The public spaces of the hotel are gorgeous, particularly the soaring painted ceiling in the lobby, off which the Lockwood Restaurant and Bar is found. The lobby itself has a bar, surrounded by additional comfortable seating. Potter's Lounge is accessed from the street level, where there is a Starbucks and small shopping arcade (gift shop, shoe store). The indoor pool is small but adequate. The hotel has an odd configuration. The lobby is on the second level, not the street level, so it is necessary to bring your luggage either up the escalator, elevator, or stairs to check in; however, there is a bellman at the Wabash Street entrance. Both the Wabash Street entrance and the Monroe Street entrances are staffed by doormen who can help you hail a taxi. It seems like the hotel is comprised of several different buildings, along with several different elevator banks; it is necessary to find the correct elevator that will take you to your desired floor, because not all elevators stop on all floors. The Executive Level elevators (and lounge) require key card access.
Keep in mind that many of the rooms are TINY! We checked in the day before online, and after reading all the possible room options available to us, we chose the description that stated LARGE ROOM, LARGE BATHROOM. Other descriptions claimed SMALL ROOM, SMALL BATHROOM, NOISY ROOM, and the like, so we felt that we got lucky with room 10171. There was no upgrade offered to us as Diamond members, even though we had booked the second-to-lowest category of room (the lowest being a DOUBLE room with one DOUBLE bed); the hotel was not full, either. Upon seeing the room, if that was a LARGE room, I would dread seeing what the SMALL rooms looked like. Although it would have been possible for the room to be a bit smaller (there was an arm chair in addition to a desk with a chair), I don't see how the bathroom could have been any smaller unless you had to stand in the bathtub or atop the toilet to close the door. The décor of the room was attractive and modern, but the size prohibited us from enjoying a relaxing space. On the third day of our stay, we didn't receive service on our room until about 4:00 pm (despite departing the room at 8:00 am), at which time we were showering and dressing for an early dinner. To be fair, we asked the maid to return in an hour after we had departed for dinner, and she did service our room while we were gone. The room had no mini-bar, which we found odd - it's a quick and easy way for a hotel to make a few extra bucks on the guests - although in our room, there was no space to allot for that amenity. Our room had an interior courtyard view, but at least it let in some natural light. Our major complaint about the room occurred on the evening of our second night, when my spouse, dressing for dinner, skimmed a bare foot along the dust ruffle of the bed and withdrew it with a USED CONDOM attached! It doesn’t get much more DISGUSTING than that! We immediately telephoned the front desk - and our call was put on hold - then we called the concierge - and our call was placed on hold again - and finally, we called the special guest services number (I think it we dialed 26 on the phone) - also to be put on hold! Because we were preparing to depart for dinner, we attempted to stop by the executive lounge to voice our discovery (no one was manning the desk), as well as the concierge (where the lines were “a mile long”) and finally, the Hhonors front reception desk (where there were no long lines, but where every desk attendant appeared to be waiting on the non-Hhonors patrons). We just wanted to tell someone about our "find", as well as have it removed from our room, but no one was available. Later that evening, we left a message with the front desk staff for the manager; we were told that NO MANAGER WAS ON DUTY ON WEEKENDS, which is a bit disconcerting for a hotel of this size. We don’t understand how a routine cleaning of a room wouldn’t remove such a personal item. The room assumably had a thorough cleaning after the previous customer had checked-out, and we ourselves had some type of service after our initial night stay. It wasn't as if my spouse had gotten on his hands and knees and looked under the bed, or that we had arrived with an ultraviolet black light searching for “creepy crawlies”, so there's no reason why a maid's vacuum cleaner did not uncover the condom. We spend a lot of nights in hotels, some of them at lesser Hilton properties than this full-service Hilton (for example, Hampton Inns and Hilton Garden Inns) and never has this happened before! Apparently, spending extra money on a “better” properties guarantees you some extra personal-care items! We never received a call from the manager, although we did receive a message from the maid asking us to call and discuss the matter, which we didn’t have time to do.
The executive lounge was a bit disappointing - extremely crowded on the weekends at both breakfast and evening cocktails. The breakfast buffet was small but adequate - pastries/muffins/bagels, fresh fruit (whole not sliced), hard-cooked eggs, sliced luncheon meats, hot oatmeal, yogurt, juices, flavored waters, and coffee. The evening cocktail hour featured sliced fresh fruit, fresh vegetables and dip, and some hot hors d'oeuvre items, along with complimentary non-alcoholic beverages. My spouse purchased a beer, which was $6; I'm not sure if that was a "deal" as compared to what they were charging in the lobby bar, nor could we compare the price to that of the mini-bar because our room didn’t have one. From the sizable crowds in the executive lounge, it seems that everyone is either a Gold or Diamond Hhonors member these days, although no one really checked guests in and verified that they belonged there. We saw many extended families, some with as many as 6 family members, staking out places in the lounge and partaking of the freebies. Key card access is required to access the lounge from the lobby or street level, but with the many additional elevators and staircases in the hotel, you can get around that if you know how.
Overall, this was a disappointing stay, and we would not recommend this hotel, which is a shame, really, because the location is great. We could overlook the size of the room (even though it was billed as LARGE but to us appeared SMALL), but the whole USED CONDOM ISSUE is pretty unforgivable!
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