Black Friday disaster ... or is this a challenge?

You know how, sometimes, in the middle of a perfectly clear afternoon, there's a sudden thunderstorm that just takes you completely by surprise?

That was today with me and the Monopoly Hotels game from EA.

This morning, I had almost M$300,000,000 saved, and a few hundred gold.

During the day, I collected rent from my three Harvest Pumpkins, 3 of my 5 Microphones, my one and only Tiny Pilgrim Hat, and several other rooms ... enough that I splurged on 2 more Tiny Pilgrim Hat rooms and still had M$116,000,000+ remaining ... was planning to pick up more of those Tiny Pilgrim Hats over the next couple of days from the ongoing M$100,000,000+ daily rent collections.

Plus, I'd finally got all 5 Golden Cauldrons and the brand new Golden Treasure to start producing, so, together with my Golden Goose, I was on target to collect an additional 160 gold every single day.

And then, of course, disaster struck.

Yes, you guessed it.

When I logged in this evening, the game churned for a moment, claiming "Downloading new items for your game" or something like that, then went through its usual rigmarole of "Readying your properties for business", "Dusting off the welcome mats", etc. ... and I saw a flash of the Baltic hotel, with the "Buy Now" banner on it.

Thinking it was an origin glitch, I exited the game and re-entered ...

Nope.

No mistake.

This time, the "Buy Now" banner was gone, but Baltic was resoundingly empty.

So was Mediterranean.

And Oriental.

And the Vermont Aquarium.

And ... 

Need I go on?

Checked my stickers: they are all still there.

Checked the Guest Book - all the guests I've unlocked are still in there, even peek-a-boo Abigail who appears and disappears at will.

Fired off a message to Electronic Arts / Monopoly Hotels via their FaceBook page.

Hopefully, they will be able to restore my progress, especially as I gave them the link to this blog, which has tons of pictures of my hotels and the rooms within. 

Hopefully.

I've got my fingers crossed.

But now, I have a dilemma.

Do I just sit and wait until they respond? Which will be Monday at the earliest, given that I don't believe anyone will be monitoring their support messages over the weekend? Especially given that this happens to be the Thanksgiving weekend?

I think I'll be exceptionally lucky if they respond any time next week - they are swamped with people complaining about this exact problem.

So, I have another option.

I can use my saved up cash and gold to buy some rooms and get a fresh start on the game.

In a way, this is kinda neat.

I have some cash. Enough to buy a Tiny Pilgrim Hat room, but not enough to build it.

And some gold ... enough for ONE Golden Cauldron and one Harvest Pumpkin.

I think I'm going to splurge ... and see how far I can get starting from this very promising beginning. After all, when I first started playing this game back in July, there was NO way to earn 30 gold in a single day, and I was terribly far from hoping to purchase a million-plus-producing room.

One Golden Cauldron will give me 30 gold ... I can purchase another Golden Cauldron the next time they go on sale. In the meantime, my one Harvest Pumpkin alone will help me buy a heck of a lot more rooms in very little time.

I think I have a plan.

One Golden Cauldron, plus one Harvest Pumpkin, and actually, 200 more gold coming up real soon as soon as the 3 green properties finish building (yes, that was something else I started yesterday ... I should earn that 200 more gold in about 2 more days), so maybe one more Harvest Pumpkin, or perhaps a Golden Treasure by the time this sale ends.

Plus, I can still send and receive trains.

And there's always the option of rolling doubles on the Community Chest cards ...

Things are looking promising! I'm off to buy and build ...