Exceptionally Disappointing!!
We spent 4 nights at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago last week and had a terrible experience. Problems were rampant from the minute we checked in, and continued until the minute we left. They simply couldn't get anything right, and were incredibly rude about it - despite the fact they charged us hundreds of dollars every night to stay there. First, they didn't have our reservation right (neither our name nor the dates we were staying), then when we asked for a lake view room, they said they had no lake view rooms on the property because they were not high enough and too far from the lake to see it. Instead, they gave us a room above a fire truck route so we literally heard loud paramedic sirens blasting every five minutes 24/7 for the entire 4 days we were there (the hotel is about 3 blocks from the hospital!). Unbelievably, housekeeping short-sheeted our bed so that our feet were laying on a BARE MATTRESS with no sheet covering it and even took our washcloths and did NOT replace them. They also literally TOOK personal notes from our room that we made to ourselves to keep track of mini bar and room service expenses, took wine glasses from the mini bar without replacing them, re-positioned the shoes in our closet for no apparent reason, placing our worn tennis shoes on top of another pair of dress shoes, and the room service menu was not current and extremely limited - and they took much longer to deliver it than the 30 minutes they quoted on the phone. Then, when we tried to eat lunch downstairs we were told they don't serve lunch during the day at the restaurant! And it's 5 star? That's crazy! As if that's not enough, they don't even have a sundry store, so if you forget toothpaste, sunscreen or a razor, you have to leave the hotel and walk to a drugstore to get it! Want to use the pool, hot tub or fitness center after 10 pm? Forget about it! They all close at 10. And it's 5 star? But wait, there's more ... the one evening we tried to have cocktails in their outdoor lounge, a server ran up to us and rudely told us to get out because the patio was closed that night for a "private" event - but no one was there and there were no signs anywhere indicating that the patio was closed to hotel guests at 8 pm on a weeknight! And the "gentleman" who chased us out made no suggestions as to where we might have cocktails in this 5 star hotel. There were more incidents, but I'll stop here. Last year, we stayed at the Four Seasons down the street and DID have a 5 star experience! This year, we totally wasted over $1,000! Enough said!