Grand Hall at Union Station — Local services in St. Louis

The Grand Hall is truly an unexpected delight.

First, lets talk about getting inside the place. Easiest way in is to use the valet parking out front. (This is a hotel after all- and this literally connects to the hotel lobby/front desk.) If you opt out of using the valet, getting to the Grand Hall is a little tricky. We parked in Union Station's main paid parking lot out back, and it was a bit of a maze getting to The Grand Hall, using gates, walking through "Hotel Guest Only" doors that likely should have been locked (PSA- they weren't). You would think it would be easy just walking through Union Station's halls to get to the other end but there were gates closing the giant halls off. Why Union Station itself was blocked off in the center of it, I have no clue. Nevertheless, we made it to the hall after cutting through the hotel.

The architecture... Its magnificent. Its literally hard to imagine this was a train depot. The ceilings are extremely high. The details- from the gold-laced paintwork to the multiple archways to the stained-glass windows, the architecture itself is worth the trip alone. No, this isn't Rome- this is St. Louis (lol). Its nice to see that we still have building like this in this city.

The food- not bad. The drinks- also not bad. Dining and drinking here is very casual and you will see large groups of people walking around with suitcases, etc. The tables are very small but with comfy lounge chairs and couches around them.

That being said, the server was fantastic. Literally as soon as we picked a table, a server appeared to take our orders. I ordered calamari and jumbo prawns. The calamari was pretty awful, admittedly- unsure what happened there as it was dry and tasteless. But the prawns were large and were pretty good.

Lastly, there is a light show that is displayed on the ceiling of the Grand Hall about every hour or so. Yes, you read that correctly. It was a fairly unexpected surprise. The light show lasts about 10 minutes or so and the light shows are themed. We saw The Beatles light show, and on our way out, they were starting a Queen/Freddie Mercury light show (which Queen isn't really our thing, so we packed up and left during the first few minutes of that).

The bottom line- go for the architecture, drinks and the light show. The food is just kind of okay. Still definitely worth checking out. Just be prepared that if you don't use the valet out front, its a bit of a challenge getting back to The Grand Hall from the opposite side of Union Station. And remember, this is literally connected to a hotel lobby.

Four stars. A noteworthy place to check out even just for the history and...

By far one of the worst experiences I’ve had with a Hilton hotel. For the amount of money we spent for a Christmas experience I expected more. You could tell the bathroom floor hasn’t been moped for a while it was sticky next to the toilet, the mirror had handprints and smudges and they put a plastic cover over the remote to promise sanitation. I took the plastic cover off and the remote its self was sticky. I understand holiday times are busy but my room was not clean, the front desk clerk was no help to showing me how to get to my room, telling me any things about union station( knowing it was our first time there). We even missed the polar express due to waiting for food at one of the hotels when told it would be about a 30 minute wait which turned into a hour and 45 minute wait at least. Just disappointed in the experience we had when this was suppose to be an “ unbelievable...

This place is grand! I forgot how beautiful our Union Station is!! This place makes me happy to be from STL!! This use to be our hangout for real!! I'm glad to see it come back to life and now tht the STL SC is across the streets even visitors will get the chance to enjoy our Union Station! What I wish could happen for the times when the Train isn't in use that they come up with something similar to Polar Express all year 'round or at least during certain times of the year besides Winters Polar Express!! Stay tuned, I have 2 planned trips on the Polar Express coming up very soon & I'm excited about the extra things (light show, soda fointain etc) I get to show my niece & my grandbaby! Oh, don’t forget the...