Melissa B.
Yelp
I still prefer ORD, which is sacrilege to many who praise how MDW is smaller and thus easier to navigate and "deal with." It's not totally wrong! One example is how easy the rideshare area is to find. But, as so many cliche term papers state, it is a "study in contrasts."
MDW has continuously been updated and renovated, which is awesome. The main atrium with the various food options is bright, airy, and even calming! It is cool that they've added so many restaurants there. The restaurants near the gates are a bit less successful - I was excited to see Big&Little's there, but the breakfast menu had three items, and that was it. (So too with Porkchop, and their breakfast sandwich was revolting and overpriced. The eggs involved tasted "off." One woman worked the cash register and the other assembled the sandwich. The latter was probably supposed to hand off the food, but she then stood behind the former and scrolled on her phone. I politely asked for the food, since I had indeed just paid for it. WEIRD.)
I never ran into this in years past, but my goodness, it is thoroughly unable to hold the amount of passengers it receives. There is a massive disconnect between space/facilities and traffic. This occurs in other airports, but I had never seen MDW in this manner before. The gates have very little seating, so a ton of people had to stand around for a while and sit on the window ledge. They seem to have added more chargers to seating, which is great.
Both departing and arriving, I noticed that there are WAY too few bathrooms here for men or women! Every single time someone in my "party" needed to go to the bathroom, each time, there was a massive line! It felt like intermission at a theatre downtown. Usually, at an airport, you get this at peak times and/or after a flight lands, but this was at every bathroom, on two separate days. There just aren't enough bathrooms for the amount of people, so everything on your travel day becomes a game of lines. No thanks!