Cubs Convention and a Night in the City

One of the Christmas gifts to Rob from the kids and I were tickets to the Chicago Cubs Convention. With the tickets, I also booked a night's stay at the hotel where it was being held (The Sheraton in the city). I thought it would be a fun little family getaway. Saturday morning, we packed up the car and drove to the city. It wasn't as great of an experience that I had hoped for, but the kids still had fun.

When we arrived we parked valet and left all of our luggage with the bell hop as we left the car. (In retrospect, we should have just taken everything ourselves, but they insisted it would be delivered right up to our room). We checked in at the front desk and provided the ticket for our luggage and requested it be sent up to our room, along with a pack-and-play crib for Mason. After a half hour it still hadn't arrived so we left the room and went to go check out the convention in the hotel. (The bell hop had our stroller, so we figured we'd just carry Mason). We walked around the convention for awhile and it was pretty cool, but Leah had zero interest and must have asked when we were going to the pool about 20 times. They did have a section just for kids with a balloon maker, face painter, charactature artist and other kids stuff. After an hour and a half we went back up to our room to find out that our belongings still had not made it to the room. We called down to the lobby to check on it. They said it should be right up. The pack-and-play arrived in about 30 minutes. After an hour passed, our luggage still had not yet been delivered. At that point, we didn’t want to wait any longer so we dragged the whole family to the lobby. We checked in with the concierge and she directed us to the woman at the bell hop desk. After searching for 10 minutes they finally located our luggage. It was sitting all alone in the valet luggage closet. The woman at the bell hop desk explained that the front desk never provided the ticket to them so it was never delivered (it is disappointing because we also called directly to check on it and no one could figure this out). The woman at the bell hop was very pleasant and apologized. She did give us a voucher for free breakfast in the morning, which was appreciated. Rob ventured back to the convention while I hung out with the kids in the room. It was much more enjoyable to explore it kid-free. 

Later that night we had dinner plans at Gino's East and we went down to valet to get our car. After waiting for 30 minutes they informed us they could not locate our car. What!?? They scrambled trying to locate it. We waited another 25 minutes before they found our car and brought it down. It turns out the tickets got mixed up with another vehicle and they had brought someone else’s car to the area. If you are asking customers to spend $60 for valet, you better ensure there are not these types of mix-ups. The manager comped our valet and apologized for the inconvenience. We ended up getting to Gino's East so late (because we waited more than an hour for our car) that there was now a huge line out the door. There's no way the kids would survive the wait in the cold weather. We drove around for a little while debating on where to go before stopping at Timothy O'Toole's for dinner. After we finished eating, we went back to the hotel and took the kids to the pool for awhile. Leah had been dying to go swimming! Of course, it was packed with kids. We swam for almost an hour before going back to the room. By now it was almost 8:30 pm, so I got the kids ready for bed. The Cubs Convention was open until 10:00 pm, so Rob went back down again to see what else was going on. 

Then the next morning, we went down to the restaurant for our complimentary breakfast. It was pretty good. Afterwards, we called ahead (just as we were checking out) to valet so our car would be ready when we got down there to head home. When we got there we waited at least 20 minutes and then spoke to the manager. It turns out they could not locate our car AGAIN! He put 5 guys on it to find it and I had to provide a description of my car. The one manager we dealt with was very unprofessional and was yelling at his guys to get on it (in front of the other customers). They were all running around like chickens with their heads cut off in the parking garage to find our car. In total, we waited almost an hour again. The Sheraton's valet system is a mess!!! They apologized extensively but this is unacceptable. I can understand if this happened once, but it happened twice in a 14 hour period. Seriously, I thought it was a joke when they informed us they couldn’t locate our car again. If it happened twice to us in a short time, how many other customers is this happening to? We were traveling with a 1 year old and 3 year old so you can imagine that it was not fun waiting around. I was pretty ticked.

Overall, we spent less than 20 hours at the Sheraton, but we spent a total of 5 hours of “just waiting.” Waiting for our luggage and waiting for our car (twice). Options that are supposed to offer convenience made our overall experience very disappointing. The Cubs Convention was neat, but I am not sure I'd do it again. (Or at least maybe leave the kids at home). The kids enjoyed the pool and Leah loved being in a hotel. I'd love to do another night in the city once the weather is nicer outside. There would have been more options for us to do. Oh well....it was still a fun night away with the kids.