When we arrived at the top of the inn at 7 PM for the party, we got our first hint of the unpleasant surprise the Holiday Inn's staff was preparing for us, the party rooms weren't ready! That was only the beginning. When food finally arrived, small desert plates were all that were given to the guests in the "over 21" room to place their food on. The hotel allocated 50% of the space, tables & food appropriate for a 450 person party. When the (desert) plates ran out the line stopped & waited.. waited.. waited.. for more plates. Not so much as a brass coaster was to arrive for a long time. A few resourceful individuals learned the trick; go over to the youth room & get a plate, then come back & get food. When the 50% of the adequate amount of food ran out, the cook refused to provide more. This obstinance was corrected with a call to the general manager at home. Around this time my wife brought a cookie over to me (we hadn't eaten yet) & said, "enjoy it, it's the most expensive cookie you'll ever eat!" One other thing I noticed was the absence of employees to bus the tables, or a place for people to put their used plates. Resourceful party go-ers once again found a solution and stacked their plates on the carpet in an out of the way corner.
The inn had assured the organizing committee of eight employees to bus tables, one of the co-chairs said she only ever saw two of the eight. That same co-chair spent most of the party dealing with the hotel in an effort to get them to perform on their contract.
My feeling is that the inns' general manager should hire a person competitent enough to plan & produce parties, or not take them on, and see if the person currently serving in that capacity is any more competitent with a broom.
Some post competition follow-up: Our committee co-chair & her husband paid a post competition follow-up to the hotel & found out the two rooms they had crammed 460+ party go-ers into had a maximum seated capacity of 130 persons per room. In a separate incident, one of our club members had to report the hotel to the fire marshall during the competition for blocking the 2nd floor fire escape stairs at one end of the hotel. So this is the second safety code violation that we became aware of.