We decided to get away for one night due to a canceled family event in California--so we took a short road trip from home in the Milwaukee area to Chicago to see a show and stay over. We heard the James was the hot set-up right now. so we thought we would try it out for a night. We booked on their website which worked fair. I called to confirm on the phone just to be sure and they were very professsional. I asked if they had a fitness facility and they said yes they had a big one. I asked about spa services and they said they could arrange them. My impression was this was going to be a very luxurious experience--and all for $209--not bad. We arrived there and a person helped us with our luggage from the trunk of the car--I gave him a tip but he didn't do much--I thought he would take us to the room--he just rolled the suitcases a few feet from the car to the front desk and left. We were going to a theater at Watertower but the concierge had no idea how to precisely direct us to the door of the theater since Watertower is a big complex. The hotel building is an older Holiday Inn style high rise with small elevators, halls and doorways. The standard room is tiny and there are no mirrors in the main room so if someone is in the bathroom there are no mirrors for the other person. The bathroom is remodelled but the original tub is there only repainted. The bathroom door slides back and forth but it was off the track and didn't slide smoothly. It turns out there was no spa--it was off site, a major disappointment, as we had hoped to book a massage and facial. The fitness facility stairs were closed off with plastic so you had to take the back receiving area, metal service stairs past the garbage smelling kitchen and enter it the back way into a dungeon-like basement area. There were foam cups and a pitcher of water, but the pitcher was empty except for ice. They offered passes for an outside club called Crunch, but this was several cold blocks away also in a basement. There was no supervision in the fitness room, and the one guest working out at the time was blaring one of the ceiling mounted TVs in the room with ESPN, even though his treadmill had its own TV with a headphone jack. The guest would not give the courtesy of turning it down, so you couldn't use your iPod becausee you coudn't hear it over the ceiling hung TV. We ate at the hotel's Primehouse which was excellent. Figure at least $75 per person. In conclusion we thought during that initial call to confirm the reservation they should have told us clearly about the lack of on-premise spa and the workout room construction. I mentioned this at checkout and received $50 off. Yes, the plasma TV was amazing, but all in all I would recommend the Omni for the same price range, and althought we like to try new things, this, like the W Chicago Lakeshore still has the bones of a 1960's Holiday/Day's Inn and you can't cover this up no matter how hard you try. This was not a luxury experience by any stretch.
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