and keep driving to the Sands. Their 2 stars slaughter this sham in northern desert any day.

P.S. As a matter of courtesy we make the bed upon exit. H-bot found this spot of blood (which appeared a few days old but had obviously not been washed, as blood was flaking off) on our sheets, tucked under the bed. Niether of us are bleeding, go figure. Nice to find you've been sleeping in dirty sheets. The maid aslo tried to clean our room twice while writting this blog, at the time of posting, we still have an 1hr 3omin to check out.