Hôtel Valcartier — Hotel in Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier

Overall, I give this a three out of five stars. Extremely beautiful place and the water parks are phenomenal. A few things that should be looked at:

1. If you stay at the hotel, there should be some sort of discount on the indoor and outdoor waterpark tickets
2. hotel Wi-Fi hardly worked at all
3. although there are two restaurants located in the hotel plus additional food available for purchase in the water parks. Some sort of breakfast should be provided or discounted if you spend a night in the hotel.
4. 50% of the arcade games were broken and according to other guests have been down for over a year, including the arcade prize counter, which looks to be more like storage now.
5. if you purchase credits for the RT games which are not cheap, you are unable to combined remaining credits into one card bought four cards, one for myself, and each of my three children, and had over five dollars of credits left that I had to throw out as we could not combine them and use them on games.
6. climate control in the room was busted and none of the staff could help fix the problem. They all just said they didn’t know what to do.
7. vending machine machines were extremely overpriced. $7.50 for one monster energy (that’s more than airports).

Some positives:

1. upon arrival and during dinner at the hotel restaurant the power went out five times. Due to the delay in our order, we were given $20 off the bill.
2. due to the high number of slides in both the outdoor and indoor waterpark and the max occupants they lead in in a day the lineups were extremely fast. Almost never stood in line for more than 4/5 min resulting in everyone being tired afterwards due to all the excitement lol.
3. gas station located right in front of the hotel, which was cheaper than the surrounding areas fuel prices.
4. two times restaurants plus various snack and food courts available at both the indoor and outdoor waterpark.
5. rooms were large clean and had both English and French staff and TV channels.
6. hotel provided towel coupons to get additional towels if you were to go to the waterpark.
7. 15 minutes away from Tim Hortons, and various other shops, including Dollarama.
8. large secure parking for all the hotel guests.

Would definitely recommend this for anyone looking for a decent waterpark. Both cost and capacity of water parks beats. Great Wolf Lodge any day. Will definitely be returning next summer. Fingers crossed the hotel can...

We stayed in the ice hotel on the first night, that has it's own review so won't go into it here. ||This hotel is huge! It's clearly set up for family breaks away. I wouldnt say it's catered much to couples, I mean there is no bar!! A hotel without a bar! Sure it has eating venues, but who wants to sit in a restaurant all evening to enjoy some drinks? We certainly don't, especially when it was really quiet at the time of our visit. I'll also add in terms of eating choice, there isn't much. That being said we did eat in the Safari Restaurant. We were the only clientelly eating there when we were in. The staff were very friendly and helpful. The food we got was piping hot and very tasty. I saw a few negative comments on the food, but we had a good experience overall in the restaurant. ||Activity wise, we did the couples massage from the Aroma Spa. Sandy and Roxanne did us. Chose relaxtion and was very good! Slept like a log that night when I went to bed later. A tip.... take some cash with you as a tip is expected. We did leave a reasonable tip after I ran back up to the room to get some cash. We also did some ice skating. Haven't done ice skating for over 20 odd years so felt like I was a beginner again.... bambi on ice for sure! Decent enough loop around the grounds. The hire boots I got didn't really suit me that well. Clearly well used and just couldn't get them tight on my ankles, which for ice hockey boots is pertinent! However, not bad value for what you get overall. Can't comment on the snow tubing etc but from what I saw of our balcony looked decent! We just wanted a relaxing trip away.... ||There is an assortment of gift shops with plenty offerings. they don't open that early though. 10:00 is their opening time. We wanted something out the shop when we checked out at 09:00, but weren't going to hang about for an hour. ||For me, it ticked the boxes for a quiet hotel, comfortable bed, hot shower, decent enough food and coffee in the rooms. ||Our final morning we chose not to do anything at the hotel itself, we got up early-ish, skipped breakfast here, checked out and went to Quebec City to the Strom Nordic Spa. Spa-wise exactly what we were looking for (covered in another review). ||Overall, even though not much to do in the evening, during the day it's a great hotel to visit for things to do and we will come back here in the summer with our kids this time to do the water...

The facility is tidy on the surface but deeply disgusting. There was garbage piled in the halls for days. Our bedding in our rooms was not clean. We had to change our own towels, get our own toilet paper and kleenex. The air in the hotel is stagnant and still and made us all sick. The hot tub in our room was not balanced properly. It burned the eyes and skin. There was food in the couch cracks. There were stains on everything.

The waterpark is freezing cold. The water stings the eyes and skin. The staff are rude and inattentive to a point where i felt i had to follow my children everywhere out of legitimate concern for their safety. The upper levels of the park smell of mould.

The tubing hills were fun but the staff running the lifts and runs were both rude and/ or inattentive to safety or questions.

The restaurants are beyond disgusting. Extremely overpriced. It took a family of 5 95 minutes to get hamburgers, fries and a soft drink with two tables in the restaurant. (Safari) Literally more staff than patrons. Every one of them sitting on their phones with their backs to us. And I believe the bill for said meal was 150$. Came cold and wet. Nobody followed up. Asked for a bill and sat there another 15 minutes watching our server text or scroll.

All the other restaurants are the same. Terrible food. Overpriced. Idiots on their phones.

Everywhere you look. Idiots on phones not doing their jobs. When you ask for help or service youre treated like an inconvenience.

Theres no staff to help with luggage. Theres no luggage carts. Theres no welcome at check in. No information given.

When we went to the waterpark the first time we were surprised to find a 15$ charge to secure our belongings in a locker. Even more surprised to find they wouldn't give us a towel after our chlorine bath because another member of staff had forgotten to give us ‘towel cards’. They wouldnt even allow us to dry off at the towel desk. Told us if we were from the hotel to go up to our rooms and use a towel there, smugly. There’s more. Bottom line is we hated it all. It made is sick. And we left poorer for visiting. We’ve been to lots of places like this and next time we will go back to Great Wolf Lodge where you are treated with respect and get what...