We stayed eight nights. Hotel seemed to be in good shape and to us did not have a run-down look. We were upgraded to a corner suite that overlooked the stadium, however it was on a smoking floor and the closet was poorly designed and poorly built, leaving little room to actually hang clothes. And the closet doors did not clear the drawers in the closet so you could not use the drawers. The guest services manager on duty, Jesse, worked with us to compare our suite with the other suite layout, the non-corner suite, on non-smoking floors, and we eventually found a comparable corner suite on a non-smoking floor with a closet that worked in terms of space and the closet doors clearing the closet drawers. She was great!
Yes, you will hear traffic noise even in the corner suite, but we found it tolerable. We were high up. There was even a pop/rock concert in the stadium on Friday night, and it ended at 10:00 pm, so it was not a problem. The clanging of assembling and disassembling the stage went on through the night but was not much of a problem noise-wise.
The breakfast buffet was awesome. Loved the noodle station - just remember to remind the noodle chef that you want your noodles "not spicy". The Club Lounge had enough food laid out, about five hot dishes, that there seemed to always be enough to choose from to eat. You have to remember that Chengdu is in Western China so the food is going to be different than what you get in Shanghai or Hong Kong.
The Club Lounge staff were great. The front desk staff were helpful. Martin at the Concierge station was very helpful. He gets an A+ from us for his assistance. You have to remember that again, you are in Western China where there are not many tourists and English speakers, so you have to work with what English the staff has - some are great, some are not so good - however, regardless, their English is better than my Mandarin.
We traveled around without tours and it was not a problem, though we are very experienced travelers at taking local transportation in other countries. Took the local city bus to close-by Wenshu Monastery. Took the Metro to/from the "Wide and Narrow Alleys". Took Metro/High Speed train/bus to/from Dujiangyan Irrigation System about 30 miles from Sheraton Chengdu. We walked to Changxi shopping area for the experience there on a Sunday afternoon - check out the Kowloon Plaza building for incredible crowds shopping in an eight story building!
Concierge will help you get a taxi and tell the taxi where you are going - we took taxi to/from Wu Hou Temple & Jin Li Street for 15 RMB, and took taxi to/from Panda Breeding & Research Center (highly recommend) for 44 RMB. Taxis are relatively inexpensive by just using the meter. Even to/from the airport (50 RMB into Chengdu at 9:00 pm, 60 RMB to airport at 7:30 am). Avoid rush hour if you can.
So, all in all, the Sheraton Chengdu worked well for us. Platinum benefits were recognized. Breakfast buffet was great. Club Lounge was good. Exercise room was good. English not a stro
ng point. Overall service was good and staff friendly. Only downside was the slow wireless internet and that China blocks Google products as well as Facebook and Twitter. Computer in Club Lounge had fast internet access however you often had to start out on the Chinese page and switch over to English.