Crowne Plaza Clayton, Clayton

When I made my reservation about a month ago, this was a Radisson hotel. Only by luck did I call to confirm my reservation and discovered this was now a Crowne Plaza Hotel. We had never stayed at this hotel, so I imagine it would have taken a while to figure out we were now looking for a Crowne hotel. We found it. However, as I explained to the manager, we were in town for an evening show. We chose this hotel because it had an indoor/outdoor pool which was to be our entertainment saturday afternoon as we celebrated our anniversary without our 4 year old daughter for the first time since her birth. We were utterly disappointed to find out that the pool was inoperable. While I can appreciate a problem might develop, the manager told us the pool had been down for several days. I had called the hotel just one day before our visit to determine if my early check-in request looked good, and I asked if we could use the pool after noon if a room wasn't available. I was told that we could. Obviously an intentional lie, in fact, there was absolutely no work done on the pool the entire duration of our stay. As I explained to the manager, our stay at the hotel revolved around the use of the pool. He refused to discount our room or upgrade us to a room of better quality. He did however let me know that he would let us cancel our room without a fee; the first clerk at the counter told us we would have to pay for the room anyway. Since we wanted to celebrate our anniversary rather than spend the afternoon looking for another hotel in an area where we had never been, we stayed. It then took us 30 minutes and three trips back to the counter to find the parking area. This was apparently under construction so a back entrance had to be found. There were no signs visible indicating the lot provided access to the hotel on a certain floor only. When we got to our room, the floor was not clean and there were coffee stains on the sink counter which we cleaned ourselves. Also, I had inquired when I made the reservation about transportation to and from the show (less than 3 miles away), and was told the hotel had shuttle service that could take us to and from the show. When we showed up at the hotel, the story was drastically different. Now it seems, the shuttle is only for service to the airport, unless they are slow. Of course they weren't, and they never intended to provide transportation back since they don't run after 10:00 pm. So we used a taxi service. The price wasn't cheap, and it even cost $0.75 to call the taxi from our hotel room. The manager on saturday when we arrived and the manager on sunday when we left know our story very well. Neither offered, nor obliged at my request, to discount our room, upgrade our room, or help us find another hotel in the area with a pool. I would really like to hear back from you if this is the type of service you expect of Crowne Plaza hotels, and if you just expect us to accept the service we experienced at one of your most recently opened hotels. Fortunately the show we saw was great and was the highlight of our anniversary, despite the treatment and dissappointment we experienced at your hotel in Clayton Missouri. Cary & Jan