This was a hard decision to make since the resort ...

This was a hard decision to make since the resort jumped between great and mediocre many times throughout our trip. I landed on 3 stars because while we overall enjoyed our stay, there were a lot of things that took us out of the resort feel that could easily have been avoided. However the atmosphere is very nice, and we will most likely be back.

The good:
1) The Jefferson Restaurant & Bar - the food, drinks, and service here were all quite good. As it is was pretty much the only place we could go to for dinner during the weekday (aka off day), we ended up eating there twice. Both times we were pleasantly surprised.

2) The tea and cake time - Every day at 3pm they have a nice tea and cake time, and we found that to be very pleasant. They lit fires in the fireplaces, and it was nice to hangout in that grand lobby while

3) The surrounding area - we went on a hike our last day, and it was really nice to be able to walk out their front door on a nice 1-1.5 hour hike and enjoy the scenery. We took the North Trail and enjoyed it immensely.

4) Beautiful spa - the spa is very nice and has a lot of different options inside it

The bad:
1) First and foremost, the price - Many things can be forgiven at a lower price point, but for the restaurants/spa pricing here, you can't help but feel you're being taken advantage of for what it is. 16 dollars at the casino lunch area for a pizza that looked worse than a frozen one you buy in a grocery store? Come on.

2) The service - the service ranged from pretty good, to just downright bad. Many times we asked employees around the property about open times for restaurants or things to do around and we just got blank stares and "I don't know." There was rarely an attitude of "let me find out for you!" or really any sort of apology for not knowing. The only exception here was the front desk, which was always very helpful.

The worst example of this was in the spa. After a couples massage, we wanted to order some food and drinks in the lounge area (which is two stories above the outside pool area). We asked a random employee about ordering, she said she would tell someone, which she never did. My wife went into the womens side figuring she would just ask someone and they'd help us. Wrong! She asked THREE people, including the manager at the front desk. Their response? Walk outside yourself and order it from the outside area. Meanwhile it's 40 degrees out, we're in robes, and had just finished our massage. Nobody said "let me take care of this for you" - they all just said either I don't know, or go get it yourself. For a spa, it was the very opposite of relaxing.

3) Maintenance - the property simply isn't maintained all that well. Walking around you just got the feeling that things were very old and not very well kept up. This was most obvious in the room, where 2 out of the 3 chairs we had were VERY stained. It also became clear why things looked the way they looked as throughout our stay housekeeping did a poor job of cleaning our room. They clearly didn't vacuum, or not well, and pushed dirt around when wiping down the bathroom sink area.

All in all the place has its charm, but falls short on service and the finer details. For a good promotion it would probably be worth going back to as the building is historic and pretty grand, but we won't make a special trip to go there again for its own sake.

A good contrast to this is the Mount Washington Hotel, also owned by Omni. We got married there and loved staying there, and go back regularly. We were hoping for the Homestead to be our Mount Washington replacement, but it didn't quite make it.