Hotels! Quasi population control?

So the tail end of 2017 did not go all that well for our family with the passing of my Mum right on Christmas, which with 12 grandchildren was a bit of an issue, because Christmas just didn’t really happen.

So once the dust settled we had our family get together to send Mum off, then it was time to try and get life back to normal. But just as we did, Dad’s 87th birthday loomed large on the calendar, 15 January 2018.

As we are all still a bit fragile and at home we are surrounded by memories of Mum, the last thing I felt like doing was throwing Dad a birthday party. And frankly I think that would be the last thing Dad would feel like doing either, it’s just too soon.

But the day before his birthday is one of his great granddaughter’s birthdays too. She’s only 7 and of course wants a party with all her family, so there is no avoiding that and she lives on the Gold Coast and we must attend.

So I thought why not abandon ship, leave the Sunshine Coast, head to the Gold Coast collect the rest of the family en route, and make a 3 day weekend of it while the grandchildren are still on school holidays!

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Dad will be distracted chasing around his 12 great grandchildren, he will be either so tired or so busy, he won’t even think about his birthday without mum.

I can sit on my butt and watch my 12 grandchildren run amok on someone else’s nice clean floor. My 3 children (and their respective partners) can supervise the grandchildren (and hopefully Dad), and I’ll provide the venue. Or so I naively thought…

And this is roughly where the excretia hit the turbine!

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Yes we have a big family, but it’s not like @mumofmany has 25 kids, she only has 6 for heaven's sake. And my son on the Gold Coast only has 4 kids. Hardly a record breaking number of children.

Admittedly 6 + 4 does equal 10 but still! And when @krystle rocks up with her 2 kids, that will be a total of 12 kids plus the 8 adults. So yes there are 20 of us altogether, but we are hardly a conference!

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Again, I didn’t think this was going to be a problem, these are hotels after all, they have lots of rooms, with lots of beds in them, solely for the purpose of having people, well you know, stay in them.

Well think again folks because apparently it is a huge problem!

Now Dad and I we’re fine. We can just get a twin room and we’re sorted. But don’t even in your wildest dreams even think that it will be on the same floor as the rest of our family. In fact there were times when I wasn’t sure we would even be in the same hotel!

But then we really got to the crux of the problem @mumofmany, or more to the point her 6 kids…

She needed a room/rooms for 1 adult, 5 children and 1 infant. Yeah, not so much. Not happening at the Crowne Plaza, not happening at Palazzo Versace. Not that we could afford the later, but I just wanted to see if throwing a lot of money at the problem would solve it. It wouldn’t. Nor could it be solved at any of the 40 other hotels I tried on Trivago.

Apparently, the maximum number of guests hotels will allow in one hotel room is 5. Which begs the question… Which of @mumofmany’s children should she leave alone and unattended in a high rise hotel room overnight without adult supervision? Or anywhere unattended for that matter!

Could we get 2 adjoining rooms? Nope, it’s still school holidays, and there is not a super computer on the entire planet capable of juggling reservations to facilitate adjoining rooms in any of the 40 plus hotels we tried to book.

How about an adjacent or nearby room? Nope, that super computer doesn’t exist either.

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So thinking outside the box, notwithstanding it was his birthday, (he doesn’t really need that much sleep) I thought 1 or 2 of Dad's great grandchildren could join Dad and I in our room.

Problem solved! Not quite…

Dad is quite deaf and a very heavy sleeper, and knowing I would need to shower at some point over the weekend, leaving the grandchildren unsupervised for 15-20 minutes, I asked reservations staff, if the highrise balcony doors could be locked with a key.

Also @mumofmoney would have the very same problem there is always the risk that one her special needs kids, or a toddler would get the sliding doors to the balcony open. A child unattended on a high rise balcony, not on our watch.

Reservations had no idea, but were sure it would be fine, Reception would work something out on arrival. No, no, no, no, no I don’t think so! Clearly, I had abandoned Trivago at this point and gone for the phone.

It was already going badly, but when we tried to add my son, his partner and 4 kids and @Krystle, her partner and 2 kids who have special needs… OMG!

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Seriously, I’m sure there was less drama organising the Commonwealth Games… Even hotels that said they had Autism friendly rooms, didn’t really, and if they did well someone forgot to tell the hotel staff about it.

And then of course we were back to the 5 persons per room issue again, because now my son has to take 2 rooms as well, because they can’t fit all 6 of them in 1 room either… No folding beds or cots allowed that will put the capacity over 5.

So @krystle and family will fit in a room (she meets the population control criteria) yippee! But with 2 special needs kids who are escape artists and needing to sleep at some point, with no locks for balcony doors on high rise hotel room balconies, they would have to sleep in shifts or not at all. And I say again OMG!

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So the bottom line is if you have more than 3 kids you're screwed! And if you can’t be certain your kids won’t venture onto the balcony, you’re really screwed!

Buy now then we have established that we have too many children to be accommodated by the hotel industry, so we have just 2 options. One, put a few children up for adoption so they don’t interfere with our future travel plans. Or, two go with airbnb or stayz.com!

I’ll let you know what we decided… Have a great weekend everyone!