I think my patience partly has to do with the fact that I knew what to expect. This is the second time I've attended a conference here (it's an annual conference) and having spoken to the conference organizers, I know that they cannot afford to move to a nicer hotel in the city. The conference itself is wonderful, so I'm willing to put up with the hotel to support it, and didn't have very high expectations to begin with. Also, I was going through this with the mindset of "I"m really, really going to enjoy lambasting them online." After reading my review, they actually refunded me one of the nights at the hotel, so in the end, for essentially a free stay it's not *that* bad. Maybe I'm being generous.

I mean, I didn't pay for the upgrade and in my case, I really needed a room facing away from the noisy highway side so I could sleep, so to me it was an upgrade because it was one of the few rooms left facing the side of the hotel that would actually let me sleep. But for someone who doesn't have my sleep/noise issues, there is objectively no difference between this and a regular room. I, like you, was also too lazy to ask what the difference was; also, asking the front desk anything required waiting for, like, 10 minutes and since the only thing I was doing in my room was sleeping I didn't much want to bother.

I honestly think that it was just broken to the point where it blows cold air when you ask for hot. This is a very old building, and given that the hot water went out in the entire hotel, I'm inclined to think that they have problems with their furnace/heating system that is responsible for the lack of warmth in both the air in the water. I wish I'd been in the room when they came up to "fix" it so that I could see what they did.