New Years Cheers (and Jeers)

I hope everyone had a good and safe New Years.  Justin and I decided to partake in one of those “open bar/buffet hotel parties” for the night’s festivities.  All-you-can-drink and sometimes all-you-can-eat is usually a win-win situation.  In DC, there are so many parties to choose from.  We’ve actually done a bunch of hotel parties from Euronet’s 007 Themed Gala to Big Night DC (heck, I’ve even done Big Night San Diego many years ago).   This year we wanted to do another one, yet still be cost effective.  Now you might be thinking, how can you consider a hotel party to be cost effective, when most of them start at $100?  Well, in addition to hotel parties, we’ve also spent New Years at bars and clubs, and it’s no fun at the end of the night finding a cab to take you home.  Nothing will ruin ringing in the New Year more than standing outside in the freezing cold, wearing your party dress, and trying to haggle with cabbies on the fare.  Unless you plan on having a house party (where you can just stay in once place the entire night), hotel parties is the way to go.

After reviewing our options, we decided to go with the Passport to the World Gala, thrown by Professionals in the City.  We decided to go with this party because it had a no food option of $90 (‘cause really who wants to eat pasta that has been pawed at by hundreds of people, probably sitting there for hours?) that started at 10:30pm.  Perfect…or so we thought.

We arrived around 11:30pm and ran into some of our friends as we entered the main ballroom.  Realizing that midnight was nearing, we rushed to the nearest alcohol lines, in order to get some drinks for our toast to the New Year.  Justin got into the cocktail line and I got into the champagne line, hoping that we could meet up by midnight.  With midnight nearing, and the champagne line not moving, I was starting to get frustrated.  That is when I found out that the bar stations were only doing one drink per person.   It did us no good that we were in separate lines.  I tried darting to the line that Justin was in, but it was too late. It was an anti-climatic start to the New Year, as the clock struck midnight and I was running around looking for Justin, instead of waiting in line with him… L

Once we got our hands on some cocktails, we were none too pleased with what we got.  They were advertising “premium open bar” (YOU LIE!!!!), but the brands of liquor being served were names that I’ve never heard of (and trust me, after doing alcohol promotions for over five years, I know my liquor).  I didn’t know what vodka they were serving, but Justin said that the bourbon they were serving was Beam Eight Star, which to him is the “red headed step-child” of the Jim Beam family.  On the bright side, the lines for liquor were shorter after midnight, and the lines for beer and wine were non-existent.  Once we actually got some champagne, it was actually quite tasty.  We toured the other rooms and they seemed really dark, missing the usual disco ball/dance floor lighting.  Basically, people were dancing in dark with cheesy dance music.  Overall, we were pretty disappointed with the experience; however, because this was one of the cheapest options out of all the hotel parties, this might be an instance of “you get what you pay for.”