We had a really poor experience at Timberline.

We booked one-dog friendly room and a second room for my sister for an event (a showing of The Shining at the place it was filmed).

We knew check-in wasn't until 4, but we were exhausted from traveling and hoped we could check in early to the room that would allow us & the dogs to rest. We arrived at 12:30, ate a lunch on the patio, and then went to the front desk at ~2 p.m. We inquired - they said check-in wasn't until 4, but the room might be ready early and they'd call to let us know. A staffer stopped by to where we were waiting in the lobby once around 2:45 and said the room would be ready soon. We never saw him again. Once more, around 3:30, I asked the front desk if we could be let in - we didn't even care about cleaning- because we'd been sitting in the lobby since 1 p.m., exhausted. They said, no, we'd have to wait until 4. I would have preferred they say right out that the room would absolutely not be ready until 4 p.m., rather than us wait three hours, exhausted, in the lobby with our dogs on the hope that the room would be free.

Both times I inquired at the front desk, staff were almost aggressive about telling me that dogs were not allowed to be unaccompanied in the room. We were aware. We gave up a ticket to the event to ensure someone would be with the dogs. I understand the reasoning, but it should be ok for people with well-behaved dogs, to be able to leave to go eat at the restaurant or go to a 90 minute event. There's a fee for dogs to cover the possibility of destruction. That should be persuasion enough without aggressive reminders from staff.

The last dog-related thing that really was frustrating was that after all the hype about not leaving the dogs alone, not having the dogs off leash, having to walk through a maze to get the dogs in and out of our rooms so we didn't walk through the eating areas... we met the Lodge dog, Bruno, a huge St. Bernard (so cute!)

Bruno was very sweet, but has terrible recall. My sister's dog gets anxious on stairs and we ran into Bruno off-leash on the stairs with two leashed dogs. The woman in charge of him had a hard time getting his collar to gain control of him. Fortunately my sister had her dog in hand, but it was extremely frustrating that with all the overzealous communication about what our dogs were and weren't allowed to do that Bruno was just out walking around the hotel off-leash with poor recall he has and no one physically controlling him. It seemed very hypocritical and kind of capped off the experience at Timberline.

We also had very disappointing service at the Ram's Head. We went there for two meals - lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, since dogs aren't allowed, one of us had to sit out dinner (me) and stay in the room. The rest of my family had incredibly slow service. They went to the Ram's Head at 4:30 p.m. It took 15 minutes for a server to appear, and another 20 minutes for the first drink order. The food didn't come until 5:40. That meant that my food, which had to be brought back to the room, did not arrive until 6:05 p.m., which meant that all of us wound up missing a significant portion of the event we were at the Timberline for which began at 6 p.m., so that I could eat, and the dogs could be fed and walked.

If we'd been able to check into our room just half an hour earlier, we might have been able to enjoy the whole event.

We did come back to Ram's Head after the event, and the server we had the second time was great. We also stopped by the event bar. Big ups to the two women working the bar during The Shining event - they were fantastic and helped turn around what had started out being a very frustrating day.

I did stop by the Wy'East gift store, and it was well-stocked, and had very helpful staff members who helped me locate a particular kind of souvenir.

So - gorgeous location, gorgeous lodge, really neat space, but so much of my experience was hampered by the terrible service at the front desk and the restaurant that I can't recommend Timberline to anyone in good conscience.