The best part of our stay at the Hilton at Bell Ro...

The best part of our stay at the Hilton at Bell Rock was the surroundings and the views. It was our first time to Sedona, and it will not be our last. What a beautiful place to see, driving around led to sight after sight. My wife could not stop taking pictures.

But, back to the review of our stay at this particular hotel. I have to admit that I was quite disappointed. I've stayed at a number of Hilton properties, and because we were staying here for our 20th wedding anniversary, we decided to splurge on a more expensive resort, rather than our typical stay in the mid priced Hilton properties. Now perhaps my expectations were too high, but at about $400 a night, I expected a lot more.

First, there was no kind of room service available the first couple of nights. I understand this a bit, as we did arrive on a Monday. But the problem is there were extremely limited options outside of that. I only found one drink vending machine, and the one vending machine with snacks was nearly completely empty, and it didn't work at all when I tried it. This made for very little food or drink available once the restaurant and gift shop were closed, and the gift shop had the worst hours I've seen. There was also no easy option for breakfast - all grab and go or overpay in the restaurant, no option to even have breakfast delivered to your room. I have had better service at hotels that cost less than half.

The hotel does have some cute outdoor areas, but I'm still wondering what I was paying the resort fee for exactly. It only got us like a 10% discount at the spa, but we had no interest in that. The room itself was ok but also underwhelming. The couch in the second room was horribly uncomfortable because it was also a pull out bed, but it was the type that made the couch almost unusable. I suppose the price all went in to the fireplace, which when lit had the smallest little area of flame.

All in all, we had a great trip, but the hotel was very disappointing. I understand the pandemic has turned a lot of things on their head, but if you're going to remove services to compensate, that should be reflected in the cost of the room and the pointless "resort" fee.

We will still be back in Sedona, we just won't be staying here again.