Free Grand Slam breakfast offer too awesome for Denny’s Web servers

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Denny’s, the restaurant chain, appeared to hit a grand slam with its Super Bowl ad, offering a free Grand Slam breakfast for patrons dining between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. Eggs, pancakes and meat at no charge!

But its Web servers struck out from the apparent traffic load to Dennys.com. The site was down sporadically in Los Angeles, Seattle and Dallas this morning, said a spokesman for AlertSite, a website performance tracking company. He speculated that the rush to the website may have resulted from freebie seekers looking for their nearest Denny’s locations.

Google Trends, which tracks the current hot searches, seems to confirm the assumption. Five of the top 40 searches this morning are Denny’s-related. And No. 9 is ‘denny’s locations.’

The restaurant also holds spots No. 1 (Denny’s) and 7 (Grand Slam) on Twitter’s trending topics this morning. In between the hundreds of ‘free breakfast’ tweets, users have been buzzing about Denny’s server failures.

So, if you’re searching for Denny’s locations in L.A., you might as well skip the shoddy server and check out the Times’ Travel blog for a nifty map.

-- Mark Milian

People wait in line for a free Grand Slam breakfast outside a Denny’s in South Carolina. (Photo credit: Mary Ann Chastain / Associated Press)