jamesteroh

If you are flying to Chicago I wouldn't rent a car and just take a cab from the airport and do a day rental for the car if you absolutely need one. The hotel is very convenient. If you are driving or absolutely have to have a car the entire stay I would pull up the main entrance on Monroe and have a bellman take your bags while one of you checks in and have the driver try to find a remote lot. Parking is absurd in downtown chicago

krazykanuck

+1. I have never had a car in Chicago and done just fine, and that's with 3 months of working there. Just take a cab/Uber from the airport, and Uber around from there. Rates are very reasonable in Chicago. Rates for parking inside the loop? Not so much.

Eujeanie

Unfortunately it's a week long road trip from Wisconsin to Indiana, including a wedding in downtown Chicago, so the car is mandatory.

I'll look into Spot Hero, Bestparking, etc. and see how that compares to the hotel self garage. Often, however, the not-valet options do not include in and out, so you're adding up different stints in the garage.

mbluecpa

The two self-parking options are 124 S Wabash (attached to the hotel, $55) and 55 E Monroe (across the street, $45). Both show in and out privileges.

Eujeanie

Spothero has them for $29 and $37 if you reserve ahead which we can easily do.

In any case much better than $79, and even better than the hotel's self-parking rates.

There will be 3 of us so no problem dropping the bags then parking.

Thanks.

jamesteroh

Parking is the main reason I never drive to Chicago. I always meet friends who are flying from other cities so splitting a ride/parking isn't an option. I am only 250 miles from Chicago but it is cheaper for me to drive 50 minutes to Detroit and fly than what parking and tolls cost. And not to mention traffic at rush hour, I've driven a couple times to Chicago and spent over an hour in traffic just going a couple miles in the loop where the train gets me from the airport to the Palmer house in under an hour

Eujeanie

That would be great if we were going from the airport to the PH, but we're not.

Got my parking sorted, thanks all.

regoarrarr

I've got 1 room for 2 nights over Thanksgiving - I've heard that the Palmer House is good for watching the Thanskgiving Day parade?

As a Diamond, I read about the lounge issues so I'm aware of that - can you watch the parade from the lounge? Or is there a better place other than just out front?

If I'm requesting a room upgrade, are there certain types of rooms that are better than others?

Eujeanie

Just completed our 2-nt stay, and we were very disappointed in the valet parking. They do NOT tell you that it is very different from most valet parking options in that, while you do drop off at the door, you must go into the bowels of the garage to retrieve your car...meaning you still have to drive up the curvy ramp, get close enough to press the right buttons to get out...to ME that is not "valet" service worth $80 per night, and they took one of the charges off, which seemed very fair to me, since we were happy with "half" the service (the dropping off part). We had an older woman with us and really needed the drop at the door option.

Otherwise, the stay was great save for a few minor issues - very slow elevators (our bank only had 3, other floors had 4), slow draining tub. I did leave a note for housekeeping about the tub).

They upgraded us, even at our $86 rate, to one of their, I think they are called "business" rooms which was twice the size of the hip and historic we had reserved. We had two corner rooms at the end of one of the wings, very quiet, newly renovated, one even had a decorative fireplace, which made the aunt we were traveling with very pleased.

And with my husband being Diamond they allowed all 3 of us from the 2 rooms Lounge access even though we were not on a Lounge floor.

mbluecpa

Just seeing this with the recent thread bump. No views from the lounge - the windows are all interior views of other parts of the building.

Upgrades vary widely. I don't recall getting a suite here but have typically gotten their oversized Business Class rooms which range from a little larger than a regular room to what amounts to the footprint of two standard rooms.

jamesteroh

Just completed a three day weekend here.

Was given a 4 pm check out by just asking. Some friends travelling with me were golds and asked for a 4 p.m. Checkout and was told 2 is latest they'll give a god with no charge, wasnt a big deal they just stored their bags in my room.

They now have digit keys which is nice. Biggest complaint was wait at front desk. The diamond desk wasn't open when we checked in and the digit check in line was closed and thee HH line is for ALL HH members. They need a line for diamonds during the busy time since they no longer have a dragon at the lounge to check people in. I needed to see an agent because I had a back to back reservation and wanted to make sure it was handled correctly.

They changed the exec lounge on weekends. Breakfast is now in Potter's for exec level and diamonds. I was told by the front desk clerk that I could eat at Lockwoods and have the contiential breakfast comped since I was with two golds and wanted to eat with them, sounds like they have a list of diamonds at lockwoods on weekend mornings and only the diamond/exec level guest plus 1 are only admitted. Not sure what would happen if a family was paying for one room on the exec lounge, maybe they have it in their notes to admit the entire family. That has to really cut down on congestion on weekends since I would see big groups of people and big families up there and Lockwoods has a lot more tables.

I was told that it was the continental buffet with a $6.95 upgrade to the full but Saturday and Sunday they told me that they usually waive it for diamonds. I didn't eat there this morning.

Lounge now has a fountain and removed the cans which I don't like because I prefer Coke Zero and they had that in cans but not in the fountain.

Eujeanie

Sounds like we were there at approximately the same time, we were there Friday and Saturday, checked out Sunday.

The check-in lines on Friday were insane at 3:30 - we mistakenly stood in the "digital" line (the sineage was very poor), and those in back and in front of me told me I would be scolded, sent to the back of the "regular" HH line but that didn't happen, got a wonderful young girl who was an intern from Michigan State and she could have cared less who was in her line. Since I had just visited Detroit recently we were immediate besties .

Yes, we did eat breakfast in Potter's both mornings, it was fine, since both Saturday and Sunday we were headed out for brunch so we didn't want a big breakfast anyway.

Made a meal of the Gyros and Greek Salad for dinner Friday night, didn't hit the lounge on Saturday night at all.

And just in full disclosure...I wrote my post above about the valet parking before we checked out, and on the second day (departure on Sunday) we only had to walk out to the street on Wabash to get our car, much easier than the night before.

We have no idea why they told us when we called to go to the bowels of the garage on Saturday, but in the end all was ok.

lmsalman

Seems like there were a few of us there this past weekend. We arrived Friday at about 10:00am and the line to check-in was definitely long. Some of my wait may have been people wanting to complete physical check-out. Worse than the check-in line was the elevators, only a gold so no executive floor and the elevators for floors 18-23 were always busy and seemed that only 2 of 3 were operating at any given time. As Gold we had breakfast at Lockwood's, upgrade to the full buffet was $6 but we never did it as the continental was more than enough.

Eujeanie

Yes, we were on 19 and those elevators were awful - part of the problem I think was that we had only 3, the other two banks had 4 each. We would often ride up just to go down since they always arrived full.

jamesteroh

We were on 18 and my friends were on 16.

If we were going to each others rooms we used the stairs and if we were going to the street level we just walked to 17 and used those Elevators