I've held off on posting this, because there are s...

I've held off on posting this, because there are so many negatives for a place that has such great potential. I would give it 1 star, but those reviews rarely get read.
It all started at check in. The day after xmas. A week where the kids are on vacation and people tend to travel. Winter; a time when people, I don't know, ski. Yet this ski resort was not prepared for vacationing kids and their families coming for their ski trip on xmas week. The lobby was filled with people as expected. One problem. Check in is 4. We got there after 6 and were told we had a 2 hour wait...the same as the 7 other families. None of our rooms were ready? Check out was 7 hours ago. How do you not have staff to clean rooms? They offered us $75 toward their on site restaurants. Anybody who travels to these types of resort knows that this cost them about $10 and will not cover our 1 meal for 4. A very dirty trick which netted them about $80. More on this in my review of Trax.
The room was nice, but I'm still not sure it's what we ordered. The photos on the site are ambiguous at best. If you've ever gone to great wolf lodge, great escape resort, or whiteface lodge, then you know the rooms. This is one of those mass produced rustic hotels with water park features built in. Nice but corporate and overpriced. Our suite came complete without a coffee table. Sounds small, but a room for 6 people may benefit from a flat surface for "things." They have them. We just didn't get one. They claimed it had to do with half of the hotel apparently being timeshares. Um, ok.
The "fun area" was underwhelming if you've ever been to great wolf or great escape. The arcade was a definite afterthought, and the water park was run down. It's 6 years old and presents as at least 10 years older. The vent tubes overhead were all blown out and ruptured. The outdoor pool was hit or miss because of the alleged understaffing. The indoor features would occasionally suffer from the same. During our stay we noticed many things were broken or worn out. The staff seemed more than happy to let us know that the management is aware and had no plans to fix things.
So now we get to the part that really sucked the wind out of the sail. This trip was for our daughter's 8th birthday. We did Gret Escape for her little sister in August, and this was keeping it even. At GE, they had a whole birthday layout available...but you have to ask for it. They do charge for some of the goodies, but they're all optional. Knowing this, we asked for a similar treatment for this occasion. They offered, and while it wasn't nearly as great as the other it was plenty good enough. They have what they have. And this would have been fine, had they delivered. We had a time set up where they would bring the birthday favors to the room while my brother waited for them and helped while we occupied the kids at the pool. Time came, no show. It got later and later. They finally showed up...with some balloon centerpiece that you'd buy at Walgreens for $10. No confetti. No party favors. Why not? We noticed the night before there was a party of some sort being set up in the lobby by the fireplace. As the story goes, apparently they gave our stuff to them. For this we got a half hearted apology. We'd already had our bad experience at Trax, so by now we're livid.
The skiing was lackluster but the weather was a bit warm. I won't say too much about it aside from maybe it's time to update the lifts. God forbid somebody falls of at mount or dismount. They have to put coal in a furnace to get it restarted.
The best part of the trip was as we left. We had passes to the tubing facility. It was warm and there was a light drizzle. This made for a limit on their open lanes, but the ones that were open were super slick and fast. The drizzle and being Sunday seemed to keep the lightweights away, so the wait times were short. The staff on the hill weren't fazed by the weather at all and were the only ones to this point who didn't seem to hate their lives. Out of space, but there's so much more...