Fast Food Rankings: Roy Rogers

3/9 brought the second day of Big East Tournament games. After getting to the Madison Square Garden area early, this blog set out to find some food. Pun City had sighted a Roy Rogers the day before, and set out to eat there (having never been to any of the chain's locations before).

What's this mean? Fast Food Rankings are Back!

Roy Rogers is a fast food chain based in Frederick, MD. Their first restaurant opened in 1968. This blog really doesn't know too much about them. A brief Google search shows that at least some locations do have drive thrus, so they meet Pun City criteria. One caveat is that Pun City has only been to one Roy Rogers. This particular Roy Rogers is combined with a Nathan's Hot Dogs, and is run by Riese Restaurants. This particular Roy Rogers was terrible.

Pros: Tough one here. One recalls there was plenty of seating available in the upstairs section. Seating is hard to come by in the Madison Square Garden area, so that was a bonus. Being in a location that offers other food options (in this case Nathan's) is good too. Pepsi products on tap was unusual, but a nice change of pace.

Cons: First, there was only one guy working at the Roy Rogers. This is surmountable in and of itself. Pun City ordered the Double Cheeseburger combo. The guy said, "Just move down to the register, they'll get you a drink." Pun City moved down to the register. No employee there. One minute passed by. No sign of another employee. Not even any noise eminating from the back of the restaurant to indicate there might be another employee. Pun City went back to the initial fry cook guy and was about to ask about his co-worker's absence, when the guy noticed this blog and said "No one there? I'll get him....MAX! CUSTOMER!" (muffled sound from back room). Fry cook, now turning to Pun City: "He'll be right there." Another minute or two passed by, no sign of Max. At this point, Pun City was seriously considering reaching around the machine and getting the soda for itself, but there was still the matter of paying for the food. Another minute passed and finally a Nathan's employee came around their counter and walked over to the Roy Rogers counter, getting the drink and taking this blog's payment. The cashier asked Pun City if it got the cheeseburger combo. Pun City said, "the double cheeseburger combo." At this point, the cashier charged this blog for the Double Bacon Cheeseburger. This wasn't noticed until later, but this blog figured it didn't have another half hour to kill to save 50 cents. Pun City believes the overall service falls under the category "horrible service."

Pun City moved upstairs to eat. They were in the middle of some remodeling or something, and there were giant tarps over one upstairs wall. The place has a huge open space without any tables, but there was plenty of seating available. Two police officers were upstairs, no one else was up there. Generally the place looked unkempt, but Pun City didn't really mind that much, and sat next to the tarp since that was the best spot for a backed chair. Nothing really too notable as far as atmosphere.

The double cheeseburger was terrible. The meat was too thick to really be palateable, and it was low quality meat as well. The fries were way too doughy, and too many had been punctured, which resulted in being saturated with grease to the point of inedibility. The bun wasn't even particularly good, although it was probably the best part of the meal. Well, except for the long-awaited Pepsi, of which there were no free refills.

Prices were very high, Pun City thinks it was around $7.00 for the combo. Granted, this was in New York City, so that's not as bad as in other markets, but this blog can only go on what it knows. Lack of free refills also a major strike against Roy Rogers, although other locations might not have this issue. Not particularly convenient to get to, unless you're in downtown New York or on the east coast.

Cripes, even their website stinks. Using the restaurant locator generally will freeze up their site.

Burger-Only Ranking: 2 out of 10 Fryers. This is being pretty generous. It is a lot of meat, so theoretically you get a lot of sustenance. The cheese and bun combo were alright, that might have carried the ranking above the minimum.

Overall Ranking: 1 out of 10 Fryers. Bad. Bad service, bad food, bad atmosphere, bad refill policy, bad cleanliness. Reasonably good location?

Pun City didn't give Roy Rogers a lifetime ban, because the employees seemed more apathetic than intentionally trying to mess with this blog, but Pun City definitely isn't going to be rushing back. Hopefully their other locations are better.

Want to see how Roy Rogers stacks up against the competition? Check out these other fast-food reviews courtesy of Pun City:

Bullets
Burger King
Culver's
Dairy Queen
In-N-Out Burger
Jack In The Box
McDonald's
Rally's
Sonic Drive-In
Wendy's
White Castle

Pun City's gotta get A&W in there too. Once this Big East trip wraps up, Pun City will post that.

