Lake Guntersville Resort State Park

Reviewer: Not provided on Thu 02 Dec 2010 rated 4 out of 10.

I know most reviews online are either rants by angry customers or over-eager shills for the companies that want positive reviews. Because of this I will simply give a brief summary of my experience here and then a consice breakdown of the major things people find appealing or unappealing in a hotel/resort. You can decide if you want this to be of you in your travels.

Very recently my wife and seven week old daughter went on a day trip to the lodge. Having been there before and enjoyed it, I thought it would give my wife some time away from the house and allow us to relax for a bit. Long story short, the power went out complex wide for 6 hours literally right after we checked in. It came back on at 3:30 in the morning with a crying baby and a room temp that had cooled to 60 degrees(it was early December). The hot water did not return to the room until almost 10AM and of course check out is at 11. Finally the place has generators, but only for staff inside the lobby and lights outside with loud unceasing alarms. Basically we check in to a relaxing one night get away, have instant darkness, no heat, and air raid alarms going non-stop (the alarms did not shut off until 6 AM by the way.

Now you may say this is bad, but can happen once in a blue moon to anybody. And you would be right. However, it was the response that was the kicker. Since they only had 6 guests for a place that has over a hundred rooms, you would think they would come around and say something or call us or at least apologize in the morning. Nope when I went to them in the morning to either have an extra day or for my money to be refunded, they looked completely dumbfounded. Being a GOVERNMENT run facility, they do not have to be accountable to anybody. This is why the place is opulent and huge but has literally nobody staying there and a 200 seated restaurant with 10 staff members for simply my little family. It is insane. I finally got the manager on the phone who they had to call around for because he was not working "until later that afternoon". Remember this place is over 20,000 square feet and it has no manager on duty at 11AM on a Friday. Seriously. I did not make this up. He says like the others that it is not the Lodge's fault that they could not provide me with the basics of a hotel even though they took my money to do so just an hour prior to the blackout, but at least he gave us until 4PM to take a shower and checkout. We proceeded to grab a nap, shower, and leave. No other company can run a business like this and not rapidly go into bankruptcy. Only government.

Positives: Beautiful park around it.
Great view if you are on Lake-side.
Reasonable prices.
Wonderful Lodge feel in a huge renovated Lobby.

Negatives: I'm all for being king of the manor for a low price, but even I got a Shining vibe from people the ONLY check in for that entire day in such a huge place. This was nullified by the fact that 20 people were on staff there throughout our stay.

Legitimate problems are your responsibility. Not only do they have clueless looks on what to do, but get mad when they might actually have to do something about it. We're government dude!

No resolution to problems and a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. I'm all for the park and the lobbies, and restaurants, but if you cannot at least break even, how do you even justify staying open during down periods on the state's dime.