My husband and I stayed at the Hilton for the quilt show (yes, I was one of those “old ladies swapping quilting tips” that were referred to by a previous reviewer).

The quilt show puts a lot of pressure on the hotel because they are linked by walkways so the hotel is a popular choice both to stay at and to eat at. To try to combat this they offered buffet meals only in the cafeteria throughout the duration of the show, which as far as I know they hadn’t done so extensively before. I have a feeling that they will offer a two-tier system in future, offering a full buffet and a lighter (in terms of food and price) version too.

Our room was spacious and extremely comfortable. It had beautiful views of the new Discovery Park opposite. There was a slight downside to this since events took place in the park on a couple of evenings, but the slight noise didn’t disturb us and were over before we were ready to sleep. My husband appreciated the large, L-shaped desk area though it seems a shame that hotels charge for Internet access these days!

Parking was quite expensive, but then it was in line with the parking charges in the surrounding area and much the same as the charges in other hotels locally. We elected to go for valet parking and call it part of our holiday spoiling.

We found all of the staff to be friendly, efficient and helpful.

All in all, we were delighted with our stay from the moment we arrived to the moment we left.

I stayed one night at this hotel in October 2008. One of the nicer Hiltons at which I have stayed, although it is huge - my room number was like a zip code - 17067. I arrived at 9:30 am and was surprised to find that my room was ready even though there was a big convention going on next door - the hotel is directly connected to the convention center - very handy.

The room was spacious, comfortable and clean and had a nice view of the park across the street from the convention center. However there was a concert going on that afternoon that I could hear from my room when I retuned to freshen up before dinner. I was glad it was over by the time I returned for bed. I wasn't working on my computer, but there was a large desk and it appeared it ha everything one needed to get online. My only complaint about the room was that the bathroom light was dim (why do hotels do this?) and there was no lighted magnifying mirror. This little detail I have come to appreciate more and more as my eyes are aging.

The staff was friendly and helpful. The bar in the lobby was open and nice, although rather loud with TVs. I had a seared tuna appetizer there that was very good, although it came slathered in wasabi mayo (note to self - ask for it on the side there!). I was a little put off when I arrived at the restaurant the following morning (a Sunday) for breakfast and was told that it was buffet only at a hefty price to boot. I opted to get some yogurt at the convention center. I feel that a hotel restaurant, no matter what day it is, should offer a breakfast menu.

Check out was a breeze. They offered no shuttle to the airport, but a taxi was easy enough to get at the door.

Over the past 5-10 years, Hilton has been aggressive in building new, upscale hotel properties on urban frontiers. See the Hilton connected to an event center in Omaha, or the new one near the museum in Denver, for instance. These hotels are ambitious, flashy, weirdly oversized for their locations, and a bit incongruous, perhaps overcompensating for their humble surroundings by overdoing the luxury decor a bit. The Hilton Americas in Houston is the most extreme example of this weirdness I've yet encountered.

The hotel is isolated from downtown Houston by a sea of parking lots at least 4 blocks wide. It's connected to the convention center and next to the Rockets arena, all part of a "renewed" area of the city with a new park and small pond, but it gives one the sense of being in a hotel on the moon. There is no street parking within a million miles that isn't aggressively metered, and the parking garage is a massive, expensive nightmare. Getting from the parking garage into the hotel feels like an endless hike; you have to traverse the entire hotel through a surreal, gigantic mezzanine, filled with giant planters and overwrought Chihuly chandeliers.

Check-in is annoying: the reservation, made for me by a business associate, had my first and last names reversed, and that made the clerks' brains explode, for some reason, and it took forever to work out. I asked where the health club was and was told it was $10 (!!!!) to use it. I told them I thought that was also annoying and they said if I joined their "Honors" club it would be free, so I did, and then it wasn't.

The hotel room numbers have 5 digits, like suburban addresses, since they apparently have over 100 rooms on each floor. Directional signs are nonsensical, listing all rooms in both directions somehow, although the floors are not circular, so if a maid tells you to go the wrong way, you'll walk a mile until you hit a dead end.

Oddly enough, the rooms are kind of cramped.

The health club, once I protested the fee and was let in "just this once" for free, was adequate, and only one other person was using it. Good job, Hilton, charging for that, you're obviously making a ton of money. The pool is free, and quite pleasant, up under the roof with a large, vertigo-inducing balcony next to it, to look out over the Houston wastelands.

Everywhere you turn, you have to pay more money. The coffee bar "proudly serves Starbucks coffee," but is pointedly NOT a Starbucks, so that an espresso can be $3.25. Of course, try to find a coffee or a restaurant somewhere else and be prepared to walk for an hour with no luck: you're on the moon, after all.

After a while, I realized the hotel was reminding me of nothing so much as the Hotel Rossiya, the gigantic hotel across Red Square from the Kremlin in Moscow that was recently torn down. The Rossiya was also head-spinningly massive, one block square, but maze-like and off-putting. Completely nonsensical "luxury" decor was tacked on to every surface in a futile attempt to compensate for the cavernous spaces, but rather than feeling impressive, it only served to give lodgers a sense of alienation. While the Hilton Americas is brand new and its luxury touches and terrible Chihuly glass blobs are still shiny, it seems like only a few years and an economic downturn will turn this into a dusty, massive monstrosity, an artifact of strange, heady times, when conventions of old ladies sharing quilting tips thought nothing of $30 lunch buffets. We'll look back and laugh, I hope.

It's decent in terms of cleanliness and ambience. A good location for conventions across the street. There is nothing within reasonable walking distance in terms of groceries- so expect to drive.

Negatives- the lobby is freezing!! Also, the service staff is lazy, unfriendly, and will lie to you. When I picked up a package from the valet, there wasn't even a smile.

I called multiple times to obtain a missing receipt for my stay. I either received a blank email or nothing at all. If you leave something in the hotel room after checkout, don't expect to see it again. The cleaning staff took my shorts and kept it. Yeah, that's right, shorts. Stay away unless you have no choice.