Roach Hotels and New Daylight Savings Time: True March Madness

Final Trip Recap (Recap #10), March 10th, 9th day of the trip. As promised, literally and figuratively a lot of ground to cover. First off, on 3/10, this blog got to check out an extremely expensive mall along the Boardwalk. It's probably within 2 blocks of Boardwalk Hall, but this blog had avoided it because it looked small and overpriced.

This day, Pun City had some extra time though, and found out that it was way off. The mall is large and overpriced. Deceptively large actually. Three levels of ridiculously expensive stores, including a Fila that was passing itself off as "high-end". This blog doesn't know, maybe that's their business plan these days, but it seems really weird coming from a company that sells low-quality shoes.

After going through the mall and mainly window shopping since this blog wasn't going to be getting anything at Coach or Nieman Marcus anytime soon, this blog headed to Boardwalk Hall's "Fan Zone" to watch as much of the Wisconsin-Illinois Big Ten Semifinal as it could. Pun City was fortunate in that the Badger game was on the in-house TVs. Also fortunate was that those suckers are effectively locked on any channel they're set at because the channel changer is locked up and the Best Buy-supplied plasmas didn't have any buttons on them. So this blog just sat back, relaxed, and enjoyed the game as fans around it kept futilely trying to switch to either the Big East or SEC games in progress. This blog was almost laughing at them until some gambling addict got the arena control supervisor to open the lock and the channel changed. Not awesome. Luckily Wisconsin had virtually clinched it by then and they did end up pulling through. However, this blog wasn't thrilled with George Washington's fans based on this poor representative.

George Washington did pull the win out though, a pretty competitive affair where the game was in doubt until around 4:41 remaining. Coach Karl Hobbs celebrated just in front of this blog's seat with the Colonials' fans.

After the Atlantic 10 final finished, this blog headed over to a casino sports bar and caught some more games on TV, then ventured back to the hotel. As always when it came to this hotel, things got interesting then.

1. On cue, the room key didn't work (typical).

2. This blog headed to the good ol' front desk to retrieve a new one. While Pun City was there, this blog figured it would ask for a wake-up call.

2a. This blog knew it was going to be a a rough going asking for the wake-up call, because the dude had missed 2 out of 3 calls previously.

2b. Adding to the problem is that it was Daylight Savings Time. Not just any Daylight Savings Time, mind you, but the first Daylight Savings Time since they switched the date.

3. Dude doesn't speak English well, and acts like he speaks it worse. There is very little chance he's going to understand Daylight Savings Time. If he does understand, there's really no way of knowing.

4. This blog needs a 4:00 AM wake-up call. This will seem like 3:00 AM with the "Spring Forward". If this dude blows the wake-up call, Pun City isn't going to naturally wake up at that time.

4a. Let Pun City emphasize the NEEDS part of that "This blog NEEDS a 4:00 AM wake-up call" sentence. There's a huge drive ahead, and then a flight to catch. Granted, there's a little wiggle room in there for travel time and possible extra gate-clearing time built in, but it would be very easy to oversleep this by 3 hours.

Did you ever NEED a miracle but the only way you're getting it is from one of, if not the most, incompetent, ill-equipped, miserable jaghole you've ever met?

After an extremely long and frustrating conversation in which the dude seemed convinced at multiple times that Pun City wanted 2 wake-up calls, the dude showed a thorough misconception of Daylight Savings Time, and made it clear that he did not have an automated system for the wake-up calls. It was probably about midnight, so this blog seriously doubted dude would be awake to make the call, but dude repeatedly assured Pun City that the wake-up call would be made and that this blog didn't have to worry. He said this in a voice that made Pun City feel convinced that this dude wanted Pun City out of his office above all else. At this point, this blog was tired, knew that it had a long day ahead, and chose sleep over arguing with some Indian idiot that might actually be helpful.

Needless to say, this blog set its phone alarm. And its watch alarm.

