The Hotel at Midtown — Hotel in West Chicago Township

If you are considering staying at this hotel based on the nice room photos featured on their website and the higher-tier room rates they charge (as we were), be forewarned that these photos do NOT nearly represent the full (and very disappointing) hotel experience that you would expect at this price point– as we found out when we stayed there.

Start with the hotel entrance. From their website, you’d probably envision a nice, pull-up-to-the-curb entrance with plenty of area to unload your vehicle and helpful staff there to assist you. In reality, you’re looking for a non-descript, concrete, 5-story parking ramp in the parking lot of a plot of land containing a Michael’s Crafts, a Home Depot, and a few other businesses. Find your way deep into the back corner of the ramp and you’ll find a set of revolving doors. This is the hotel entrance.

Once inside, there’s no grand lobby with hotel staff there to meet you. Instead, you’re suddenty thrust into a high-traffic corridor fighting health club members coming and going from their daily workouts. After you frogger your way through them, you’ll finally make your first contact with a member of the hotel staff. After checking in, they’ll buzz you through the health club turnstiles and send you on your way to your room.

The room was okay. The photos are accurate. They’ve even included a refrigerator– albeit a very small, square, dorm-style refrigerator that doesn't even include a freezer compartment. We honestly didn’t know they made microwave ovens as small as the one they had in our room. It was literally pop-tart sized. You could fit a bag of microwave popcorn in it pre-popping, but I’m not sure if you would be able to remove the bag post-popping without applying major effort.

The bathroom is stylish, as long as you don’t mind water covering the entire floor of your bathroom after taking a shower. It’s one of those modern bathrooms where you don’t have a drain under the shower. Instead you have a slit in the floor that the water is supposed to run into. The trouble is it doesn’t– not without using your bare feet to direct the water towards it or bunch some towels up into a makeshift squeegee. When we described the problem to the staff, they said they could send someone up to fix the drainage issue– except that it wasn’t a drainage issue– it was a water not going towards the drain issue. So be ready for a wet bathroom floor experience.

Also, you should know you’ll be hearing all sort of bumping and kicking noises from the floors above you (fortunately only during the daytime hours). Asked about this, they did point that the fine print of their website states we should expect this while staying here. We didn’t notice this until after the fact. You probably ought to know about it beforehand.

The health club that is part of this hotel was very nice. However, I think that sentence should probably be flipped around. The health club is the priority here, and the hotel is actually an afterthought– an area of rooms that offers convenient location to the health club– and very little else. As testament to how little priority the hotel holds in this building, when I asked if they provide courtesy transportation (van or bus) to and from nearby Wrigley Field for Cubs games, the desk clerk wasn't even sure offhand– and had to go back and find out from someone else (with the answer...

Was not pleased with our experience.

1. Very confusing checkin process. No signs outside indicating where the hotel checkin is. There are a few 15 minute parking spaces by the entrance, which is where I parked temporarily to checkin and try to find out where the overnight parking was. After checking in, I came back to my car to find I had received a parking violation…how the heck does this happen when you are at a strange, unfamiliar hotel and just trying to checkin? Suggestion to management…maybe have a few parking spaces designated for guests checking in that aren’t limited to 15 mins.
2. If you want to sleep later than 6am, then definitely reconsider booking this hotel. You will be woken up by extremely loud smashing weights and fitness classes with pounding music, which reverberates the entire room, even if you are a heavy sleeper. Suggestion to management…maybe consider putting a note on website that lets people know AT THE TIME OF BOOKING that there are very loud workouts that start early in the morning. This was ridiculous and ruined our entire stay. Had we known, we would not have booked this hotel.
3. Keep in mind this is an athletic club. It is an athletic club more than it is a hotel and they do not cater to the needs of the hotel guests. The restaurant is open odd hours. They don’t open until 9am and are closed throughout the day. there is no room service. The food is good at the restaurant, but the service is extremely slow. After placing our order, we never saw our waitress again.
4. The pool was awful. Extremely overcrowded (mostly members and their families). It was packed full of people, literally stacked on top of each other. No room to swim or for kids to play. Way too crowded.
5. Maid service is available upon request. I figured if we didn’t need the room cleaned, they would at least take out the trash and replace the towels. Nope. These standard things need to be requested as well. I called the front desk and asked for service, which never happened. The next morning, I went to the front desk and personally requested the room to be cleaned, fresh sheets, etc. When we returned later that day, the beds were made, but the sheets were the same dirty sheets we’ve had our entire stay. They also did not replace the bottled waters, which they are supposed to do daily (included with the resort fee). I tried the vending machine, but the water was sold out. No room service and restaurant was closed. I had to beg for water at the front desk, which they finally brought up.
6. The TV lags and the words do not match up. I did try to nicely communicate our concerns, but was not addressed by staff, didn’t really...

I am extremely disappointed with the overall lack of communication by the staff here.

My partner and I wanted to do a little one night staycation to celebrate our 4-year anniversary. We are both in our early twenties, work very regular jobs, but we wanted to do something special. I booked a king bed standard room through expedia, which said it would come out to about $368 (around $269 + resort fee + parking fee (even though we didn’t use parking). I called the resort the day before to confirm that this would be the total price, and they said yes. The day of check in, I hand the front desk person my debit card and I get charged $468- a whole $100 more than what I was expecting. Again, $100 is a lot for me right now given rent was just due and I just spent 400 bucks on a one night stay. The person at the front desk did NOT disclose the “debit card fee” with me until after he’d swiped my card. I told him I wish he’d told me that so I would’ve given him my credit card and he kind of brushed it off. He said that the $100 should take 3-5 business days to clear, which was not good because I needed that $100 to pay my rent. He said I could call my bank to expedite the $100 hold and was very apologetic after I mentioned that. Anyway, he was actually really nice to upgrade us to a suite and give us a $50 restaurant credit. So thank you Mitchell. HOWEVER, at CHECK OUT (after an otherwise very lovely and luxurious stay), I get charged another $52 ON TOP of the already $100 gone from my account. Again without being told about it. My issue here is COMMUNICATION. Why are we charging cards without confirming with the customer first? I ask what the $52 is, and the lady at the front desk tells me it’s the resort and parking fees. Which is interesting because the base fee for my stay was $269 and WITH RESORT AND PARKING FEES it was $368. So why did I get charged again? She told me it takes 5-7 business days to clear. Sorry I can’t wait that long because now I’m down $152 which means I’m unable to pay my rent in full by the 5th of the month. And it’s on me to call my bank and figure it out instead of enjoying the rest of my anniversary.

My mother worked as a hotel manager for 20+ years of her life and I work in customer service so I know what bad communication and service staff looks like. Clearly they expect everyone staying here to be wealthy and don’t consider that some of us are just trying to do something fancy for one night. I will not be staying here again and I am now in a very...