The hotel turned out to be pretty good. Reception was overly nice. I was given my choice of floors. The manager even called me after I checked in to make sure that everything was okay. In-room coffee, microwave and mini-fridge. Very clean, comfortable bed, the pool/hot tub looked nice, location was good, good room size, furnishings were in good condition. Lots of restaurants within walking distance, as is Great America. The light rail is a long walk/short drive and there are several buses that you can walk to catch, including a PRICELINE EXPRESS that runs on the weekdays. The property is very large (four stories), with all exterior corridors. There seemed to be few people in the hotel while I was there, with only one person on my floor (4th) a couple of doors down the first night. The down sides: - Bathroom was dated, and the tub had definitely seen better days. You had to actually turn the faucet clockwise and push in to get the water to turn off, which I thought was kind of funny. - Very limited cable TV. - Hard to get into the parking lot. There's no access from GA Parkway, so getting in involves going through at least one traffic light's left-turn signal, unless you're coming south already. - An office area, so traffic gets bad at rush hour. - Adjacent to a catholic church. This was Easter weekend, so that presented a problem with parking and traffic. - An IHOP is on the property. This caused issues with parking, traffic, and noise at night when the little teenagers with nothing better to do hung out outside until about 1am. (Seriously though, is IHOP really worth an hour wait?) All in all though, this worked out well and was a good value. Not worth the rack rate, IMHO, as there are better properties in the area that run about that much, but I would take it again for the price that I got it for.
