Elkwater Lake Lodge & Resort — Hotel in Alberta

Our family spent the Labour day long weekend in a two bedroom condo suite. We were there to hike & canoe in Cypress Hills provincial park. We expeienced great service except in the restaurant.

Although the check-in desk closes at 10:00 pm, the clerk was kind enough to wait 30 minutes for us when we phoned to say we had been detained and would be late. Our condos were big, with a good kitchen, large balconies, comfortable beds, and great towells.

The restaurant kitchen was consistently slow in producing our meals. We waited 45 minutes for breakfast for three on our first morning, and had to settle for a walk in town instead of the hike we had planned due to the delay. Coffee top-ups were also difficult to come by. We found an equally good breakfast, served in 1/3rd the time, at the restaurant attached to the park visitor center , where, try as I might, I could not get my coffee cup to go below half full. Needless to say, we had the remainder of our breakfasts there.

We waited close to an hour for dinner for three. When I ate alone one evening, a simple stir-fry took over half an hour to arrive. Our meat also showed signs of inexpert preparation. The venison tenderloin still had bits of gristle and sinew, and a 10 oz New-York strip-loin was twice the width and half the thickness of a similar weight steak at the grocery store. Not suprisingly, being so thin, it was cooked well past well done, despite requesting medium donness, and was tough and dry. I could not finish it. Fortunately my wife shared her venison. The wait staff was pleasant and polite, although by the end of that disastrous dinner there were visibly cringing whenever a customer wanted to speak with them. It seems they had to endure a fair bit of complaining over the evening. They readily acknowledged the problems, and removed my son's pasta and my wife's glass of wine from the bill to make up for it.

I was left with the impression that the restaurant personnel meant well, but were woefully short on experience and training.

When I informed the duty manger of the kitchen difficulties, she indicated that the kitchen had been overwhelmed that evening due to having to cater a wedding reception at the same time. While sympathetic, I remain unconvinced this was a one time problem, given the difficulties experienced at other meals, and the fact that a wedding repection is booked far enough ahead that they had ample time to schedule additional capacity.

The pool was clean and kept at a nice temperature. It seems management really took to heart a previous review about the hot tub being dirty, because not only was it spotless, but it had so much chlorine the fumes made my wife gag and cough. The supplied pool towells are small and thin, so just bring a bath towel from your room if you go.

In short, by all means stay there, but avoid the restaurant. You can eat at the visitor center, or, better yet, grill your dinner yourself on the gas grill on...

Utterly disappointed, when booking two weeks earlier it stated the only room left was the jacuzzi room at $280.00 a night, upon arrival the hotel is almost empty, funny? We supposedly got the last room but over the course of the weekend realized there’s no cars, no people or very few. When we arrived in our jacuzzi suite we realized the A/C wasn’t working, just the fan, and we couldn’t control the TV. The front desk stated they would send someone, that did not happen! Two trips to the front desk and they decided to move us next door, then it was two doors over and all were jacuzzi suites. It’s Sunday and those suites are still empty. The room they gave us is incredibly dated, as were the other two seen. Once we were settled in we decided to fire up the jacuzzi, the jacuzzi tub took 2 hours to fill, thought we would lite the fireplace, it did not work, a bunch of lights didn’t light, we’re like wow! $280.00 a night for this!! I will say the bed was incredibly comfortable and the bedding and linens were great! Not the end of the world, right! So we thought, we go to use the pool which it states is salt water on the website and it’s not, hot tub was warm and the jets were out of order. The pool and hot tub are so worn out, broken tiles everywhere, and the hot tub water was disgusting!

I feel very cheated with their dishonesty about our room being the last room, we would have preferred a basic $200.00 room. Even as I checked availability for Mon/ Tues they still only show the jacuzzi suites, it’s obviously a ploy to sell the expensive rooms. Will never recommend and will never be back and this is an eye opener, read the negative reviews, look at the posted photos, read the positive ones last.

Update to owners response

Your response makes 0 sense, you stated I should of asked and you possibly had something else? If you had other rooms available why could I only book the most expensive room! Why when I looked at booking for Sept 15th and 16 does it still only show “last room available” your booked up on a Monday and Tuesday 🤣 the first fireplace worked, hmmm, guess they weren’t turned off like you stated. The hotel, condos and cabins were NOT fully booked, I did not see one cabin being used, hotel was empty, nobody but the wedding party coming out of the condos, we ate in the restaurant 4 times, never more than two tables being used, where were all the hotel guests??? It’s the only restaurant 🤣 If you were full how were you able to move to us to an open suite twice and both suites stayed unoccupied. I noticed you did not respond to the the salt water pool not being saltwater but advertised as such, or the broken hot tub, I hope everyone looks back on reviews from a few years ago, people have made the same complaints, no saltwater pool, broken hot tub and run down rooms. The pictures posted show the terrible condition of the pool...

I'm leaving an honest review here. There seems to be a few 5 star ones that are obviously suspect (elegant?). I would say "It's ok" - we enjoyed our stay, but there are some major opportunities for improvement, especially considering the rate for staying a 3 day weekend cost close to $1000. We stayed in a 1 bedroom condo. The dish soap in the accommodation was mostly water. To me that is just tacky. For the rate that is being charged, provide real dish soap to guests, not a big container of water with a drop of soap. There was a dirty old sponge beside the sink when we arrived that I immedietly threw out. The fridge hadn't been cleaned when we arrived and the shelves were sticky. In the kitchen the sink faucet was broken and the bath tub drain was too. The broom in the closet probably should have been thrown out years ago. Simple touches that would have brought it from an "it's ok" to "elegant" would be things like providing oven mits in the kitchen and ensuring that the salt and pepper shakers that are provided on the stove aren't completely empty. There was a small basket by the coffee maker (that didn't make hot coffee) with some coffee pouches and a single random green tea bag and some coffee mate packs piled into it. Aside from organizing the basket a bit, it would be nice to have a few black tea bags, and if you want to aim to hit the "elegant" level perhaps a couple hot chocolate or apple cider packs. In general it felt like maintenance is a bit lacking around the entire resort. That leads me to the pool area.....the pool needs some MAJOR TLC. The switch to turn on the hot tub jets was broken and the water in the hot tub was a bit suspect. The paint was also peeling off of the hot tub. Alarmingly, there was a very long extension cord dangling over the water of the pool that terminated on the chipped up pool deck by the hot tub in a very wet area. It made me uncomfortable and I couldn't help but trace it back to the socket it was plugged into (it ran out the door of the pool area out into the hallway) and it wasn't a plugged into a GFI socket. There shouldn't be safety concerns in a pool at a resort that costs what this one does. The changerooms were run down and dirty and in desperate need of maintenance and a good cleaning. In general I would say the pool area is "it's ok" but certainly not inviting or by any means elegant. Like I said we enjoyed our stay and it wasn't a terrible place to stay, we had a good time. I just hope the resort can look into putting a bit more into maintenance, cleaning, and simple touches. I would probably stay again, but hopefully this review can be taken as constructive feedback and my next stay can be "elegant" rather than...