Emily Page Review of Homestead Resort
This was the most disappointing getaway I've had. ...
This was the most disappointing getaway I've had. I called about 2 weeks in advance of my stay to make reservations for pedicures, dinner, and activities. I called 3 times over the course of 3 days and left messages each time, and no one called me back. I finally called again and asked for the hotel manager, and he was able to accommodate my requests, and offered a room upgrade and spa passes to make up for the lack of return calls. Then I received 3 voicemail messages from various people asking if they could help me make a reservation, so the staff clearly don't communicate with each other. When we checked in at 4pm, we went to our room to take a nap, then got up and went to dinner at Sam Snead's tavern where we had a reservation at 7pm. We got to the restaurant only to learn that someone had called at 5:30pm to cancel our reservation. Luckily, they were able to fit us in, but the service by our waiter, Mike, was appallingly bad. The next day, we went for pedicures, and were expecting something really fantastic given that the price was 4 times what one would normally pay for a pedicure elsewhere. While the women were nice who were giving the pedicures, it was just your average run-of-the-mill service that I could have gotten at a salon for $25. We followed that with the cascades hike, and we had heard that the guide, Brian, was really funny and entertaining. Brian was on vacation, so Allen was our guide. So disappointing. He had very little to say and didn't speak loud enough for all 12 of us on the hike to hear him, and he spent most of the time talking with a young woman interested in herbology. We'd all hike ahead, then sit around waiting for 10-15 minutes for the 2 of them to catch up. I couldn't believe we had paid for that. What should have been a 2 to 2 1/2 hour hike ended up being closer to 3 1/2 hours, causing us to miss the daily tea they apparently serve in the lobby. At dinner at Jefferson's that night, they were out of the first 3 glasses of wine we ordered from the menu. The waitress went to one of the other restaurants to see if they had any of them, but no luck. So we finally just said, bring us whatever. I will say that the waitress, Cricket, was very nice and the salmon was excellent.
Other than that, the whole place is really run down. There were stains and holes in the furniture, the curtains and carpet were stained and fraying, there was water damage to the prints hanging on the walls, and things just generally seemed to be falling apart. They have displays talking about the history of the place, and they were filthy with dust and bug carcasses. Simple things like making sure the tag for the silverware display matched what was actually on display weren't even right. When we checked in, there were hairs all over the bathroom from the previous guests. When we put out dirty dishes in the hall for clearing, they were still there 24 hours later. They parked a cleaning cart directly in front of the door for several hours, but didn't actually clean our room until around 4:30pm. They didn't give us fresh water glasses or of the complimentary coffee (and no teas were offered at all). Given how much they charge, I was expecting better. On top of your room fee, they also charge a daily "resort service charge" and a dailyfee for you using their parking lot (not even valet). There was also rarely anyone actually at the concierge desk. We had requested a late check-out, but ended up getting up early and leaving because we didn't want to spend any extra time there than we had to. Upon check-out, they asked if we had had a chance to review our invoice but we hadn't even received one yet. If one or two things had gone wrong, I could have overlooked it, but almost every aspect of our stay went wrong. Start to finish, this was a hugely disappointing stay and we won't be returning or recommending the facility.
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