On Saturday three people were injured in a shooting at the Texas State Fair. A 22 year old man has been charged with aggravated assault after a conflict that began amongst two people who already knew each other at the Fair’s food court. Everyone was evacuated, and the fair re-opened on Sunday.

def not what u wanna see at the top of the ferris wheel at the texas state fair pic.twitter.com/zx8V7p1frh

— awbs (@cans0fsoup) October 15, 2023

I was there the previous weekend. The food court area had some of the great food items, but in reality the single best thing there was the Fried Pho, a deep fried burrito with the dry ingredients and the Pho soup as a dipping sauce (think French dip-style).

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Dallas, the same hotel that several years ago stole – and then lost – my underwear. I’ve always found this large convention center property to be almost nice, well-meaning, but a bit disorganized. And this stay was no exception.

Check-in was efficient with no one ahead of me. Since I’d flown in from DC, I arrived in advance of my wife and daughter who were driving over from Austin to meet me. I was given the keys to our room (suite) for the two night stay and an explanation of Globalist benefits. We were staying on points, so it wasn’t just restaurant buffet breakfast but also complimentary parking, self-park or valet. I was given a couple of bottles of water at the desk, and given 5 coupons for use at the grab ‘n go market for 2 bottles of water apiece, or half off a coffee.

The hotel was absolutely mobbed with people. It was the Texas-Oklahoma game weekend, and since 1929 each year the rivals have played in Dallas as neutral territory (about halfway between the two university campuses). UT Austin was the ‘home team’ this year, and in all odd years, and Oklahoma in even years. UT lost the game.

There were banners asking people to be quiet. Those banners were… ignored. The hotel is set up atrium-style and sound carries. But there was revelry and rivalry everywhere, not just after 9 a.m. but after 1 a.m. too. A call to the desk did nothing. They promised that security would come quiet people down (they had to know about the noise to begin with) but security never did.

The hotel itself is… fine. Self-parking is a decent walk and in a sketchy area beside the freeway. An unmanned police car was parked in the lot each time I passed by. That made valet more attractive and fortunately it was complimentary for this stay.

I had no real complaints about the room itself. It was essentially two connecting rooms set up as a suite, each with a bathroom, where one room was the bedroom and the other a living room with fold out couch.

Globalist breakfast was in the restaurant, and our first morning the restaurant was doing buffet only because there were so many people on property. The second morning things had calmed down after busloads of people had left, and there was a menu option available. Breakfast was average Hyatt Regency at best, with nothing really local or especially great but also serviceable… think Sysco eggs and extremely thin bacon.

The hotel added valet parking to my folio, or rather they did not remove it. And they even had one more day of parking than I was even on property. I emailed a copy of my folio to my ‘My Hyatt Concierge’ but as is typical she hasn’t responded after a week. Hyatt has made some hires in that department, but I’ve found agents to be quite overloaded, such that I usually just send requests to the Hyatt Concierge team over Twitter direct message. I’ll have to follow up again to have these charges removed.