My wife & I just spent 3 nights at the Conrad Chicago, Sept 14-17. I had booked the room back in June for a nightly rate of $185.
Checkin was effortless, they put us in room 1011, which is a corner room, very spacious. It was characterized as an upgrade at checkin when I asked. Nice view down the street, you could see the Lake at the far end. Bed linens, MB toiletries, robes, etc. were all very nice. This room did not have the new TV but WiFi was working well, no problems there. I didn't receive any coupons for breakfast at checkin, nor did I ask since we hadn't planned to eat at the hotel anyway.
A few little problems, all of which were resolved fairly easily. We sent some items down to the laundry service late Thursday night, chose the Express service (for return by 2pm) but when we got back to the room Friday at 5pm, nothing had come back. A call to housekeeping produced the missing items by 530pm and an offer to refund the express surcharge. I later pointed out to the manager (James, very helpful) that my complaint was not with the $$$ amount, but with the fact that there had obviously been no tracking of express items that had gone out, therefore no knowledge when an expected order hadn't returned on time, and finally no proactive notification to me. He agreed, refunded the whole laundry charge, and bought my wife & I a drink on the terrace later that evening, which was nice.
The cordless phone by the bed was DOA and was replaced. And the one-hour shoeshine turnaround required a call down to the valet the next morning to get my shoes back.
As many others have said, the location is excellent, and I like how discrete the property is, you don't have the zoo of a lobby the way the Marriott does. Access from the adjacent Nordstrom/mall is also similarly subtle, so no casual hangers-on that I noticed.
I had a rental car and used the self-park garage across the street. If you mention this to the front desk they will give you a discount card (good for $5/day I believe) but in order to use it you must have a physical ticket from the machine, rather than just inserting your credit card to gain entry to the garage.
All the staff we encountered were pleasant. The front desk staff were particularly good at calling out to me by name to say hello or goodbye whenever I walked by.
I've had some dreadful experiences at the Palmer House, and a range (from dreadful to quite good) at the Hilton/Michigan Ave, so this was certainly my best Hilton experience in Chicago so far. The day before arrival, the Hilton site was showing a daily rate of $545 for the 3 nights we were booked, so if they weren't fully booked, they must have been close. I would stay again at or around the rate I received, but if I were paying much more, I would expect little problems of the sort I described not to occur at all.
All in all, thumbs up, and I'd certainly stay there again.
twj