Our Stay at the Kansas City Aladdin Hotel

August 25, 2014

Disclosure: Many thanks to the Kansas City Convention and Visitors Association for providing us with a complimentary hotel stay on our girls' trip to Kansas City. This past Friday after work, Hannah, Joanna and I loaded up my little Honda Fit with bags and snacks and hit the road for Kansas City. We were taking a weekend trip as a last hoorah to the end of summer. Crazy fact about myself: Before I moved to Omaha I thought the Midwest had one big city: Chicago. Chicago is definitely top dog, but there are tons of other big cities in the area. Kansas City is one of them. To give you some perspective: the Omaha Metro has about 800,000 people, while the Kansas City Metro has about 2 million people. I had been here twice for work before, but never just for fun. I was so excited to change that. The trip to Kansas City from Omaha was awesome. The roads were uncrowded, the drive was easy, and our general direction was a straight, flat line South. We got to the city in a little under 3 hours, and immediately got to exploring our hotel.

The Aladdin Hotel

We stayed in the Holiday Inn Aladdin in Downtown Kansas City. It is a restored hotel from the Art Deco period and it's on the National Register of Historic Places. I love staying at hotels that have their own unique look and feel and aren't cookie cutter replicas of thousands of other hotels. The Aladdin definitely breaks the traditional hotel mold. You can tell this building has some real history. The Aladdin is also right in the heart of the everything. It is three blocks to the Power and Light District; a fun club, bar, and restaurant area that is a must visit on a trip to Kansas City.

A view from above. Rates at The Aladdin are really affordable, especially considering the location. One cost to factor into your stay is parking. This is very typical in city hotels, but if you bring a car you're going to have to decide between paid lot parking and paid valet parking. The parking lot was a block away and meant paying every time you leave. The valet parking was more money but involved an underground parking garage and having your car delivered to the door every time you needed it on your trip. We ended up going with the valet parking and I thought this was a great decision.

Our room

Our room was a double Queen room. It was cute, clean, and comfy.

We spent Saturday night watching Dateline episodes on TV. (We're exciting, we know.) The cases were all about family murders and my faith in humanity was lowered a little.

Plenty of chargers for all our camera and phone needs. It is a huge pet peeve of mine when I get to a hotel and have to hunt for a charger. I've unplugged lamps and clocks before in times of need.

A view of our bathroom with a Myspace-like pose. I had to step into the shower to get a good shot of the bathroom vanity. That's dedication guys.

I loved this shower head. I think I'm becoming spoiled by hotel showers.

The ammenities

We were surprised with a bottle of champagne at check-in. I of course had to pose the champagne with the little elephant animal towel in our room. How cute is that?

We got there on a Friday night so we immediately had to pop open that bottle.

Some silliness ensued. More on that in tomorrow's post. ;)

Joanna was dedicated and while Hannah and I slept she woke up for an early run in the hotel's fitness center. She inspired me to bust out a quick 7 minute workout when I woke up.

The hotel has a Zebra themed bar and restaurant. We did not make it here, but there seemed to be a crowd both nights.

I appreciated that there was complimentary coffee in the lobby each morning.

And blueberry muffins! I wanted to try these, but we were on our way out the door to restaurants both mornings. Next time. We really enjoyed our stay at the Aladdin. The staff was friendly and the hotel was really nice. It was a great location, too. We could walk to so much and the things we had to drive to were really close by. I would definitely come back here with Josh. [Tweet "Our stay at the Kansas City Aladdin Hotel #kc #KCgirlsweekend #travel #vacation"] Questions of the Day: Have you been to Kansas City? What's the last weekend trip you took? What do you look for when choosing a hotel for vacation?