2005
Feeling assured that my plan to deceive the Dark Side was fool-proof, I spent the rest of Sunday and all of Monday at work feeling as if the weight of the Death Star had been lifted off my shoulders. I woke up Tuesday morning with a day off from work and a lightness of heart as I prepared to set my plan in motion.
The plan to attend all of Celebration III required me to modify my hotel reservations from two nights to three. To do this I needed to find the e-mail confirmation of my reservation. I figured this would take several minutes of searching through my saved e-mails but surprisingly found it right away. I followed the provided link to the CIII Hotel Reservations site to try to change my reservations. I was disheartened to find that the Adams Mark Hotel at the airport was fully booked on Thursday night, meaning I would have to find lodging elsewhere.
I ran a search of the other hotels on the CIII site. They were all booked all three nights. I searched the Indiana Convention Center site for other options. None of the other downtown hotels had openings on Thursday. All seemed lost.
As I started another search of the CIII site, it occurred to me to try starting with Wednesday night. Unfortunately, Wednesday night was not part of the CIII discount plan.
I went back to the convention center’s site and found some downtown hotels with Wednesday night openings but still no Thursday night options. The nearest Thursday night opening was on the city’s north side. This would mean checking out of one hotel in the morning, locating parking near the convention center for the day and then leaving CIII during the show to check in at another hotel. And not just on Thursday but also on Friday. This would waste precious time that could be spent at the show but may prove to be a necessity.
I checked the Adams Mark one more time and saw they had a Wednesday night opening. Rather than book the different rooms online, I decided to call the reservation center to speak to someone directly and to plead for help in my situation.
The woman I spoke to listened patiently to my questions and took my reservation information. What she asked me next absolutely floored me. She told me they had some recent cancellations and asked if I would like to spend all four nights at the Crowne Plaza, one of the downtown hotels connected to the convention center. And not only that, Wednesday night would be at the discount rate as well. Without hesitation, I responded with an emphatic “Yes!” She changed my reservations and informed me that I would receive a new confirmation e-mail. Barely containing my joy, I thanked her for her help then danced around the room singing an Ewok song.
I fell back in my chair laughing at my luck. It seemed that things were going my way, from Angry Dave agreeing to change his vacation for me to the cancellations at the Crowne Plaza.
Now I would be within walking distance of the show all four days! No driving back and forth, no checking out of one hotel and into another. There would be more time to spend among my fellow geeks, all decked out in their…. stormtrooper armor…. and their….. Jedi…. robes……
And that’s when it hit me.
I didn’t fool the Dark Side.
The Dark Side had fooled me.
And was it my imagination or was that really the distant sound of George Lucas laughing all the way to the bank?
Coming up:
eBay’s seductive power
A Lifetime Ago in a Neighborhood Now Far Away 