Even if you haven't stayed at The Peabody, you likely know its famed ducks are a big deal. They live atop the hotel in their own penthouse.
Their likeness is on everything - pillows, towels...even carved into soap.
And there's the parade. Every day at 11am and 5pm these ducks take a trip from their pie-in-the-sky apartment, roll down an elevator, and prance up a red carpet into a tiny fountain.
And people lose their minds. I'm not being cyncial because it's not that the ducks aren't sweet - they very much are. But the hotel staff goes super Secret Service on the throngs of quackarattzi just hoping for a quick picture, making the entire experience somewhere between a joke and a nightmare. It was just a tad...reduckulous. Heeeee.
"Quacka, quacka, quackarattzi"
I am not kidding when I say we were relocated three times, forced to sit in a chair - DO NOT STAND or sit on the floor - and then when the ducks debuted and a woman beside us leaned up for a photograph, a hotel worker pounced on her from behind. She was, to say the least, startled and yelled a profanity. It didn't rhyme with duck, but it was in that family....
To put in midly, the parade experience coupled with some really subpar service left my feathers...well, just a little ruffled.
3 comments:
That's hysterical about the ducks. Did the hotel seem out of date with the rooms? I don't like to stay in a lot of older hotels unless it's Preferred Hotel. They seem to do a good job with the older properties while keeping the character. I stayed at the Fairmont in Victoria. I should have not done so. I wasn't happy there, and was so mad that I didn't listen to Trip advisor. I think the Madison hotel in Memphis is gaining ground there. I can't believe that about the ducks.
I've never stayed there but did you know that they have a Peabody in Little Rock now that does the same thing.
Fun Trivia about the one in Memphis -- that's where they filmed that party scene in the film - The Firm.
Remember? They were on the rooftop.
Memphis and The Peabody are on my list of places I want to visit...would love to take my boys to see the ducks in a few years. I wonder when the "off season" is because I'd rather do without all that madness!
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