Party Bus Rental in Wheeling, Illinois

Restaurant Row: dinner on Milwaukee Avenue without a designated driver

For more than half a century the stretch of Milwaukee Avenue running through Wheeling has been known as Restaurant Row. The names have turned over, and some famous ones are gone, but the strip still holds a concentration of destination dining that few suburbs can match: big-ticket seafood and steak houses such as the long-running Bob Chinn's Crab House, Italian dining rooms, and, between them, Korean barbecue, Indian, Mexican, and Eastern European kitchens. People drive in from all over the north and northwest suburbs for anniversaries, retirements, and rehearsal dinners.

That makes Wheeling unusual for us: many of the vehicles on Milwaukee Avenue on a Saturday are bringing people in. A family in Arlington Heights or Buffalo Grove hires a limo so that grandparents, parents, and adult kids arrive together and nobody counts drinks.

Dinner parties are small, and they book late. Across our network, 28% of all quote requests were for ten passengers or fewer, and only about one in ten of those small-group requests came in 90 days or more ahead. A 14-passenger Navigator limo suits a family table of ten or twelve.

Two practical notes. Reserve the table before the vehicle, because the big rooms fill on holidays and Saturdays. And Milwaukee Avenue is a fast four-lane highway with a center turn lane, not a strolling street. A progressive dinner, with courses at two or three restaurants, needs the vehicle for each hop. Our special dinners out page explains the pacing.

Meeting a private flight at Chicago Executive Airport

Chicago Executive Airport, which longtime residents still call Palwaukee, sits at Milwaukee Avenue and Palatine Road on the border of Wheeling and Prospect Heights. It is one of the busiest general aviation airports in Illinois, used by corporate jets, charters, and private owners who prefer not to deal with O'Hare. There are no airline terminals. Passengers arrive and depart through fixed-base operators, the private terminals known as FBOs, located on different sides of the field.

Ground transportation here works differently from a commercial airport. We need the name of the FBO, the aircraft's tail number or the operator's trip number, and the expected wheels-down time. Arrival times on private flights shift more than airline schedules do, so the driver tracks the aircraft rather than the clock. Whether a vehicle may drive onto the ramp to meet the plane is up to the FBO and is arranged through them in advance; otherwise the pickup is at the FBO's front door, a few steps from the lobby.

Groups are small: executives heading to an office in Northbrook, Deerfield, or Lincolnshire, a family going downtown, a band with gear. An 8-passenger executive Sprinter van handles most of them with luggage. The Loop is 40 to 75 minutes from the field, and the Lake Cook Road corporate corridor is 10 to 20. For commercial flights, our airport shuttle page covers O'Hare and Midway group transfers.

Lake Cook Road, Dundee Road, and Palatine Road: three ways to an expressway

Wheeling sits between expressways rather than on one. Lake Cook Road forms the northern edge, Dundee Road (Route 68) crosses the middle, and Palatine Road runs along the south side past the airport, where it runs as a quick limited-access road and continues east as Willow Road. Milwaukee Avenue (Route 21) and Wolf Road run north to south.

How drivers use them:

• Loop and River North: Palatine and Willow roads east to the Tri-State, then I-294 south to I-90 and the Kennedy; or Lake Cook Road east to the Edens. Forty minutes on a calm morning, 75 on a Friday evening.
• O'Hare: the Tri-State south, 25 to 40 minutes. Milwaukee Avenue and River Road make a workable surface alternative when the tollway is stopped.
• Wrigley Field and the North Side: the Edens, then Irving Park or Addison.
• Ravinia and the North Shore: Lake Cook Road or Dundee Road east, no expressway required.

Dundee Road has no ramps to I-294, which surprises people. That is why a driver leaving central Wheeling may head north or south first.

Lake Cook Road is the one to respect. It carries the office traffic of Northbrook and Deerfield, and at 5:00 p.m. it crawls. The low ground along the Des Plaines River on the village's east side also floods after prolonged rain, occasionally closing roads near Milwaukee Avenue. Check your date and hour in the route time estimator.

Hotel wedding blocks, golf-club receptions, and Wheeling High dances

The north end of Restaurant Row is also a lodging and banquet cluster. The Westin Chicago North Shore stands on Milwaukee Avenue near Lake Cook Road, other hotels are minutes away in Lincolnshire and Northbrook, and the park district's Chevy Chase Country Club, with its vintage clubhouse and ballroom, has hosted receptions for generations. Couples marrying anywhere in the north suburbs frequently house guests here, which turns the transportation job into a hotel-to-venue shuttle.

Season matters. Among wedding quote requests in our booking network, 17% were for September dates, nearly double September's share of inquiries overall, and only 11% of wedding requests came in the final two weeks. Couples plan ahead, so the shuttle buses for autumn Saturdays are claimed early. A 28-passenger shuttle bus running two loops suits a typical room block; the wedding transportation page shows how to post departure times so nobody misses the ceremony. If the dinner the night before is on Restaurant Row, the same vehicle class works for the rehearsal dinner.

Wheeling High School on Hintz Road, a District 214 school, brings prom in spring and homecoming in fall. Those rides are alcohol-free, a parent signs the agreement, and an adult must be reachable throughout.

Adults bringing drinks aboard on other trips must be 21 or older. Equipment differs from one vehicle to the next, and the written quote lists what the assigned vehicle includes.