My children and I stayed at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel Aug. 18-22. I was a little nervous after reading some of the reviews....but decided to go ahead with the reservation.
The public areas of the hotel are updated and clean. We had a room on the Presidential floor. The rooms are supposed to be larger there and the rate included the breakfast buffet. The room was clean, but dated...only double beds, not queen size as in most hotels.
The pool area and exercise room were always clean, and we never found them to be crowded.
The location is excellent for all of the downtown sites. Easy walking distance..
We came in on the Amtrak, and the hotel provided shuttle service for pick up and drop off, which was handy.
All staff that we encountered were most helpful and friendly.
All in all we had a great time and would stay again at the President Abraham Lincoln hotel.

My early June stay at the hotel turned into a billing nightmare. After confirming the room rate over the phone with a reservations agent, I was later charged a different, higher rate for several other days during my stay. Repeated effrots at the hotel reception desk, written letters to the general manager, a formal complaint filed with the Illinois Attorney General and formal complaints contesting the charge with my credit card company all resulted from my stay.

My strongest advice is to avoid the hotel or, at a minimum, be extremely vigilant with your quoted room rates and charges. GET EVERYTHING IN WRITING for each day of your stay BEFORE you check-in. The management and billing practices are questionable, at best.

We were in town for a family wedding and got an excellent price to stay at the (supposedly) 3 star hotel through Priceline.com. I guess I shouldn't be too harsh considering the rock-bottom price we paid, but it wasn't the greatest. Next time I'll spend more and stay at the Hilton across the street.

We stayed at this hotel 20 years ago when it was called the Renaissance Hotel, and a few times since then. It has hardly been updated at all in that time span. Just the contrary - some of the beautiful period furnishings from the rooms have been replaced with standard cheap looking furnishings.

My biggest complaint is that the beds were HARD and the sheets paper thin (and too small for the beds).

On the plus side the room was very clean (I wore white socks on the carpet all weekend and they were very clean) and the neighborhood - Downtown Springfield - is clean and safe. And there's a Cold Stone Creamery just around the corner!

My husband & I reserved a room for 2 nights at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel for $85 a night about two months before our trip to Springfield. We made our reservation through their Web site, received a confirmation, and verified our confirmation the day prior to our arrival by telephone. We had signed up for their Weekend Getaway package which included a room, a buffet breakfast and a late check out. As we checked in, they didn't tell us the procedure for breakfast. I asked if we needed breakfast coupons. They seemed confused and looked at the computer. Finally, they gave us the breakfast coupons and sent us on our way. As we were walking into our room, the phone rang. My husband picked it up. It was the front desk, and they told my husband that we would have to pay about $47 more because of the weekend package. We went back downstairs with our confirmation in hand. They told us that the rate quoted on our confirmation was a state employee rate. We are not state employees, and we did not ask for a state employee rate. They didn't want to honor the rate although they had already checked us in and given us our room keys, breakfast coupons, and parking pass! I had to argue a bit, but they finally honored the rate we were quoted. When we went to breakfast the next morning, we found that breakfast was only $9.75 which would have been $39 for two people for two days even though the hotel had tried to charge us an additional $47! The morning we were going to check out, we received our bill under the door. The rate of $85 per night was correct, but we were also charged $15 per day for a refrigerator. We didn't have a refrigerator! We had to go to the front desk again to have $30 removed from our bill. The location of this hotel is great. It's within walking distance of most of the Lincoln and IL government sites. However, I don't think we'd stay there again despite the good things such as the very friendly staff at Lindsay's (the restaurant), and the fairly well maintained pool/whirlpool area.