Post #477532 by Jason Wickedly on Mon, Aug 17, 2009 11:52 AM

Our weekend was pretty close to perfect..I knew from past experience that the food at the Bali Hai was mediocre at best, so that wasn't much of a surprise. I did wait in line for drinks downstairs for the better part of an hour, but I met some cool folks, and the time went quickly. Of course when I got to the bar I got as many drinks as I could carry (2) so I didn't have to make a return trip. I figure that brought the average down to 30 min per drink. Our room party I think qualified as a smashing success..our time slot was 2-3 pm on Friday, but we had people hanging out until at least 10 pm. The "first come, first serve" booking rule worked in our favor..by showing up at 11:00 on Thursday morning, we got a choice 5th floor room overlooking the pool and the stage area. The one snag was that the hotel told us we could have a first floor room if we got there early enough, and then told us when we got there that Otto reserves all the first floor rooms for his guests. We were told to show up early for the Tikiyaki pajama party, so we showed up at about 11:20. What do you know, we were among the first 5 people in the room.We stayed for about 30 minutes there, and then moved on so people who don't live in SoCal could see the band, as they haven't traveled much. Things are pretty much what you make of them, if you let them get to you and fester all weekend, you're going to have a bad time. That means you need to drink more. We're already figuring out how to get our non-Tiki friends to get a suite with us next year, so we can host an even bigger room party!