Naeba Prince Hotel — Hotel in Yuzawa

Paying for location and convenience. Everything else is AWFUL. Stayed for a week and really regret it. NEVER AGAIN!

Can't say enough bad things about this place. A really run down mega complex.

A bunch of overpriced, mediocre restaurants. Saying mediocre is actually an understatement. Most are quite awful. 3000 JPY for the most disgusting, basic breakfast you can imagine. Runny scrambled eggs, gray bacon, burned coffee. 6000 JPY for food that's even worse for dinner. Ugh. Honestly I wouldn't mind the price being higher if the food were better. It's barely edible.

Onsen is really bad. Feels dirty. A massive hotel like this, with rooms across 6 buildings, has two little onsen, each with one little shared tub. And only one of the onsen has a dirty unkempt outdoor onsen.

The hotel is massive, so navigating to get to different restaurants or the bath is unnecessarily confusing. Massive hotel also means way too many guests. It's like a zoo.

Staff is sometimes helpful, but sometimes rude or incompetent. The people at the bell desk were generally nice. Check-in people were hit or miss.

Rentals are too expensive here compared to other places. Better to rent across the street.

They don't manage the lifts well. Most lifts are inoperable most of the time. An entire week with no access to Kagura via the Dragondola -- but they'll gladly scam you and sell you the ticket there. They don't even offer bus service to Kagura when the gondola is down. So you need to waste over an hour waiting for a bus and then pay even more for it.

Check-in and check-out process is awful. Huge lines at check-in time and they don't let you do early check-in (picture is of me halfway through the line with another 30? minutes to go). Check-out is almost as bad. They have electronic kiosks for check-in but the entire time I've been here they have been out of service. Huge check-in lines every day.

They don't hold your bags before or after check-in. They make you pay for coin lockers. How cheap can they be? Can't check-in within a reasonable time and you can't even let them keep your bag and come back later? Awful.

The only nice thing I can say is that the location is nice, right on the slopes, next to the lifts. Free shuttle to and from the echigo yuzawa shinkansen station, although the times are limited and the popular times fill up days in advance. So reserve early. But better yet -- don't stay here.

Basically, you're paying for convenience but don't get anything nice. If you're looking for a nice place to stay, look elsewhere.

If you are staying mountainside, you get a better view. You also get woken up at 4am by the snow grooming machines plowing the snow because the windows are thin.

If you are staying riverside, that actually just means parking lot view. And you get woken up by terrible music and the sounds of buses and cars.

The rooms are extremely dry.

That is if you can get to bed at all. Do NOT get a room near the elevator. You can hear the elevator bell CONSTANTLY until at least midnight. Good luck getting any sleep here.

Really awful hotel, just surprisingly bad.

I have stayed in several other Prince hotels before (e.g. Waikiki) and they are never great, check-in is always annoyingly slow...but honestly, after this, I'm never staying in another Prince hotel again. Not even if it was free. Efff this chain, they do NOT value...

