Originally Posted by
rflor
I have some....although it's not all good.
I'm a Marriott Gold who stayed there with the family two weeks ago on a Saturday night as my wife was running in a downtown race the next day.
We got there late (~7:30PM) with wife and 2 young kids. Check-In went fine, and they put us in an upgraded room (not suite, but large room with sitting area and pull-out couch).
Having not stayed there before, I did not realize the restaurant is only loosely affiliated with the hotel. It's tapas, so we were looking forward to it. Got there, and the place is packed...and very, very loud.
Hostess tells me it's a 2 hour wait. I ask if they have any priority seating for hotel guests, and she tells me no. I ask if there's anything they can do since we have hungry kids, etc...and she reduces the wait time from 2 hours to 75 minutes. At this point, I get fairly irritated at the mediocre treatment of hotel guests.
The restaurant manager comes over, and I ask again if they have any priority seating for hotel guests. He makes it very clear to me they don't, and I should have planned better by making a reservation. I counter with saying that's a bad business practice for a hotel-affiliated restaurant to dismiss guests like that. He then gets really arrogant on me...explaining how their chef was on Iron Chef, how they are booked 7 days a week, and it would be bad business practice to reserve tables just on the possibility they may get used by hotel guests.
At this point, wife and kids had already abandoned me to my battle and I realized I was going to get nowhere with this guy. So, I left to complain to night manager.
Night manager explains this is a recurring problem for their hotel and agreed to take it up with the hotel GM and restaurant GM. We ended up walking across street to the Chicago Hilton for dinner.
I fully understand your frustration and disappointment. With that in mind, I am rather surprised that you expected to walk right in a very, very popular restaurant on a Saturday night in the third largest city in the country. There are many popular restaurants in downtown Chicago where it's next to impossible to secure a Saturday night 730 reservation even 2-3 weeks in advance. Walking in, regardless of being a hotel guest, is simply poor planning on your part.
Not sure why you'd walk across the street to the Hilton. You could have easily Yelped a place that would have suited your needs. A few other things - the restaurant in question isn't really suited for kids and second, I am not sure why you'd think the restaurant would at all care about your situation. This is a city with millions of people. They aren't going to miss an out of town guest who dines there once or twice a year. Perhaps next time you're in town, you'll secure a reservation at a restaurant that willingly will seat a family with young kids. Someplace like Rainforest Cafe may be more your speed.