Kevin Stadmeyer

Review of Ojai Valley Inn & Spa

Rough around the edges. The property is beautiful ...

Rough around the edges. The property is beautiful but the service is very inconsistent. We arrived and they moved our room closer as my wife was pregnant, this was a great start.

The next day however we booked a spa session 12-2 and asked if we needed reservations for the attached cafe after and we're told it wasn't a problem. We arrived at 2:05 and were turned away as they stopped seating at 2. We are told the only other place that served food was a pub with greasy food, we later found out that they have pool side food all day. Get back to the room at 3pm - having left at 10am - and it was not cleaned, we called and they explained that they combine cleaning and turn down service and we had to specially request the room be cleaned in the morning. Odd.

We booked an art class that next day at 10am that they never followed up with the promised info on where it was held. We booked in room breakfast for 8:30-9 and it didn't arrive till 9:30 which rushed us for the class (which was inexplicably billed at 5$ more than listed).

Reaturaunt service was very hit or miss overall. There were a fair amount of fire pits and seating but these were always full of people, possibly because the resort seemed to be a popular day trip which resulted in crowds larger than the resort could comfortably accommodate.

The kicker came as we got our car out of valet to leave. We stood there for five minutes with many valets running around but none who would meet our gaze or take our ticket. Finally we went to the check in desk and asked them to take care of it. Our car pulls up and they park it in the parking lot, a fair distance from the valet area. After it sat there for five minutes they came over: "Mr. Stadmeyer? Your car is over here please follow me." Leaving me and my pregnant wife to carry our bags ourselves.

No explanation as to why they couldn't pull it around or have someone come help with our bags.

Not up to expectatioms for a place that ended up being close to 1k a night with food and minimal alcohol included. Seems to be catering to day tripping golfers and families instead of the overnight guests.

We enjoyed ourselves in spite of the resort and not because of it, which is why we booked in the first place.