I came here alone for two nights in the middle of our Japan trip while my husband had to do some work. I specifically chose this location because I wanted to ski in Japan but have something convenient and in hind sight, I probably should have chosen a different hotel/ski location that wouldn't have been much harder to get to but probably would have been a much better experience. My hubs' co-worker went to Hokkaido and let's just say I'm very jealous :).||||-The hotel was fine. A bit dated but the room was really big, comfy and clean with all the usual amenities. ||-Tons of options food wise but the quality wasn't that great for the price (admittedly, I was used to amazing Japanese food of all sorts by this trip and I also didn't choose the nicer restaurants). I was hoping to find some hot spots at night were I could grab a beer and a conversation but nothing was ever busy or open. The Whistler Cafe on the hill had great beer and wings but unfortunately they were closed early on my second day - things closing earlier than expected was a bit of a trend.||- The Onsen I was looking forward to trying there closed earlier than advertised so I missed out on that and you have to pay in advance for the ticket and don't get a refund if you don't use by check out so that was less than ideal (only 300 yen but still...)||- Rental service was efficient and the equipment was all great! Bring your own gloves, hats and goggles or risk buying pricey stuff from the stores. I rented pants and a jacket too which were great. Be warned if you're a bit bigger though - I'm a size US12/14 and almost didn't get pants that fit - I think I ended up in a Mens 5XL (it actually wasn't embarrassing though, they were nice!).||- Ski lockers were great!||- Hill - So the snow conditions weren't great when I went which obviously can't be helped but...it would have been helpful if the staff had been more open about what was closed. The gondola to the higher lifts at Naeba was closed most of the second day I was there and neither it nor the gondola to the neighbouring hill opened by noon on my last day which really cut down on the amount of runs you have access too (I didn't even bother going out my last day because I opted not to pay because I was already getting bored on Day 2 - and I'm not great by any means!). What bugs me is when I asked around, the staff told me things would be open and the TVs said temporarily closed....it's not like the weather changed drastically when I was there so it would be have been helpful (and less expensive for me) if I could have had accurate info to plan my days. Unfortunately, I had already paid for rentals for that day and wasn't able to return them early for a refund (which I get). Anywho - Probably a great hill for the kidlets or newbies but if you're looking to get a bit of variety, be wary. If there's not much snow, you may not have a lot of runs (I realize this sounds obvious but it was really just bunny hills and one slightly longer run).||- Staff were lovely - I stupidly locked my ski locker with the wrong code and they came and bailed me out really fast!||- Free shuttle from the Enzo JR station worked great both...

I came here alone for two nights in the middle of our Japan trip while my husband had to do some work. I specifically chose this location because I wanted to ski in Japan but have something convenient and in hind sight, I probably should have chosen a different hotel/ski location that wouldn't have been much harder to get to but probably would have been a much better experience. My hubs' co-worker went to Hokkaido and let's just say I'm very jealous :).||||-The hotel was fine. A bit dated but the room was really big, comfy and clean with all the usual amenities. ||-Tons of options food wise but the quality wasn't that great for the price (admittedly, I was used to amazing Japanese food of all sorts by this trip and I also didn't choose the nicer restaurants). I was hoping to find some hot spots at night were I could grab a beer and a conversation but nothing was ever busy or open. The Whistler Cafe on the hill had great beer and wings but unfortunately they were closed early on my second day - things closing earlier than expected was a bit of a trend.||- The Onsen I was looking forward to trying there closed earlier than advertised so I missed out on that and you have to pay in advance for the ticket and don't get a refund if you don't use by check out so that was less than ideal (only 300 yen but still...)||- Rental service was efficient and the equipment was all great! Bring your own gloves, hats and goggles or risk buying pricey stuff from the stores. I rented pants and a jacket too which were great. Be warned if you're a bit bigger though - I'm a size US12/14 and almost didn't get pants that fit - I think I ended up in a Mens 5XL (it actually wasn't embarrassing though, they were nice!).||- Ski lockers were great!||- Hill - So the snow conditions weren't great when I went which obviously can't be helped but...it would have been helpful if the staff had been more open about what was closed. The gondola to the higher lifts at Naeba was closed most of the second day I was there and neither it nor the gondola to the neighbouring hill opened by noon on my last day which really cut down on the amount of runs you have access too (I didn't even bother going out my last day because I opted not to pay because I was already getting bored on Day 2 - and I'm not great by any means!). What bugs me is when I asked around, the staff told me things would be open and the TVs said temporarily closed....it's not like the weather changed drastically when I was there so it would be have been helpful (and less expensive for me) if I could have had accurate info to plan my days. Unfortunately, I had already paid for rentals for that day and wasn't able to return them early for a refund (which I get). Anywho - Probably a great hill for the kidlets or newbies but if you're looking to get a bit of variety, be wary. If there's not much snow, you may not have a lot of runs (I realize this sounds obvious but it was really just bunny hills and one slightly longer run).||- Staff were lovely - I stupidly locked my ski locker with the wrong code and they came and bailed me out really fast!||- Free shuttle from the Enzo JR station worked great both...