This hotel has all of the bones to be a really great place to stay but really missed the mark in several different areas.
1) We arrived and pulled up to check in. There was someone from staff cleaning the windows on the entry doors. No sooner did we step on the first step to walk up the stairs to enter the lobby but he went inside and did not even hold the door for us or welcome us. The arrival experience is important. That was basically the perfect example of what not to do.
2) We had an upgraded room I believe which had a kitchenette and fireplace in it and had some gorgeous views of the mountains. However, the walls were paper thin! There was a wedding going on that weekend and there was a long, drunken discussion from what sounded like 20 somethings going on in the room next to us from the time we checked in until about 9:00PM at night. We woke up to the same thing the next morning as well, the group clearly being hungover and really struggling. If you have a couple coming to stay with you for their 1 year wedding anniversary.... don't put them next to a bunch of 20 somethings who are going to party. Also - Saturday night we went out for dinner and then came back to our room for a relaxing evening.... nope! The wedding party which had kept us up partying all night the night before and woke us up that morning was now having their wedding celebration on the porch/balcony right below our room until at least 10PM at night.
3) The housekeeping in the room was not great. There was a huge, hard chunk of what looked like banana bread on the floor next to our nightstand. Yummm....
4) The heating units looked like they were going to completely fall apart any minute, the tile in the kitchenette area was broken and dated.
5) The hot tubs were DISGUSTING not to mention not relaxing. When we were looking at booking and I believe booking this stay there was NOTHING mentioned that the resort was under construction. Well.... it was. We tried going in the hot tubs before our couples massage, there were construction materials on the deck in front of the hot tubs, a construction guy was banging away while we were in there and it wasn't before too long we noticed balls of hair floating around in the hot tub and quickly got out.
6) Spa - the couples massage room felt like nothing more than an old office that they quickly rigged to make it a massage room. The carpet had many stains (if you are going to have your clients laying face down for a good part of the massage, invest in some better carpet.). The room also just had a glass wall/windows and curtain separate it from the waiting area, front desk area so needless to say it was not very quiet or private throughout our massage. There were lots of random extension cords with various pieces of electronics plugged into them carelessly strewn about the room. For $100 per person for a 60 minute massage, there should definitely be a much better experience than this. Luckily Amy was absolutely AMAZING! She will definitely get poached by a spa of a higher caliber however.
7) The "free" breakfast was that of a low level hotel outside of Disney World. If you are going to provide such a poor experience you are better off not providing a "free" breakfast which has broken juice machines, powder eggs and the same thing every single day and just providing a free continental breakfast and do it well.
The location was great, the views are awesome, the actual bones of the hotel are good ( you need new carpet in many of the common areas). It is mainly the service and managing customer expectations which need quite a bit of help. The staff was very unimpressive besides Amy as mentioned above and the bartender (Can't recall his name. blond and tall and very personable).
I planned our wedding and honeymoon, my husband planned our one year anniversary trip. I know that he is definitely disappointed in the experience as well but is very unlikely he will say anything. I am saying something though because to see my husband let down and defeated after he tried so hard to do something really nice but to have your hotel and staff constantly provide unpleasant or less than desirable experiences really upsets me.
