Toilet trouble - hotel style

A few days after the solstice holiday, my honey and I went further north to a resort on the North Shore of Lake Superior.  (We wanted to be even colder!)

The visit started out well, but took a turn for the worse on the very first morning.  What happened?

The toilet overflowed.  Reception was called, the maintenance guys came out, and after a number of hours of banging around, this was the result:

Yes, they had to move the toilet from its spot to try to snake the sewer line. Although first, they had to use a wet/dry vaccuum to clean up the toilet and the bathroom floor.  The problem?  Ice.

They brought up some chunks of ice to start, but eventually decided to try to use a steamer to melt the ice in the line.  Amazingly enough, we hung around this entire time, listening to them make noise and smelling the pungent sewer odors.  (We were waiting for it to get warm enough to go skiing.)

The head maintenance guy decided to move us at about the same time as the plumbers were trying to decide if they had cleared the sewer line. Even though they decided they had been successful, we moved rooms anyway. This was probably a good idea, especially after we learned that this had been an ongoing problem with this unit.

Our new unit was not quite as nice, didn't have the same quality of furniture, and was in the middle of a row instead of at the end, but the toilet worked very well.

Interestingly enough, management never acknowledged the incident in any way.  I kept expecting a gift certificate or a coupon to the restaurant or at the very least, a "We're sorry that the toilet didn't work and we inconvenienced you."  But no, nothing.  Maybe it was because we were in one of their cheaper rooms, I don't know.

Whatever the reason, I guess we'll be checking out other resorts on the North Shore in the future.