I have stayed at many Embassy suites, and generally enjoyed every stay. I did not enjoy this stay and think this hotel is currently rated much higher than it should be (10th in DC as of July, 08). First thing to note is that the communal areas (lobby, reception, breakfast area) of the hotel are very small given the number of guests. It is not like the usual design for an embassy suite, which generally have large communal areas. The lobby area is noisy and claustrophobic. The breakfast is good but crowded. My main complaint was the registration desk, which seemed very badly managed. When I arrived, the area in front of the desk was crowded and it was not easy to tell who was in line for service and who was just standing around. There were about seven people behind the desk, but only two seemed to be dealing with customers. The rest seemed to be staring at screens and avoiding eye contact with customers. It later became apparent that several of these were trainees. The main issue that soured my experience is that I was checking in at 1.00pm and was told the room was not ready. OK- I have had this situation before and usually have had to wait half an hour at most, so I politely asked for an estimate on how long it would be before the room would be ready. I then informed in a snooty manner that the check in time was 4.00pm and that they could not give a time before then. The person dealing with me seemed to recognize as soon as they said this that it was not consistent with their customer service training. They put on a smile and said that as a special favor they would take my number and call me as soon as the room was ready. Of course we did not get the call, and after returning to the hotel at 3.40 found our room was ready. We got the keys and went to the room on the top floor. The key would not work. I returned to the lobby leaving my family at the room. Again the registration was chaos. When I eventually got someone’s attention, I was told my room had been changed from the one originally assigned to us and we were now on the seventh floor. So I had to retrieve my family and move to the new floor. The room we were assigned had dirty dishes and glasses left outside and the there was a lot of wear on the furnishings. The mini kitchen area was in drastic need of renovation. The soundproofing, as noted by others, is very poor and we were awoken by a crying baby in the next room at 2.30am. For the money I think you can do a lot better than this hotel, which is well below the standards of other Embassy Suites and highly overrated in the Tripadvisor listing of hotels in DC.