What. A. Treat!!!
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 4/4/11
The last time I stayed in a Holiday Inn property was about 5 years ago in the Cleveland, OH area, and we suffered an uncomfortable room that reeked of cigarette smoke. After reading about the recent Holiday Inn Express makeovers, we decided to give Holiday Inn another try. Wow, what a change, and what a treat!!!
We rented a Kids Suite at Holiday Inn Express Fremont (Indiana), located conveniently just a short distance off of I-90. The signage directing traffic there from I-90 could be better, but we found our way to it easily enough despite the dark, somewhat wet night. It was about 11:15pm, and I was greeted by a very friendly desk clerk who knew just what a travel-weary family of five wants in a hotel. The Kids Suite he rented us was a bit more expensive than we usually look to pay for a brief, overnight stay on the road, but at $125, it was only $10 more than a room with 2 queen-size beds and well worth the rental. It was the cleanest, most comfortable room we've ever stayed in.
The bathroom was large, well-appointed, up-to-date, fully functional and immaculate.
My older daughters loved the bunkbeds and the extra privacy that the Kids House (basically, a house-shaped partition inside the suite, with a curtain for privacy, 2 bunk beds, a desk, a TV and boom box for entertainment and free PlayStation available upon request) afforded, and there was plenty of room in the king-size bed for my 4-year-old to share with my wife and me. The suite includes an eat-in kitchen with a small, household type refrigerator, kitchen sink, microwave, coffeemaker and a table with 4 comfy chairs. It was wonderful to have a proper freezer that could re-freeze our cooler chest's cold packs. There were plenty of towels and pillows. It was great to have some space where I could work on my laptop for awhile without disturbing the rest of the family members, who had gone to bed. We all woke up refreshed and ready to continue our trip home in the morning.
Free breakfast is provided, with pancakes, pastries, bagels, cereal, juice, milk, tea and coffee. Kosher customers will be pleased to hear that the friendly food server maintains a list of which foods are kosher. (She surprised my wife and daughters with it as they were trying to determine what they could eat.)
The only problem I could find was that the hallway smelled a bit of cigarette smoke, most likely from smoking customers who end up in non-smoking rooms and therefore go out into the hallway to smoke. I mention this only for the benefit of a reader who might be severely allergic, but since this had no impact on our stay, I am not down-rating the hotel for it. There was no trace of cigarette odor - or any other kind of off-odor - inside our suite.
No "stealth" charges were added to our bill.
My daughters are already asking when we can stay at another Holiday Inn Express!