We've been waiting for about a year for Margaritaville to open in Glendale. They had signs up in the windows but it didn't look like they were doing anything for a long time. Construction finally started but it seemed to go on forever.
We waited as patiently as we could (because we had no choice). Originally, it was advertised as opening in the spring of 2007 but it finally came down to November. We have a couple of club members and the daughter of another member working there. Between them and the General Manager, we had some inside scoop on the opening. A few of us were lucky enough to get passes to the Friends and Family events before the actual opening. Those were designed to test the staff and the servers.
We were told the soft opening was Friday night and the press opening was this coming Tuesday. I ended up taking a vacation day on Friday and Norene came up from Tucson for the big day. We were so ready!
I sent out an email to the club members telling them I'd be there by 1PM on Friday and that the first 50 club members who showed up would get commemorative badges for the event. The local paper advertised the opening as Tuesday so I got lots and lots of emails back saying, "Kathy, the paper said it's Tuesday. Why are we going on Friday? Are they going to be open?" Panic, panic, panic.
Sigh. I had to send out another email to calm the waters and reassure everyone that they would really be open on Friday.
Norene and I got there at 12:30. The GM saved us a couple of tables and I pulled aside our server right away to give her the speech. The speech consists of "We're going to have lots and lots of different people rolling in and out all day, they'll be ordering food and lots of drinks and we can be high maintenance if you're not used to us." I then gave her $40 upfront.
You can warn people but they never actually believe how we are. Our server got overwhelmed and even my initial $40 didn't guarantee that I got my Miller Lites on time. However, she didn't cry so that was a good thing. We stayed into another server's shift and she was a little better equipped to cope with us.
By the time we left at 9:30, about 70 club members had rolled in and out. Everyone was really jazzed about finally getting our own Margaritaville and we'll no doubt be spending lots of time there in the future.
As a funny aside, there was an event at Jobing.com Arena right across from Margaritaville. The event was the Women of Faith Conference. Picture 12,000 religious women floating around while 900 Parrot Heads are rushing to their version of heaven.
