I decided to stay at the Phoenix Park Hotel primarily because of the reviews on this and other travel review websites, which were nearly unanimously positive. I requested in my reservation a quiet room on an upper floor. I was placed on the 8th floor in a room next to a storage closet, which should be quiet, right? Wrong! For some reason, every time the fan/ac unit cycled off, it made an extremely loud rattling/shaking noise, that woke me up repeatedly, despite taking a sleeping pill, which usually knocks me out cold for the night. My husband had the same issue too - he only got 1.5 hours of sleep the whole night, and nearly passed out the next day from exhaustion. And there were flies in the room. We asked to switch rooms the following morning, and they directed me to another room on the floor, with a street view, which was showing in the computer as having been cleaned. When I entered the room, it was clearly not yet cleaned - bed not made, etc. There were no other rooms available at the time, so the front desk told me that when a room became available, they would move our luggage to the new room. We went out for the day, and when we came back we checked in with the front desk, expecting to get our new room assignment. Wrong again! The new shift had come on, and the previous shift did not leave any note or record of this room request. The hotel clerk said to me, "Which room do you want?" Am I supposed to name a room number? Huh? How about asking me what was wrong with the first room? I said I wanted a room where the a/c unit doesn't make such a loud noise when cycling off. He gave me the room next door to where we were the night before. Turns out the new room was fine, as far as the a/c unit was concerned, and fortunately we couldn't hear the a/c noise from the room next door. I'm most upset about how poorly the hotel handled this situation. They were pleasant, but not very competent. I can't believe they didn't move our stuff while we were out, as promised, or even have a record of it to leave for the next shift. Plus the next guy asking me which room do I want? That was not very good customer service in my book. Also, one more thing to mention, the tv was terrible - you get a beautiful wall-mounted 32 inch LCD tv, but over half the channels failed to come in most of the time - CBS, ABC, HBO, and ESPN were out the majority of my stay, and HGTV didn't come in at all - there was no signal on the direct tv satellite - the weather was good so I don't know what the deal is with that. That is another reason I won't stay there again - I was looking forward to watching some tv after a long day of sightseeing, and none of the channels I was interested in were available - maybe they should dump the satellite and get cable - satellite was so unreliable. One more thing, the housekeepers were very friendly but lacking in service. They didn't replace the toiletries, even when empty. Other, less highly rated hotels give you a new shampoo, conditioner, lotion, soap daily. The first room we were in didn't have a body lotion at all. Due to a combination of all the above factors, I would never stay at this hotel again, nor recommend it to others. It's not worth the lower price relative to other area hotels, and the well-situated location near Union Station and the Capitol.
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