Blue Ridge Hotel Kannabe Kogen Hyogo — Hotel in Toyooka

I probably rate this hotel as one of the most fun hotel I have ever stayed in, at least Top 5 in my personal list. ||||I first visited the hotel with my wife last January 2014, we just had Coffee there but went to their "backyard" to play in the snow. We quickly thought of our kids back home and how it would be a great place for them to experience playing in the snow here. ||||So our host booked us a room for December 2014. Our room was a family room, basiclaly 2 adults 2 kids and 1 infant. Our room had 3 beds, 2 twins and 1 single, which was very comfortable. Toilet/Bath was intersting it was similar to what you would see in a Tatami room, wherein the Toilet has it's own door and the shower/bath has a different door and outside of these two is the faucet and mirror. Quite nice, basically 3 persons can be doing three separate bathroom things at the same time :) The Hotel is well prepared to handle big families as we observed that most families checked in are all packing Snowskiing and snowboarding gears, not to mention sleds. ||||We checked it late in the afternoon, as we first visited a Ski Resort, there were so many guests that they had to schedule 2 batches for the buffet dinner, and we were given the second slot. Buffet dinner was great, mostly Japanese cuisine of course, with lots of offering based on the local crab that is in season. They also offered some beef carvings and unlimited beer and soda bar but for an additional fee. The beef is of course from the area, as Tajima beef after all is very popular, in fact they say that Tajima raises most of the calves that eventually get transferred to Kobe. ||||The Hotel has a Hot Spring, free for Hotel guests, unfortunately I bathed before dinner so only my wife and kids were able to go, they enjoyed their bath, apparently there is also an outdoor hot pool too. ||||Breakfast buffet was also great, again mostly Japanese cuisine of course, they have an Egg station, but unsure if the chef accepts special requests, as the scrambled eggs and poached eggs were enough for us. They also have Yogurts which is plain, usually they would mix with some fruites and sugar. One tip, if you like flavored Yogurts, go to the Bread area, get a bunch of your favorite Jam flavor and mix that with the Yogurts, my kids loved my Strawberry Jam Yogurt :)||||Now, why did I say this is one of the best hotel I have stayed in? Because it is fun, specially during winter when it already started snowing. At the back of the hotel is a hill with a very nice slope, their website mentions this but only highlights the summer activities where they have a petting zoo and a Ranch like ambiance, nice for Picnics. But during winter, the whole hillside fills up with snow and thus is a great place fo kids to play in and do some sledding. ||||We know it was allowed when we visited the first time, but during breakfast, we couldn't see anyone playing out there, worse no sleds. But after checking the front desk, they provides us with 2 sleds for the kids to play with. By gosh we had fun. The snow was icey because the last snow fall was 2 days ago, but it was pefect for sledding. The only problem was that we did not get to make a big snowman as planned, because there was no fresh snow. We did make small snowmen using our snowball making device. ||||We could play at the back fo the hotel all day long, but alas we had to catch the train back to Osaka that afternoon.||||By the way, the nearest Train station that I know of is Ebara Station (Toyooka), I saw a BlueRidge Hotel shuttle bus at the station so I think they will be glad to pick upnad drop off guests at the Ebara station if you arrange it in advance.||||We visited last week of December, If you want to be sure you have fresh snow, January is probably the best time to go. ||||If any of you readers go, could you plead build a snowman for us and post in...

My family visited the Blue Ridge Hotel in a morning in late December. We did not accommodate in the hotel but using its excellent snow park. My kids (aged 8 and 6) wanted to play snow and have snowboarding. I learnt from the hotel website that it had a snow park charging a lower fee (than nearby ski areas in Kannabe). So we used it. It was a sloping area immediately behind the hotel building. The reception staff greeted us warmly and provided two sets of snowboards and spade freely to my children. It happened that the left part of the snow park was free! The right part required a charge 1000 yen and allowed kids skiing, and we did not use it. We found that the snow park was indeed quite big to us and covered with fresh and powder-like natural snow (about 25-30 cm thick; the northern part of Hyogo Prefecture snowed continuously in the last few days of December). My children played happily there for almost 1.5 hours. The slope was steep and long enough for children’s snowboarding. I also used the hotel car park for free. To us this snow park was much better (in terms of size, and snow quality) than those paid ones in Osaka and northern Kobe. As I observed, the Blue Ridge Hotel offers fine western rooms, onsen facilities, and buffet meals. The attachment of a fine snow park is another advantage of the hotel. I strongly recommend it to families with kids who visit the Kannabe region in winter time. Here I would also like to thank the generous hotel staff....

I booked this hotel online by looking at its photo of the room. It looks okay. So I booked it, even the price was not cheap, costed $USD 255 per night ( not included breakfast and dinner) I regretted so much. When we checked in. Cos the facility and service was bad. Staff could not speak and understand English well. And the air conditioning of the room was strange. It was 7 degree Celsius outdoor on that night. The room temperature was sometimes low, and sometimes was super hot when we fell asleep. It made our sleeping quality very bad. There were 2 restaurants in the hotel, one was closed at 19:00 sth already. I could only have a buffet dinner in lobby restaurant which totally disappointed me with very limited choices, all the food were cold, only tempera was freshly made. The taste of the food was not good😨. But it was expensive, I paid $USD45 per head. It was an disaster for me in this trip. I was hungry and could not...