Families came together this weekend to spend time in Corvallis and take place in the events hosted at Oregon State University. There were craft centers, comedy shows, and tailgates.

The combined Dad’s weekend and Family weekend is known throughout the entire town, with every hotel and restaurant booked up.

Corvallis has a wide range of hotels, and at the Holiday Inn Express, booking in advance always helps with the busy weekends according to front desk employee, Kayla Daniels.

Daniels explains the staff helps people to another hotel when they get all booked up.

“We have people who book them as early as a year in advance. We have sold out for mom’s weekend and that’s in May. If they know they are coming they book,” Daniels said. “Typically on a particular weekend with an event for OSU, we know will be busy so we stock our hotel a little more, in terms of reserving, we keep up to date in the hotels around. All of the staff members will know where to direct you if we are sold out,”

First year student Kayla Passanisi explains her family didn’t get a hotel booked in Corvallis in time for the weekend and had to go out of town for a hotel.

“Unfortunately they are staying in Salem because all of the hotels in Corvallis and Albany were booked,” Passanisi said.

Hotspots in Corvallis can also be affected by the events that are going on at OSU, like American Dream Pizza.

Night manager for American Dream Pizza Keith Mayock explains that there is a difference between mom and dad’s weekend and how their weekend deals fit in perfectly with the weekend events at OSU.

“It depends on the family weekend, on mom’s we sell a lot more salads, we sell a lot more spinach. On dad’s weekend we probably sell a 150 pounds of bacon on saturday alone. Sunday is one dollar ‘paps’. I  imagine we will go through a couple kegs of that,” Mayock said.  

Passanisi explained that every restaurant she went to was generally pretty busy.

“Friday night we went to dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory and it was extremely busy. On Saturday we went to a late lunch at Local Boyz and the line was extremely long,” Passanisi said.

Mayock explains the procedure they usually take when they know an event is going to happen and how they figure out when OSU’s events are.  

“We research them ourselves, usually through the OSU website. We make sure we have spare bodies, extra people on shift, and we try to be as diligence as possible, being aware of your surroundings,” Mayock said.  

Daniels explains how the hotel finds out when the events are happening so that they can prepare and even put a little fun into it.

“We are very proactive here on looking up when the events are like football games and mom and dad’s weekend. We put on little displays like balloon things that we put up for special weekends,” Daniels said.