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Holiday Inn Conquering game

Started by bandit957, December 10, 2017, 04:11:16 PM

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bandit957

Anyone else do something like this?

In my day, Holiday Inns were a lot cheaper. Some of them had ridiculously low rates like $11/night. And they were the dominant hotel chain. So we usually stayed at Holiday Inns on family trips. Anyway, Holiday Inn would distribute a directory - a little book listing all its locations and a map for each. We invented a little game where we'd go through the book and pretend we were "conquering" each Holiday Inn - in the order in which they were listed. We pretended we dumped out the soda machines into the pool and essentially trashed the whole place, leaving just a pile of rubble. We invaded each inn with tanks.

This was maybe 1979 or 1980.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool


oscar

#1
Nowadays, Holiday Inns are hardly worth "conquering", both fewer in number and lower on the lodgings food chain.

The directories of chain locations are pretty antique, too. I think Motel 6 might still print them, and maybe Red Roof and La Quinta. The rest, you can print them out online (such as Super 8, last I checked), or directories are not available in any form. With some chains, new locations are opened at such a rapid pace that a paper directory would be a futile effort to catch up with a moving target.
my Hot Springs and Highways pages, with links to my roads sites:
http://www.alaskaroads.com/home.html

Roadgeekteen

Quote from: bandit957 on December 10, 2017, 04:11:16 PM
Anyone else do something like this?

In my day, Holiday Inns were a lot cheaper. Some of them had ridiculously low rates like $11/night. And they were the dominant hotel chain. So we usually stayed at Holiday Inns on family trips. Anyway, Holiday Inn would distribute a directory - a little book listing all its locations and a map for each. We invented a little game where we'd go through the book and pretend we were "conquering" each Holiday Inn - in the order in which they were listed. We pretended we dumped out the soda machines into the pool and essentially trashed the whole place, leaving just a pile of rubble. We invaded each inn with tanks.

This was maybe 1979 or 1980.
So was this a board game of some sorts or was this real life?
God-emperor of Alanland, king of all the goats and goat-like creatures

Current Interstate map I am making:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?hl=en&mid=1PEDVyNb1skhnkPkgXi8JMaaudM2zI-Y&ll=29.05778059819179%2C-82.48856825&z=5

bandit957

Quote from: Roadgeekteen on December 10, 2017, 09:35:48 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on December 10, 2017, 04:11:16 PM
Anyone else do something like this?

In my day, Holiday Inns were a lot cheaper. Some of them had ridiculously low rates like $11/night. And they were the dominant hotel chain. So we usually stayed at Holiday Inns on family trips. Anyway, Holiday Inn would distribute a directory - a little book listing all its locations and a map for each. We invented a little game where we'd go through the book and pretend we were "conquering" each Holiday Inn - in the order in which they were listed. We pretended we dumped out the soda machines into the pool and essentially trashed the whole place, leaving just a pile of rubble. We invaded each inn with tanks.

This was maybe 1979 or 1980.
So was this a board game of some sorts or was this real life?

It was just something I made up in my head. It didn't even use a board or anything.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool

jp the roadgeek

The only thing I used to do when I checked into a hotel is see if there was a Gideon's Bible, then find the phone book and see how many people there were with my last name (and/or my friend's/cousin's/mother's maiden/grandmother's maiden).
Interstates I've clinched: 97, 290 (MA), 291 (CT), 291 (MA), 293, 295 (DE-NJ-PA), 295 (RI-MA), 384, 391, 395 (CT-MA), 395 (MD), 495 (DE), 610 (LA), 684, 691, 695 (MD), 695 (NY), 795 (MD)

Max Rockatansky

I just jumped between the two beds and tried to steal from the vending machines.

Scott5114

I never did this with Holiday Inns, but I did do it with a casino. Some context: at the time, I worked graveyard in a casino, where you're mostly getting paid to stand around and wait for something to happen like a slot machine to run out of paper. So if you run into a coworker and open a conversation with an outlandish what-if or pointless thought experiment, you're likely to get some semi-serious discussion about it just to pass the time. Another context is that the casino in question, like most casinos, is divided up into sections named Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and so on to make it more manageable.

The relevant discussion is when the following question was posed: If each section was its own country, which one would be the best off in a war? Surprisingly, a lot of people had strong opinions on this, and of course defended the merits of the section they were assigned to that day (which is kind of silly because someone from Bravo on Sunday was just as likely to be assigned to Echo on Monday, so there's no real reason to have an allegiance, but whatever). Someone from Delta managed to get ahold of some paper and was issuing passports.

Eventually the consensus was established that Golf was going to be the eventual winner because it was heavily fortified (only one way into Golf from either Foxtrot or Alpha, while most other sections shared lengthy "land borders" with the others) and had the best economy (the most $25 machines).
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

kphoger

Quote from: bandit957 on December 10, 2017, 04:11:16 PM
Anyone else do something like this?