April 11th, 10th day of the trip - 4:00 AM. Feels like 3:00 AM. Watch alarm goes off. Shortly thereafter, the phone alarm goes off. Pun City wakes up. This blog finishes packing, washes up, and gets ready to check out and go. It's probably 4:15. No wake-up call.

This blog is checking out anyway, so it figures it's going to let him have it. Here's a rough paraphrasing of the conversation:

Pun City: (This blog) was supposed to have a wake-up call at 4:00, why didn't this happen?

Idiot: It's not 4:00 yet.

PC: It's 4:15!!! (Pun City) just explained this to you last night!!

Idiot: Why would I give you a wake-up call at 4:00? You're checking out now.

PC: What?! Wait, WHAT?! It's 4:15 RIGHT NOW! You were supposed to give (Pun City) a wake-up call FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO!

Idiot: You didn't ask for that, I can only give you one wake-up call.

PC: (Pun City) DID ask for that! I only wanted one wake-up call! Last night, we talked about it for 10 minutes! You said not to worry about it!!

Idiot: (shakes head)

PC: (Completely exasperated and just astonished anyone could be this dumb): "You have (Pun City's) keys. This is all you need for (this blog) to check out, right?

Idiot: Yes

PC: So we're good, we're done?

Idiot: Yes

PC: Fine.

Stunning. Just stunning. How can anyone stay in business with that little grasp on the English language? How can anyone stay in business with that little grasp on common courtesy, common sense, and rudimentary intelligence? This blog finally just left so that it wouldn't have any of the stupidity rub off on it. Frankly, this blog was just ecstatic that it didn't have to deal with him anymore.

Long ride back to Richmond, Virginia, this time without having to deal with Washington DC's rush-hour traffic (since it was a Sunday). On the way up, while running late, this blog had noticed that the University of Maryland was on the route between the two cities. There wasn't nearly enough time to stop then, but today there was a little extra time. This blog was able to check out the Comcast Center, home to Terrapins basketball, and even got to go out on to the floor.

They also had the floor from Cole Field House, Maryland's old home stadium that was where Texas Western beat Kentucky for the NCAA title featured in "Glory Road".

The trip moved on to the Richmond Airport, sat in the Sam Adams Lounge for a while, eventually succeeding in getting the bartender to switch from Meet The Press or something over to basketball. Shortly in to that, it was time to fly out from Richmond to Chicago, where Pun City would have a layover during CBS's Selection Show, and then a flight back to Milwaukee thereafter.

At O'Hare Airport in Chicago, this blog settled in at the Chili's, which was the first place this blog could find with TVs. CBS was on already, so this blog just sat back and enjoyed as they listed the top seeds.

During a commercial break, a woman wearing fur approached the bartender. This blog could only hear the bartender asking "Is that local fox?"

This blog assumed he was asking her about the fur coat. Turns out it was "Is that local Fox?" that he was asking. She wanted NASCAR on. No. Frickin. Way.

The highest-rated, most-watched, most-relevant part of March Madness, and you are switching over to some Snoozecar Race? The woman said we could switch it back, she just wanted to see who was winning. This is fair, alright, cooler heads prevailed.

But wait. Some rube trying to score points with the woman jumped on the Nascar bandwagon and said we should just leave it there. That was it. This blog had already closed its tab there so it had no real claim (other than common sense, which clearly had no value at this bar) to switching it back to CBS, so Pun City immediately bolted the scene in search of more sane pastures.

Pun City found refuge in some type of family diner that had the Selection Show on, just before a table was being cleared. This blog didn't care, Pun City just sat at the table with its notebook scribbling down the brackets, even with a heap of dirty dishes in front of it.

No white trash Nascar monger, horny idiot, or stack of crum-ridden plates was going to prevent this blog from knowing what the brackets were. Especially since it would have relative "communication silence" for the Chicago-to-Milwaukee flight.

In the end, this blog was able to get the brackets filled, hear some analysis, and laugh at Syracuse's exclusion before the flight, during which Pun City looked for possible upset potential. The picks made that night led to an eventual 8th-place finish in this blog's pool, which wasn't too bad given the large number of high-seeded teams that lived up to their seeding this year. This concludes the Pun City Trip 2007, hope you enjoyed it.