Originally Posted by bdesmond
It's not like that sort of train system. You simply put money on a card. It's $1.75 each way without transfers. You just walk up to the machine and feed it cash ($1,$5,$10,$20 bills) and when your done hit vend and it spits out a flimsy card that you put in the machine and it deducts the necessary funds and then your on the train. It costs the same to go one stop as from one end of the line to another.
The blue line (the only subway from O'Hare) will get you to the loop, but won't quite get you all the way to the Conrad Hotel in the Mag Mile area. You either have to transfer to the red line and take it to grand st. or you can actually walk...it's not that far...altho it's getting cold in Chicago again...so walking isn't going to be much fun.
I believe there is a blue line stop in the loop called State/Lake that will let you out close to where the Conrad is...you'll have to cross the river and walk north and east for a handful of blocks...