In my day, Holiday Inns were a lot cheaper. Some of them had ridiculously low rates like $11/night. And they were the dominant hotel chain. So we usually stayed at Holiday Inns on family trips. Anyway, Holiday Inn would distribute a directory - a little book listing all its locations and a map for each. We invented a little game where we'd go through the book and pretend we were "conquering" each Holiday Inn - in the order in which they were listed. We pretended we dumped out the soda machines into the pool and essentially trashed the whole place, leaving just a pile of rubble. We invaded each inn with tanks.

This was maybe 1979 or 1980.

Yes, I did this exactly as you described, but during the mid- to late-90s.  So did my wife, even before we ever met, although she used suicide bombers instead of tanks.  We stayed at a Holiday Inn on our honeymoon just so we could dump out the soda machine into the pool.  It was a dream come true.
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

busman_49

Quote from: jp the roadgeek on December 10, 2017, 09:45:33 PM
The only thing I used to do when I checked into a hotel is see if there was a Gideon's Bible, then find the phone book and see how many people there were with my last name (and/or my friend's/cousin's/mother's maiden/grandmother's maiden).

We never really looked for the Bible, but checking out the phone book for people who shared our last name was one of the first things we did when we got to the room.

US71

I usually "pillage" for old phone books. 5 or more years out of date, they seem to disappear.
Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

spooky

I definitely checked the phone books for our last name and checked every return coin slot in every vending machine or pay phone in the hotel. My 8 year old self hit a return coin slot jackpot at a rest area on the Garden State Parkway on the way to Memphis, TN in 1980.

We rarely stayed at Holiday Inns though, typically my folks patronized the non-brand roadside motels that don't exist anymore.

oscar

Quote from: spooky on December 13, 2017, 09:01:03 AM
We rarely stayed at Holiday Inns though, typically my folks patronized the non-brand roadside motels that don't exist anymore.

Lots of them still linger, on US routes and other roads bypassed by the Interstates.
my Hot Springs and Highways pages, with links to my roads sites:
http://www.alaskaroads.com/home.html

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: oscar on December 13, 2017, 09:22:10 AM
Quote from: spooky on December 13, 2017, 09:01:03 AM
We rarely stayed at Holiday Inns though, typically my folks patronized the non-brand roadside motels that don't exist anymore.

Lots of them still linger, on US routes and other roads bypassed by the Interstates.

Some of them can still be surprisingly nice around places like National Parks.  For the most part the old US Route level non-chain motel/hotel hasn't aged very well as they can be pretty haggard.  The hotels on old alignments of US 99 near Fresno are basically crack dens these days. 

kphoger

Quote from: spooky on December 13, 2017, 09:01:03 AM
My 8 year old self hit a return coin slot

Taking this phrase out of context as an excuse to talk about myself...  When I was a kid, the Holiday Inn on Shawnee Mission Pkwy (KC suburbs) used to have a basketball arcade game–you know, the kind where you see how many shots you can make and it keeps returning balls to you for a certain amount of time.  Anyway, I discovered when I was not much older than 8 years old that you could rub your shoes on the carpet to build a static charge, touch the coin slot, and you could shock the machine into giving you a free ball.  Never had to pay again, every time we stayed at that hotel!
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

jeffandnicole

Definitely looked at the phone book and for the bible and the coin slots.

I always read thru - and still do - the hotel guide that they give you in the room.

I always had to check out the pool, although I rarely used it.

I always wanted to find a reason to ask the front desk about something.

As an aside (not enough for it's own thread aside), we were at some small motel once.  My dad loved the shower nozzle (which was an extremely basic nozzle) so much he asked to buy one at the front desk.  They did give/sell him it!

busman_49

I used to have a small collection of hotel directories, which I'm pretty sure Mom & Dad (Dad especially) considered trash and subsequently disposed of.  Man, I miss those things.  Especially the Signature Inn directory I had.

US71

Quote from: busman_49 on December 13, 2017, 02:28:42 PM
I used to have a small collection of hotel directories, which I'm pretty sure Mom & Dad (Dad especially) considered trash and subsequently disposed of.  Man, I miss those things.  Especially the Signature Inn directory I had.

My "prize" directory was Friendship Inns.
Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

bandit957

I remember in the Holiday Inn directories, each map was outlined in green, but I have a very faint memory of seeing them outlined in blue. Anyone know what year they switched from blue to green?
Might as well face it, pooing is cool

bandit957

A few more memories: At the height of my Holiday Inn Conquering game, I visited my eye doctor one day. He used these horrible eye drops that burned your eyes. I was frustrated for the rest of the day because the eye drops made my vision too blurry to read the Holiday Inn directory.

The directory also had a small color photo of a Holiday Inn sign that glowed. It might have been this:

https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3874/14368282837_7c962a9d51_b.jpg

For some reason, when I first saw the photo, I got an image in my mind of Edith Bunker saying, "Oh Archie, there's our Holiday Inn!" (I remember adults watching 'All In The Family' all the time back then, but I had no idea what the characters were always complaining about.) My mind would always wander and free-associate like that. Weird, I know.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool

bandit957

I also remember later directories being printed on larger pages and having Bugs Bunny on the cover, for some reason.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool



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