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As part of our recent trip, we’ve been staying at a new hotel every day.  Each morning, when our “horde” of 8 people descend on the hotel breakfast area, we encounter the interesting dilemma of what to do with the hotel breakfast TV.

Typically, the hotel breakfast TV is turned to a news channel such as Fox News, CNN, MSNBC or the like.  Not only is this not entertaining for our kids, the subject matter is usually not one I’d choose for them.  For example, the main story this morning was “Charleston SC shooting of 9 people ruled a hate crime“.  But, because of the power of “the glowing box”, there’s not really any way to get away from it (and stay in the hotel breakfast area)

Changing the hotel breakfast TV channel?

So what to do with the hotel breakfast TV?  If there is nobody else in the room, I’ll change the hotel breakfast TV to something more kid-friendly (typically Disney).

mickey-mouse-clubhouse

Of course, that ends up with a different “glowing box” problem – the problem of not eating their breakfast because they’re in “zombie mode” 🙂

What if there are other people in the room?

It’s been my observation that typically most of the people in the hotel breakfast room are not really watching what’s on the TV either (adults are not immune to “glowing box syndrome”!!).  So people are just watching the hotel breakfast TV just because it’s what is on.

So I tend to think that if I were to ask if it was okay to change the channel, most people would be okay with it.  That might work fine if there’s just 1 person / group in the room, but I’m not super excited about making a large announcement about it!

Typically though, I don’t ask, because I want to be sensitive to other people, if they REALLY are watching whatever is on the hotel breakfast TV.  I think people might feel pressured to agree to my changing it, even if they don’t really want it to change.

a remote control on a table

What I do with the hotel breakfast TV remote

So what do I do?  I usually wait until everyone else has left, and then I change the channel, and then hog the remote :-P.  There’s a lot of inertia in the hotel breakfast TV channel – whatever happens to be on just gets left on because (almost) nobody cares enough to get up and change it.

I’m sure there are plenty of people who are not super excited to watch kids TV, but I know of very people that go down to hotel breakfast to watch TV!

So what do you do in that situation?  If you have kids, do you proactively ask to change the channel?  If you’re traveling without kids, would you mind if a parent asked to change the channel to something kid-friendly?

Have you ever fought over the hotel breakfast TV remote?


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