This weekend, Mrs. L and I went on a road trip. We’ve been burning through some money lately and thought it would be a good idea to try to economize. She made the hotel reservations and asked whether I thought we should pay $25 extra per night to have a fridge and microwave.
Short story long, I had an idea: I have a mini fridge—the kind college students have in the dorms. What if I got that cold before leaving home, with cold items already inside, kept it shut while on the road, then schlepped it into the hotel room? I think it’s insulated well enough to go a few hours easily. It would mean chicken salad sammies wouldn’t spoil, sodas could stay cold…but it wouldn’t address the (potential) benefit of having a microwave in the room.
If you show up at the movie theater with bags of chips and 2 liter bottles of soda, etc., they’re going to turn you away. I wondered if the hotel folks would do the same.
And by the way, I own this book. One of these days I’m going to try a recipe from it.
Manifold Destiny is a 1989 cookbook (ISBN0679723374), its updated 1998 edition (ISBN0375751408) and a 2008 update (ISBN1416596232) on the subject of cooking on the surface of a car engine. It was written by Chris Maynard and Bill Scheller, a photographer and a travel writer who were also accomplished rally drivers. Though neither edition remained in print for very long, the book is considered something of a cult classic in the American culinary scene due to its unusual subject matter, combining local specialties (“ready-boughts”) with recipes designed with various regional and ethnic inspirations in mind, as well as evaluations of representative cars available at the time of their suitability as cooking equipment.
Your hotel charges extra for a microwave oven and refrigerator? I’ve always found them included in the base rate. Years ago, before they became common, a friend of my parents would claim to need a refrigerator for storing medicines and the hotels always supplied them for free.
And when I was a kid in the 1970s and 1980s, we’d bring a cooler packed with ice, cold cuts and sodas. Even back then, hotels had ice makers we could use to replace whatever had melted.
The insulation on those mini-refrigerators is…not impressive. Of course, if you are driving there is no reason you couldn’t just pack stuff in a cooler with a block of ice, or if you do this frequently, get a small 12V refrigerator that will run indefinitely off of automotive power and/or a portable power station. This also allows you to take refrigerated food car camping without having to worry about ice melting, and avoid paying the $25 fee for a hotel fridge.
IDK, Mrs. L calculated that to be the increase I guess.
And BTW I used to stop in a 7-11 for a soda at times, and the owner chased out some guys who always used the microwave for their fish. “It stinks the place up for the rest of the day!” he said. Mind you, this was something they brought from home (not something purchased at the store). I bet there’s a lobby microwave, especially when they serve b’fast.
I used to have an AC/DC camping cooler that was pretty awesome. I wonder if I could use the 12V/110V cigarette lighter adapter I have to keep it charged. I also have a jump n charge that has a 12V socket.
Those Jump-N-Carry-type jump starters don’t have enough amp-hour capacity to run a portable refrigerator for very long. I don’t see why you couldn’t run your “camping cooler” if it has a SAE J563 adapter (12 VDC car aux plug) provided it doesn’t draw more amperage than your alternator can deliver, but you want to make sure that you don’t drain your car battery. The newer portable refrigerators use very high efficiency compressors that limit current draw. If you tried to use a plug in inverter in your car to run a mini-fridge you’ll likely blow a fuse.
If this is a one-off trip, a cheap Coleman cooler and block ice should be sufficient; I only suggested a portable fridge for the convenience of not having to resupply with ice or protect everything inside from getting wet, as well as being able to take it into your room and use it there as a refrigerator instead of dealing with whatever unsanitary mess the last occupant left for you.
[flashback]There was some muckraking investigation about hotel maids wiping down used cups with dirty rags to “sanitize” them[/flashback]
The experience I had was a little different but…
Those familiar with the beast (dorm fridge) probably recognize that when you open the door, there’s a retaining bar. It allows you to put a 2 liter bottle in the door for chilling yet not letting it fall out when you open it. Um, the hotel’s unit’s bar was gone.
I wish I had a crystal ball.
We had a dog that we loved to take on trips with us. As time went by, she seemed to enjoy the trips less and less. At first I thought maybe the novelty had worn off.
But I now think it was sleep deprivation (to the point of torture) for her. Dogs may sleep 12 hours a day or more, so to put her in a moving vehicle for hours on end?
She passed away. We’re not sure how our current dogs would fare, but we think maybe not well.
We walked down to ours and it said that it was out of order, so please go to these alternative floors.
There’s a large part of me that says if you promise me A,B,C,D,E and you fail to provide one—hey, I picked you based on what you were offering and for all you know, D was critical to me, so don’t act like a hero because you provided everything but D.
I mean, the indoor pool was closed this weekend but dammit, you know I paid for it. That stupid bar on the fridge? Wait, I am Mr. 2 liter guy.
