I checked in and was disappointed that nobody mentioned upon phone reservations that they have a $5 per day plus tax parking fee until we arrived at the hotel. I was told by the clerk that it could be worse since the city charges $25-$30 per day. I told the clerk I wasn't staying in the city. The clerk asked me if I was ok with it and I said no but after driving in from Texas after 16 plus hours, where was I supposed to park?
I looked online and there isn't mention of the fee unless you go to the parking tab. It's not like they share parking with another business so this is so wrong of Marriott in Elmhurst.
I was also told that they don't clean the rooms on a daily basis and you have to let them know a day ahead if you want service for the following day. The only thing I do give them credit for is that they did make the exception with us because we were visiting a very sick patient every single day of our stay and didn't want to bring in or take out anything that can cause anyone another illness and they did at least make the beds if nothing else.
They told us we could get extra towels if needed from the front desk.
As we came up to the room it smelled like they had just cleaned the whole entire floor with a citrus, clean smelling cleaner, even the elevators smelled clean but it was only temporary to mask the musty smell. Two days later they did come in to clean the carpet in the hallways.
The room looked ok as we walked in but was lacking Kleenex and both the toilet paper rolls were almost empty.
I immediately looked at the bedding because of the reviews read and sure enough found these nasty yellow spots on the sheet along with red hair strands in between the sheets and blanket on the other bed. Not sure if they just made the beds from the previous guest upon checkout but this is so wrong.
On the following morning (Friday) for breakfast they had one person in the kitchen doing the best she could with a few large group of kids. There were no soufflés left, no waffle mix, and nobody cleaning tables. They ran out of cereals. The kids were leaving behind all the trash on the tables and no adults around with common sense to guide them or tell them to throw the trash out.
Kids were noisy running up and down the hallway as if they were the only ones in the hotel late into the night.
This is not the same nice hotel we had previously stayed at. The guest clerks are all the same from our prior visit but it seemed they are just doing a scripted job. The hotel pool was closed due to maintenance but I'm almost positive it's because they didn't want to deal with 50 kids in the pool at one time. They have cookies daily but when these groups were here they didn't have any probably because it wasn't fair to put out 20 cookies when you had 50 kids in a group. The other downside is the people who smoke pot don't care to move away from the hotel entrance to smoke like everyone loves smelling like skunk and nobody said anything to them. Unless changes are made I don't think we'll stay here at this hotel again. The only reason I gave 3 stars is because of the people working there and the variety of breakfast items available. The housekeepers are friendly even though the majority don't speak good English. They are trying to do the best they can with what they have but are also getting too lazy or relaxed and don't really clean or check anything in the rooms. After our 4th day here, everything started going downhill again. The body wash, shampoo and conditioner were very low and not being refilled. On the 6th day we asked if they could refill them and the only one refilled was the body wash. They housekeeping crew wouldn't leave hand soap, coffee or toilet paper unless we left the empty rolls in place. I don't understand because it's not like they are extremely busy and can't remember to look.
Also, if you drink coffee downstairs it's never hot especially if you add creamer to it.
Breakfast items are decent and enough to fill up on. Plenty of fruits, juices, milks, breads, cereals, waffles, oatmeal and some kind of meat and or sandwich is always available.
I honestly hope Marriott does something about the parking fee and the cleaning of the hotel. It just seems nobody cares about service anymore. read more