Spent four nights here with wife and two sons (8 and 5) while on vacation. This place is great! It's a wonderful place to stay, especially considering the rates offered here compared to DC hotels. Our whole family loved this hotel.
The suite was typical Embassy Suites - big enough for a family of four. Kids enjoyed the fold-out sofa sleeper and "their room." Everything was clean and in great working order.
The staff was friendly and helpful; gift store clerk referred me to a convenience store/deli around the corner (see more below), which was very helpful. The front desk handled check-in smoothly - our pre-arranged suite was not available at check-in, but they quickly found another one. The breakfast and evening reception staff were great, also. The lady cooking omelettes in the morning was particularly friendly and cheery in the morning!
The breakfast was awesome - always plenty of food, even at "rush" times. The food was well prepared and tasty. The evening reception was nice - plenty of salty snacks and they had qeuso (cheese dip) one evening.
The pool did get very crowded at times, we adjusted accordingly. The hot tub is very big!
There is a free business center, as well as a three-terminal kiosk where you can print boarding passes and check e-mail.
The shuttle to the Pentagon City Metro station worked very well. It gets a few minutes off schedule sometimes, but we were never stranded at the station. One morning it left full for the station from the hotel and we didn't get on, but we just took the 10-minute walk to the Crystal City station instead and it was fine. In fact, the boys had fun counting the airplane statues along the way - this is an area theme - there is a walking path that takes you by all of them.
Area tips - there is a convenience store/deli on the first floor of the Hampton apartment building next door (also a Bank of America). This little store had pretty good prices on lots of stuff, we stopped there each night for a frozen ice cream treat. We had food delivered from a Chinese restaurant one night - it has a menu in the hotel notebook in the room. Great prices and huge portions - that's where the fridge and microwave come in handy!
All in all, this was a great hotel. I travel way too much and can highly recommend this hotel.
We also stayed at Homewood Suites Inner Harbor in Baltimore and Holiday Inn Historic Distric in Philadelphia on this trip - will be posting great reviews of those places as well.
