Not a Good Example of Crowne Plaza
My wife and I travel quite often, and this hotel ranks high on the "worst hotels" list for us...for a number of reasons.
First, the set up of the hotel and its rooms is difficult to appreciate. As other reviewers have stated, the hotel is built into a former train station. Because of this, the rooms are almost all facing inward with a single window opening to the lobby or the pool area. This means that the rooms feel like a cave with no view of the outside. It also means you have little privacy, as people in the lobby are walking and sitting directly outside almost all of the guest rooms. Our room in particular was located above the pool, where we not only had no privacy but we also had no silence. Finally, you hear trains rattling your entire room constantly. Some may love this, but given how bad everything else was...I did not.
The rooms and the hotel itself are all in disrepair. The ceilings are marked with water damage, the walls are marred, and in general the hotel feels worse for wear. Our room in particular was dirty and we experienced the dirty towels others have noted. There's also the issue of amenities in the rooms themselves. Our standard room had a single (yes, one) outlet that was not behind a bed or the TV stand. Our bathroom was not great either, as it was small and dingy (a theme for this hotel). 
In addition, the service wasn't great. Our friends staying with us had issues getting their room clean, and I couldn't call the front desk (or anyone, for that matter) because our phone's programmed buttons did not work. When I was finally able to call the valet, the phone rang and rang only for me to walk downstairs and find two staff members standing and doing nothing. Essentially, the only nice thing I can say about the Crowne Plaza is that we had hot water. Not high praise.