For this story, we go back to Anime USA in 2019. I had a wonderful time at this event and luck wound up being on my side as so many things not only went well but better than I could have imagined; however, there was one incident that was less than pleasant and that wound up being my hotel neighbors.

Now when it comes to hotel noise at conventions, especially if I’m at the host hotel, I just prepare for it during most convention hours because that is kind of the norm at these events. I also expect that at the late hours of the evening for the noise to die down as people are trying to sleep so my personal rule is I have no issues with most levels of noise prior to midnight at hotels. In this case, we heard a lot of noise starting at about 11pm Saturday night which included doors constantly opening and closing to the point of almost being slammed shut, loud music and really loud conversations. By loud I mean I learned their names, drinking habits, events for the day, and prior experiences with activities of various legality that I won’t go into detail. All while just laying in bed watching TV.

At about 12:30, my at the time fiance, and I decided to go to sleep but the noise didn’t die down. While we weren’t happy about it I was under the assumption that some of the late-night stuff at the convention was still going on and people were just still hyped from the activities so I wasn’t about to say anything. Then the clock hit 1:30 and we still couldn’t sleep, the talking was still loud the doors were still opening and closing loudly and frequently and it was impossible to sleep. Now it’s at this point where I’m wondering if I’m being unreasonable for expecting them to be quieter and it’s really making me question what I should do at this point. So I decided to call the front desk and see if they could get things to quiet down. Now I didn’t tell them which room was noisy only which room was my own and that the noise was nearby. My logic is that if I’m in the wrong and the noise level is reasonable they will come to me and tell me so and I’ll bear the responsibility for my error but if I was in the right they would identify the room and resolve the noise. The latter happened and they went immediately to the room next door. I couldn’t quite hear the entire exchange, which was a relief as this was already a sign that things were quieter, all I really caught was security telling them that if the noise isn’t dealt with they risk having to vacate the hotel. Now that was far more of an escalation than I was hoping for but it seemed to do the trick as things quieted down and we were able to get plenty of sleep.

However, it turns out more happened on my floor than I realized and I didn’t find this out till after the convention ended. I came across a video on Youtube of a lady getting into a verbal altercation with a group of convention goers. From what I was able to find out this happened at 11:30 that evening, but I honestly couldn’t tell you if this was the same group that was noisy near my room or not. I was on that floor but my room was closer to the elevators and this room was closer to the other side of the floor so it’s possible these were different people entirely. Plus even if this was near me I would have ignored it since it happened prior to midnight so I would have been following my personal rule of no issues with noise at that time and just minding my own business. I will say this about the video, apparently, the lady called the cops on the convention goers but in my opinion regardless of the noise if your issue in a hotel is a noise complaint then I see no reason to call the cops about it. Let the hotel staff address the situation and make that call if it comes down to it after all that is part of their job and they are way more qualified to make that assessment and address the situation so that arguments like the one in this video don’t happen.