pixar & a dinner saga

Sarah (Ruben’s wife) is a Technical Director at Pixar.  She has worked on Ratatouille, WALL•E, and soon-to-be-released Toy Story 3.  As a result, we were able to get a tour.  Super cool since there are no public tours.

There is a limited area inside the headquarters that anyone from the “outside” is allowed to see and even less where you can take pictures.  Here’s a few shots:
 

There are characters all over the place.

Luigi and Guido from Cars which oddly enough we didn’t watch until after we got back.
 
The Incredibles – Mr. Incredible, Violet, Elastigirl (aka Mrs. Incredible), Jack-Jack, and Dash.

Mr. Incredible has it in for my husband. Buzz Lightyear and Woody (Toy Story) in Legos.

Sulley and Mike from Monsters, Inc.

Of course the best parts were the parts we weren’t allowed to capture on “film.”  The exhibit at the time was for UP which happens to be our current favorite Pixar movie.  It was so cool to see the art that was created during the development of the movie.  It included the resin models for all the characters, sketches and paintings from character and set development, and lots of other really cool stuff.  And we were lucky because the exhibit was going to be changed over to Toy Story 3 soon after we were there.

Afterward there was nothing we were capable of besides a snack and a nap so we finished our trek to Ruben and Sarah’s in Pleasant Hill to crash until it was time to meet up with Sarah for dinner.

Now dinner… dinner was a story in and of itself.  Because the original restaurant that DeLunas had in mind turned out to be closed, we ended up at Havana in Alameda.  It’s essentially Cuban tapas.  The food was pretty darn fantastic so no problems there – those came with the bill.  Food pics first.

To begin with, the waitress got one of the plates wrong in the first round of plates from the kitchen.  Then it took forever to get the rest of the dishes we’d ordered to the point where the general manager brought us the rest of our order.  He didn’t acknowledge that anything was wrong but as a customer you know something is up when the boss is bringing out the plates.  Alright fine.

But then…we get the bill and it’s just the first round of dishes so we’re like “ok, they comped the dishes that had clearly been forgotten” and paid the bill.

Then we got up from the table to leave when the waitress came back to tell us that she’d forgotten a few dishes and needed to correct the charges and could we wait a few minutes.  So we sat back down to wait.

And wait we did as she came back to rerun the credit cards and then finally came back and said “ok, I fixed it and took care of the pitcher…. oh wait, you didn’t have a pitcher” at which point I think she kind of lost it.

So we waited another 10 or 15 minutes until the general manager came over to tell us what they had done to “fix” things.  He had decided to charge us for everything, take a whole $10 of the total, and gave us 4 coupons for $10 off our next visit (that couldn’t be combined and you had to spend up to a certain amount to use them). And then they had to run the cards for a third time which took so long that we finally got up to sign them at the door leaving zero tip, of course.

Clearly, the only reason to go here is for the food and not one bit for the service.  I don’t think Sarah will ever set foot in the place ever again since she believed, and I agree, that some if not the entire bill should have been comped after all the trouble they put us through if he really wanted us to come back.