I spent July 4th weekend at the Loews in Philadephia. I had a mixed experience.

The positives:
(1) The location is great for exploring Philadelphia. It is convenient to Reading Terminal for a nice breakfast or lunch, close to Chinatown, and an easy walk to most parts of Center City.
(2) The room was beautiful. The furnishings are up to date, and the bed is quite comfortable.
(3) The valet was straightforward about self-parking across the street, which is half the cost of valet parking (only $18 per day). It worked out great since we didn't need to move the car around at all.

The negatives:
(1) The dirty towels were removed from my room the second day of my stay but no replacements were put in the room. I called the Star service line at 5pm and was told the hotel ran out of clean towels, but upon their arrival they would be dropped off. I had to call again at 9:30pm; 15 minutes later the clean towels arrived.
(2) I requested turn down service in advance; this occurred only 1 of the 2 days I was there.
(3) The spa and fitness center staff were indifferent to the behavior of patrons. While I was in there using a treadmill, very young children (probably about 6 or 7 years old) got on other treadmills and were jumping around and not paying attention. They were acting similarly on other equipment, and staff walked past and completely ignored them. This happened 2 days in a row.

Overall, this really is a beautiful property and none of the negatives in any way spoiled the weekend.

I stayed at the Loew's on business and found the facility clean and the staff very helpful. However, I could not get my laptop to connect to the internet in the room where I was put. (7th floor, which is for pet owners--that did not bother me.) Parking was rather expensive, even for Central Philadelphia ($35/nite) and there was no coffee in the room. Toilet was low flush and light bulbs were mercury type which I don't like--not an Al Gore fan. I had asked in advance for late check-out and was told I could only stay until 2 PM. (I had hoped for 3 PM) This is not a bad choice if you get a good price. The location is unobjectionable if you have meetings at the Convention Center or City Hall.

This was our second stay at the Philadelphia LOEWS and we were decidely impressed! Not only is this a classy, understated hotel with great amenities, the customer service is pretty much off the scale. Example: our water was barely coming out of the faucet; we told the front desk and when we returned to our room that night after a day of sightseeing, were informed that we would have to be moved to another room as the probem was not yet fixed. Not only did we get a goodie bag of treats from the Reading Terminal Market, our first night's stay was comped because of the inconvenience of having to move. Everyone was just fantastic and the room (both of them) were lovely! Great location too; minutes from everything, including the Reading Terminal Market, which has a great diner ("The Down Home Diner") if you're looking for a good, inexpensive meal. (We loved the breakfast there; went both days!).

We stayed at Lowe's Philadelphia because our first three choices did not have rooms available. But it turned out that Loew's was wonderful! From the moment we checked in, the staff was courteous and friendly. The front desk asked if we wanted a river view or a city view, and we chose the city view. We were given a room very high up with a gorgeous view of the Philadelphia skyline. The concierge was friendly and took extra time to answer our questions and make recommendations. Every day there were pitchers of complimentary ice cold lemonade at the reception area. One day as we were going up in the elevator, a man in our elevator asked us if we were tourists. Then he invited us to see the top floor and its magnificent skyline view, and he gave us a tour of the large meeting rooms with the original wood paneling. Only then did he introduce himself as the general manager, and told us to let him know if there were any problems or if there was anything we needed!

On the last day (a very hot day), as we were checking out and picking up our car from the garage, the garage attendant gave each of us an iced bottle of water!

We did hear the "slamming doors" which another TA member wrote about, but it only happened a few times and it wasn't annoying.