Stone Gables Estate — Attraction in West Donegal Township

I attended a wedding at this venue just yesterday. It was rainy, drizzly, and only about 48° outside. We were made to park a quarter of a mile away from the actual wedding site. We were told that those with handicaps would be shuttled up to the actual wedding site. The shuttle never came before the time of the wedding. Everyone had to walk up a steep hill for nearly the entire quarter mile to the outside venue. No one expected that there would not be an indoor contingency plan for inclement weather. So, when it was obvious we were to be sitting under a tent in the 48° weather, people scrambled to get whatever they could find to stay warm. People were digging blankets, tablecloths, old jackets and clothes out of the trunks of their car to stay warm. The bathroom facility was over 300 yards away from the actual site of the wedding and reception. At some point they did start shuttling people to the bathroom in the open, freezing cold, side by side ATVs they had. Nothing about this place is ADA compliant that I saw. It is the absolute worst wedding I have ever been to in My Life! I will never go to any other event being held at this place for as long as I live! The people we talk to were uncaring, unresponsive, untrained, and undeserving of another chance from me. At some point we realized that there was parking within a hundred yards of the wedding site. Many people including myself move their vehicles to that location. We are awfully glad that we did that in spite of the fact that the staff did not want us to. We ended up having to take many of the elderly guests and warm them up in the vehicles that were moved outside of the tent where the wedding and subsequent reception was held. I feel so badly for the bride and groom and their parents who worked so hard to try and make this a successful event. I was told by one of the event folks that they needed 24 hours notice to have put heating units in the tent. I guess none of them have televisions, smartphones, or radios because for nearly the past week the forecast for yesterday indicated that it was going to be very cold and rainy! Shame on the staff of the Stone Gables Estate. Shame on them!

AFTER READING THEIR REPLY I FELT COMPELLED TO ADD THE FOLLOWING:

I am not sure where the stone Gable Estates folks came up with 200 feet from the beautiful green Solarium to the original site of the wedding because the actual distance according to Google Earth is over 800! That is if you stay on the walking path.

Likewise the distance from the Victorian gazebo to the bathroom was well over 560 feet.

The distance from the parking lot where I was told and shuttle would pick up anyone who would have problems walking the distance do they built over 100 yards and up a fairly steep hill. No shuttle ever came to pick anyone up that I am aware of.

In spite of the fact that I showed the parking attendant at the bottom of the hill over a quarter of a mile away from the Grand Tuscan tent (the parking guy's words not mine) that I had a valid handicap placard, he never mentioned I could park any closer to the tent.

As a matter of fact, when a family member walk down and got my truck to bring it up closer to the 10th he was told that he could not do so. Fortunately he was persistent and brought it up there anyway. It's a good thing that he did otherwise we most likely would have had to call an ambulance for my father and one of my aunts and uncles. They were shivering so badly they could barely walk. Luckily we got them to some vehicles to warm up.

Perhaps you are ADA Compliant. However, the folks we experienced last weekend were too inept, uncaring, or untrained to make it so. If you don't believe that the Google Earth measurements are close, I would be more than happy to come and measure out those distances with and for you!

I understand that you are "just the venue" but, you have a basic responsibility for the health and safety of your guests. There is no excuse for what...

