When I was in college my preference was always for no ice (in the already cold soft drink or iced tea). If it wasn’t cold, ice was okay–but at the places where I bought drinks, they were always cold.
The reason is that ice bobbing around in something I’m drink just bothers me. Also it seemed to me that I got more product without ice, and the flavor wasn’t diluted.
People told me, “Oh, you’ll love Europe, they never put ice in drinks.”
Well, I went to Europe (not eastern Europe) and, almost everywhere,* they either automatically added ice to soft drinks, or asked if I wanted it. But they didn’t put in as much ice.
I had really been looking forward to not having to say, “No ice.” But that didn’t happen.
I did find out one thing though. I thought I didn’t like beer at all. But it turned out that I just didn’t like it really cold.
Back in the USA, I once ordered red wine in a restaurant, and the waitress brought it with ice on the side and said, “Sorry, we didn’t have any chilled.” I am so glad she didn’t put the ice directly in my red wine.
Oddly enough, the very first time I encountered this was just last month in India. I’ve traveled around five continents and somehow managed to stay at hotels that did not have this feature. I was quite mesmerized by it, only to see several threads on the Dope mention it as being relatively common. I really have no idea how I haven’t seen it until just recently. I found it slightly annoying, as I wanted to recharge laptops, phones, and camera batteries while I was gone, and this set-up prevented that from happening.
I know this thread is about soft drinks, but I just wanted to put this out there because I’ve had friends try to “game the system” by ordering no ice with a mixed drink (which I found embarrassingly cheap. What are you insisting on saving? 37 cents? a splash of liquor? ). You don’t get more alcohol this way, bc the alcohol is counted and measured for each drink, regardless of ice. I’m not even sure it would be legal to put more booze in there.
So if you don’t get more booze this way, why is it embarrassingly cheap? A lot of drinks come without ice (martinis–the glass is chilled) and bartenders don’t seem at all surprised by someone ordering Scotch neat and straight.
I am not European but I rarely want ice in my drinks, or for my beverages to be near freezing, especially if I am thirsty. Ice cold water freezes my teeth and my throat. Drink too much cold water too fast and it will absolutely make the back of my throat sore. A minute or so later my throat will warm up again and will be fine, but it still hurts until it warms up. Could that be what your European associates mean by sore throat?
Up here water out of the tap is as cold as I ever want it to be. If I really am thirsty I want to drink a lot of water fast. Drinking cold water fast is painful and unpleasant for me. Room temperature water is far more pleasant to me than ice water, yet it is apparently undrinkable to the majority of people, hence everywhere you go they put fucking ice in your water. I always ask for water with no ice in restaurants and 9 times out of ten I still get ice water.
Fresh ice changes the taste and mouthfeel of carbonated beverages because the ice provides more nucleation sites for carbon dioxide bubbles to form. If you’re American you can easily try this the next time you go out to eat - get a cup of just Coke, a refill with fresh ice, and then another refill with the ice slightly melted and its surfaces smoothed. It’s like three different beverages.
I’ve stayed at hotels all around the South and have never seen it either. I would be irritated if I did see it because I don’t want to be tethered to my room in order to charge batteries for travel electronics like cameras and smartphones.
It never occurred to me that it controlled the power outlets in the room; just the lights. Then again, I’m not likely to leave the hotel without my phone and I don’t like to leave anything of value out in the open.
Didn’t seem to be possible at the places we stayed. We only got one key and were told to leave it at the desk if my wife and I expected to come back at different times.
Except to me, since I much prefer iced sodas, getting a cup full of lukewarm soda is getting ripped off.
As far as the “reasonable feature” that requires you to leave your room key to have lights on, I dont like fumbling around in the dark in a strange room to find a slot somewhere so that I can not trip over some fucking thing and crack my skull open.
I stayed at one hotel that had this "feature’ -I canceled my reservations for the rest of the week and moved next door to a sane hotel.
Note that the temperature range they tested was only down to 90 degrees, so they most definitely didn’t put the teeth in ice-cold liquid (reading the text, they exposed them for 30 seconds to each temperature to allow them to become in thermal equilibrium). Also, temperature ranges much larger than 50 degrees can be easily produced if the teeth get colder, if not ice-cold, plus there was the problem of using human teeth that I mentioned (most had preexisting cracks).
Yeah, once again, depends on where you’re at. Like I said, this last trip to India was the first time I’ve ever encountered this, and only at one hotel was the slot set up somewhat near the door (although it was still about a foot to the right of it when you enter). In one unit it was by the bed; in another it was by the TV, across from the bed; on a third one it was about six feet into the room, at about head height, on the wall. It was…odd. I imagine there’s more standardization elsewhere, but DrDeth’s description of fumbling around to find the slot does not sound so strange to me.