by Guy Heston
To celebrate the holidays we decided to treat ourselves to two nights at the Fontainebleau, the newest hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. At 63 stories it is the tallest building in Las Vegas and a swell joint that I highly recommend. It is also a decidedly high tech joint.
Being a senior, I try very hard to accommodate and appreciate new technology. When we moved from our 100 year old house where the light switches were a simple matter of up for on and down for off, I eventually learned the intricacies of our new house where the light switches (I guess I really shouldn’t call them switches), are mini-control panels, and can be remotely controlled from your phone. I have gotten used to and appreciate them.
But our room at The Fontainebleau threw me for a loop. There were control panels everywhere. I first noticed there wasn’t one of those plastic door hangers where you advise the staff you either want your room to be serviced or not. No, there was a control panel where you chose “service” or “privacy”. If you chose privacy, a little red LED light came on outside the door. So far so good and saving the planet from more plastic waste.
Then there were the control panels for the lights and drapes. Did you want all of the lights on or all of the lights off? Just the bathroom lights on? Dimmed lights? Bedside lights? The bedside control panel slightly resembled an I-Pad, and my favorite option was turn everything off so I could rest in peace. I never did figure out how to turn the bathroom lights out, so I just closed the door and tried not to feel guilty about wasting energy.
And then there were the drapes that seemed to have a mind of their own. I swear to you I did not touch anything, but twice they decided to close on their own. Luckily, I found an option on one of the control panels that had three options for the drapes—“Drapes Open,” “Drapes Closed” and “Drapes Stop”, plus the same three options for the sheers. I really wanted the drapes to stop messing with me but figured the drapes open was the better option. Viola! The drapes reopened to our view of The Strip. Twice.
And there was this little gizmo on the coffee table in the shape and approximate size of a bow tie. The Fontainebleau is bow tie themed, right down to the carpet. But as I sat there staring at it I wondered what this gizmo did. I eventually figured out each side of the bow tie had q-codes for the restaurants, bars, etc. So the days of the little printed booklet with hotel information are apparently numbered. I’ll get over it.
The high tech telephone vaguely frightened me so I just left it alone and figured if there was an emergency I could just press “O” and shout “Help!” I never did figure out how to activate the hotel internet and decided two days off the grid might be a blessing in disguise. It was.
Turns out I am not alone. Brian Merchant of The Los Angeles Times in his December 28 column, “Smart and Dumb Devices: A List of Grievances”, summarized readers’ gripes about technology. Comments were offered about Waze, Ring, keyless entry systems, self checkout and so forth.
I suspect most of the comments were from seniors.
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