As a corporate event planner for the past 15 years, I was pleasantly surprised and excited when I discovered Stone Gables Estate when looking into a place to stay for my husband and my four year old for our mini Christmas vacation. I loved the idea of staying in such a festive place during our favorite time of the year and the farmhouse looked like the perfect place to accommodate us. I worked with Denise in the booking and she was very pleasant and helpful with our booking - agreeing to accommodate a noon checkout the last day of our stay. She sent our tickets via mail for our events and we were set. Driving up to the farmhouse, we were excited and thought the place was beautiful. Upon entering the farmhouse and getting settled, even my four year old pointed out several of the cobwebs hanging from the lights in the kitchen and dining area. I don't think there was a windowsill in the place that did not have at least one dead bug on it. This is not something I searched for - once one bug was pointed out, it was hard to miss that this was a common occurrence in every room. The house itself is very cute and quaint but it is clear that this place has not actually been "cleaned" in a long time - rather maybe some surface cleaning to make it appear so. Take a look at the exhaust fans in the bathroom, the dust, the cobwebs. It just felt gross and dusty. I could almost look past that, but the worst thing about our entire stay was the inconvenience of your drive through Christmas light show. Does it mention in a tiny section of your contract that you have a light show and that may affect traffic? Sure. But it in no way effectively communicates the reality of that light show and how it would impact guests staying on your property. As mentioned, I have been planning events for a long time and I would never inconvenience my guests in this way. We paid $500/night and it is inexcusable that the only way to access our property during these evening hours is by sitting through an incredibly long light show every single time. We had long days out with a four year old and wanted to get him home to get in bed and get ourselves settled and the only option we had to get there was to wait in line, which added over 35 minutes every time. There is no reason you couldn't add cones to your main entrance and leave a path so that guests staying on property have the ability to tell the worker directing the traffic that they are staying on property and can be allowed to drive through. There is plenty of room to do so. This is an issue that has a solution that you simply do not enforce. After two nights of doing this with a cranky toddler, I reached out to Denise to see if I was missing something basically to be told that this was in our contract and there is not much to get around other than trying the Newville entrance, which did not help much, if any, at all. Fast forward to the day of check out and there is banging on the door at 11 am. I open it to a woman who said she was the cleaner and that the notes said that we would be out by 11 am. I let her know Denise approved a noon checkout and she said she had someone coming at 2 pm and needed two hours to clean so we needed to make sure we were out by noon. This did not feel welcoming or customer friendly to me at all, especially after the other issues we had along the way. You have a beautiful place, but it's clear that you do not put much into your clients and their experience or we wouldn't have had these issues. I was excited to find this place but we...

Not the experience we expected from the marketing. On November 11, I purchased tickets for the Santa train excursion on December 18th, with plans to attend the various activities. Upon arrival after a 2 hour drive we learned the Christmas museum was not on site. After driving around for 30 minutes, due to lack of ANY signage for the Christmas museum, we found it and paid $56 for entry (2 adults 1 child). Not a single train was running in any exhibit and almost all of the "shops" had notes on the door stating the shop was closed. We returned to Stone Gables for our 3pm train ride that included entrance to the Christmas Village and Ironstone Ranch only to find the Village closed at 3pm and Ironstone Ranch is only open on Saturdays because, according to employees, attendance numbers during the week were not high enough to support the vendors, food trucks etc. When I booked my tickets 11/11, the website did not state the amenities were only available on Saturdays. To make matters worse, the train excursion, that was $47 for 3 of us, was literally a straight line of maybe 1/8 th of a mile. The train maybe reached a speed 5 miles per hour because it went no further than a few city blocks. The ticket I purchased stated the excursion was from 3:00 - 3:20pm. Keep in mind that 15 of those 20 minutes are stopped in a covered station while Santa takes pictures with guests. From the website, we expected at least a loop around the estate. For my husband to take off work, a 4 hour round trip drive and $103 worth of ticket expense, we were utterly disappointed. I had hyped this day up to my 20yr old daughter, with down syndrome, as a magical Christmas experience that would be part of her Christmas gift. I was in tears on the drive home. I understand the proceeds from ticket sales go to charity, however; that does not justify selling an experience that you do not deliver on. If the vendor situation changed to Saturdays only, email the out of state people who purchased before that decision was made and notify them. The website states they will notify via email for weather cancellations, so the ability to do so exists. I feel completely duped, misled, and ripped off. We could not find even a water bottle to purchase at the estate or museum. Ba humbug. For what is touted as a Christian run experience, I left Stone Gables during this 3rd week of advent (Gaudete/rejoice) with the feeling that the evil one was rejoicing in my disappointment and the disappointment of...