Don't Back Down

We stayed two nights in this hotel, just a short distance from Chicago's O'Hare airport. The hotel offers a free shuttle service to and from the airport that runs about every 20 minutes, you can take the CTA blue line, which is just a 5-minute walk from the front door of the hotel, or I'm sure you can call a cab too (we didn't use a cab at all).

The rooms of the hotel are nice, if a bit modern. The noise of the airport isn't bad, though there is an airplane headed overhead from time to time that you can hear. For being so close to one of the world's busiest airports, it's surprisingly quiet. Our room had no bathtub in it, which wasn't a big deal, but if for some reason you like a tub, this might be an issue for you. Check to see if they have one.

While the hotel offers a unique 'dive in' movie every Friday and Saturday night at their indoor pool, where you can pull up a float or a lounge chair and watch a family movie by the pool, in practice it doesn't work very well. First, you can't listen to it because, well, kids are loud and pool enclosures tend to echo. Second, you can't see it very well because pools need a certain amount of lighting and the hotel didn't choose to use a very powerful projector. So if you want to choose this place solely for this purpose, it might not be the best choice.

As you might surmise, the hotel isn't really family-friendly. This isn't to say it's a bad hotel, as it's not. It appears to be quite new, and everything is rather nice. But it is nestled among several office buildings, meaning there are really no choices for anything to do outside 'working hours', and very few things to do even inside those hours. The buildings themselves are alongside a rather large freeway. A somewhat residential area is available across the freeway, and there is a footpath across the freeway - but it's a bit of a hike.

Because of that, the lack of a tub, and the design of the hotel's eating facilities, it is somewhat surprising that they even have a family night such as this one, as the two don't really fit together. But for us, the hotel served the purpose well, and we could easily catch the train into town when we needed to do so. Speaking of which, the best deal we found was to get a Visitor Pass - $5 for 24 hours of unlimited riding of trains and buses, available at a number of locations, including the airport.