The Ahwahnee

“A beautiful, old, historic hotel in stunning Yosemite”

Firstly, here are the positives. You are staying in a beautiful, old, historic hotel. The building and the grounds are absolutely stunning. Incredible views from every window! Sitting outside in the lounge chairs, gazing at the mountains, is just so special. As is sitting in the Great Lounge (… more

Firstly, here are the positives. You are staying in a beautiful, old, historic hotel. The building and the grounds are absolutely stunning. Incredible views from every window! Sitting outside in the lounge chairs, gazing at the mountains, is just so special. As is sitting in the Great Lounge (with the most enormous fireplace I’ve ever seen) and the breathtakingly stunning dining room (see a separate review on our lovely dinner there). What lets the hotel down are the front desk staff and their lack of interest in you. Other staff are just fantastic - the valet parking attendant who first greeted us was so friendly and helpful. The guy working the service elevator (the main one was broken during our entire stay), Josh & Miguel in the restaurant, and the lady doing afternoon were all lovely and friendly. Our problem was that we had booked through a third party so we could pay in advance in our local currency. Be warned… if you book this way then the hotel gives you last choice of any room and doesn’t honour your room request. We were assigned a room with single beds - even though we had booked a King room with a view for our wedding anniversary, and were told they were fully booked and sorry, nothing they could do about it. We felt dismissed and unheard - they said they wouldn’t honour a third party booking preference. Fortunately, someone else checking in, was in a predicament of being assigned two rooms far apart from their kids and we were able to swap rooms with them and ended up with a beautiful room. The hotel offers afternoon tea for guests and the front desk told us this was held in the magnificent Great Lounge. We couldn’t find it so went back and they said it must just be running late. We sat for 30 minutes waiting, until another guest told us it was held in a totally different area that day. It just feels like the front desk (who are the concierge of the hotel) don’t know too much or care too much about the guests, or perhaps just not empowered to make decisions, which left us feeling frustrated. We had a fantastic stay and just loved the hotel and all the other staff, but just disappointed in the lack of service and interest from the front desk staff and manager.

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