I could not get the Chromecast to connect to the hotel wifi at the Hotel Shattuck in Berkeley. I suspect the login screen that I was directed to for access to the hotel wifi. I suppose another workaround would be to clone the Chromecast MAC address on my laptop, authenticate, then unclone. I would guess that at that point the Chromecast would connect properly. I should have tried that.

I ended up using my "not quite world's smallest router" and connecting both the Chromecast and my MacBook through that. Worked fine though the Netflix stream did hiccup a few times. One odd thing was that I couldn't get it to work through the handy wall HDMI outlet the hotel provided but worked great when i connected it directly to the television/monitor.