I just finished a 53-day road trip…I took a Arctic Zone Titan 48 can cooler which has more than enough insulation for a day (or two in a pinch). Instead of block ice I use a large plastic cereal storage container filled from the hotel ice machine each morning. It keeps everything cool enough and there’s no water sloshing around and getting everything wet inside the cooler.
Did she mean that the hotel charged an extra $25 per night for a fridge and microwave, or that the available hotels that had those amenities charged $25 more per night than the ones that didn’t?
I haven’t done a lot of traveling, but when I have traveled, the majority of hotels these days seem to have mini-fridges and microwaves in the rooms, and I don’t recall encountering any that charged extra for one.
I don’t really understand most of the things being talked about here. I travel a lot and haven’t run into a hotel that charges extra for a mini-fridge in decades, and I feel like anyone who has ever traveled in the history of their life would know a simple cooler with ice is going to cover almost everything being talked about here. This feels like much ado about nothing.
Seriously? We’re talking about dragging what is probably a 50 lb “dorm sized” mini-fridge around in a car when a cheap cooler can cover essentially 100% of this scenario.
This borders on threadshitting. If you don’t understand the OP’s challenges, it’s probably best to refrain from making any contribution to the thread. Thanks.
In my experience the cheaper motels are more likely to have these things. Fancy hotels have fridges to put the expensive drinks in, but seldom microwaves. Inexpensive motels often have free breakfasts also. Some are better than others, but we survived on them during our round the country trip. Mostly good to save time.
Better double-check about the lobby microwave; my hotel does not have one.
As for the ice machine going down - things go down in hotels just as they do in your house. Since the pandemic started my hotel has had longer than normal waits for some things to be repaired; I doubt we are alone.
You do not want to use hotel ice - they do not clean them or service them properly - one of the consumer protection groups did a survey and found unacceptable levels of nasty bugs [people reaching in and grabbing ice with dirty hands seemed to be a major point] Unfortunately people have gotten to like ice. If you want something other than tap water, you have to bring your own bottled or use a soda machine for a cold beverage. [I will put a bottle of something in a full ice bucket champagne bucket style, or use it to fill a cooler to ice bucket bottled something in - but one needs to clean the outside of the bottle to avoid accidental contamination [or at least wipe off before pouring to avoid melt dripps]
We actually have a plug into car or motel wall cooler, I think it was around $1000, but well worth it. I have issues with the fat type and content of fast food, I really dislike diarrhea. We tend to travel with sandwich and salad makings of our own.
I mean you use the hotel ice to keep things cool, not really to put in drinks. There’s minimal to zero risk to your health using hotel ice machine ice in a cooler or to rest a bottle of champagne in.
If I were going to do this, I would let the hotel know to note it on my folio so someone doesn’t call the cops on me for stealing a fridge (or at least if they do, it’ll be easy to resolve).
My “Step One” would be to call the hotel and tell them you have medications that you refrigerate*, and could the hotel include a fridge? Be nice to the person on the phone (or the manager you ask for if the front desk is “not really sure…”), and there’s a good chance that the fridge rooms have the microwave as well.
*You’ll be telling the truth, because the night before, you’d put an aspirin in your refrigerator.
That occurred to me later. The hotel rooms I’ve stayed in all seem to have black refrigerators and mine has a stainless door. Plus, they could check my room and see theirs was still there. With my luck, though, I’d pick a hotel that had a stainless one go missing from the break room or something.
Wow! I didn’t know they got that expensive, but amazon has one advertised for $2828.28.
I once dated a woman whose daughter worked in a movie theater. I imagined the teen staff might not be too cleanly—the butter for the popcorn might go rancid or that sort of thing. But drinks? “My daughter told me never to get a soda there,” she said. I guess the tubing was pretty dirty. It made me wonder about all the machines in gas stations, restaurants, etc. as well.
If the room types the hotel offers include a basic room, versus an upgraded “suite” (or whatever) that includes a fridge/microwave, I could see that being the price difference. Otherwise, I’ve never been told “want a room with fridge / microwave? That’ll be extra”.
For what it’s worth, more and more hotels have them as standard amenities, which is pretty nice.
Re bringing your little dorm fridge: honestly, you’ll do just as well (or better) with a good quality, well-insulated cooler, and adding ice every day or two. I’ve had ice last several days in a cooler even when opening / closing. A cooler is also DESIGNED to be carried, unlike the dorm fridge, and is well-nigh indestructible.
There are loads of food options you can plan on that won’t require access to a microwave. When my husband and I travelled cross-country a few decades ago, we had sandwich fixings, fruit etc. in the cooler and that was 2 of our 3 meals, most days. We got a sit-down meal somewhere most days. To be fair, we also had a camping stove, which we used to make “homemade” stuff on days when we were camping.
You could always bring along a small, cheap microwave - but aside from, say, reheating leftovers, I doubt it’s worth the hassle.
I have occasionally thought about getting one of those plug-into-the-car coolers for longer trips - but really haven’t been able to rationalize the cost. We still have the same cooler we took on that cross-country drive - nearly 4 decades ago!