3 years ago
After much consideration, 7 of my friends and I de...
After much consideration, 7 of my friends and I decided to stay at the Embassy Suites in Raleigh, and attend their New Year's Eve Vegas Style Party. I do not recommend this for anyone in their 20's. We are all in our upper 20's and had a horrible time- until we moved the party up into our room. The online site, where we found the details about this party, seemed to have embellished what all it entailed. For $70 a person, we were told we would have 2 hours open bar at cocktail hour (5:30-7:30), appetizers, gaming tables, balloon drop, DJ, a hotel room and free breakfast. Once we got to the hotel, we were given 2 tickets for 2 free drinks during cocktail hour. We put our stuff in the room, and headed down to get our 2 drinks. During this time, it was very family oriented... there were a lot of kids, and it was more of a jean/t-shirt kind of feel. They only had 2 bartenders working during this cocktail hour, and they both seemed very inexperienced. It took 45 minutes in line to finally get to the bartender to get my drinks, and by that point, they had run out of many types of juices, and only offered well drinks. I asked for a Dirty Shirley, and the bartender looked very confused (I had to tell her what was in it... 3 ingredients... it was horrible). The appetizers they offered were chex-mix and chips and salsa. After I exchanged my 2 drink tickets for 2 horrible drinks, my friends and I made our way back to our room to get ready. At 10:00 we came back down for the party. By this time, they only had one bartender located in the party area, and 2 bartenders in the cafe. To recap, 3 bartenders for the entire hotel NYE party. We stood at the bar at the cafe for a good 20 minutes before we were even noticed. The bartenders would not make eye contact at all. After we reiceved our drinks, we headed out to the dance floor where it was mainly ages 55+. The DJ had grey hair... played some new age dancing songs, but also played a lot of oldies (Brick House type music). At 11:30, he was playing a slow song... way to get us hyped for the New Year! We ended up going back up to our room to get our own drinks that we brought because the second go around at the bar, we were unsuccessful... there was no point in us waisting 30 minutes every time we wanted a drink. We came back down for the countdown to the new year, and they had the balloon drop- kind of dissapointed the DJ didn't play the new year song, but instead played something that sounds like a polka song? As soon as that was over, we headed back up for the night. It was a huge disapointment but we learned our lesson. The hotel was beautiful, and the staff was friendly, I just feel like we were given the wrong impression as to what this hotel party would actally be like. Everyother hotel party I have been to for NYE has been quite fun, this on the other hand was not. The best thing about this stay was the free breakfast in the morning.