Monday, October 25, 2004

Best Childhood Dream Gone "ehh"

Keeping with the week's theme (which is: a review of the weekend's activities told completely out of order) Saturday night Andrew, Karisa, Sariah and I went to . . . okay, how exactly do I say this? We went to the rotating restaurant on top of the Marriott Marquis at Times Square. I know. Your first reaction: How Awesome. But here's the truth of the matter. It pains me to have any complaints about actually going to a rotating restaurant (sort of a lifelong dream of my own and I'm sure I'm not alone in that) but I can name a few things that weren't so great about the place . . . mostly everything. The theme of business up there seems to be "well, now that we've got you all the way up here (50+ stories above New York) what are you going to do if the service is pretty bad and the food all probably came from Costco?" [At least we had had Burger Joint for lunch] Also, and I can't believe how much this makes me sound like my mother, but the whole slowly revolving nature of the revolving restaurant (a lap an hour, pretty much) made me a little, uhm, motion sick? But on the plus side, there's nothing quite like rocketing up (and then down) the Marquis' enormous atrium (somesay the biggest in the world) in their great glass elevators, that's an experience that makes the rest of the experience worth it . . . pretty much.

I would have never guessed I'd have anything negative to say about a spinning restaurant. I've grown up into my Uncle Frank. At least the company was off the charts and the letdown of the place kept the quips coming all too quickly. I think the best indication of how the visit went is that only two photos were taken. Two killer photos.

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Here Sariah points out that her Costco delicacy was topped with an "S." At first we thought it was probably an "s" for Sariah (naturally) but it turns out it probably stood for something else, something a little more negative.

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Money makes the world (and the restaurant) go round.

UPDATE Culled from her comment, I don't want anyone to miss how perfectly Sariah summed up our Marquis visit: The highlight was when the waitress pointed the Empire State building out to us--then we knew we were really somewhere special. Or sassy. Or stupendous. Or. . . Exactly. Our waitress pointed out the Empire State Building to us, this pretty much settles that the spinning restaurant is used to out-of-town dupes and we had really lowered the bar for ourselves by going so high up in the air.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think that the "s" stood for Sariah. or probably sucker. Or, more exactly, Sariah is a Sucker. For revolving restaurants that serve shirley temples, for cubed, sherry-laden desserts, and for being the only one in the group who had been to the Marquis' tourist attraction before (twice *wince*) and was still excited to go again. Must have been all of the sherry-laden desserts on the first 2 visits. The highlight was when the waitress pointed the Empire State building out to us--then we knew we were really somewhere special. Or sassy. Or stupendous. Or. . .
--Sariah