Great Alaska Adventures — Hotel in Alaska

The Good:||No issues with the guides, all were good to great (especially at bear camp, with Steve and the other lady that started with a C, sorry I forgot).||Lodge lounge/bar area has a nice view of the Kenai||Bear Camp was in a beautiful area||The sweets (brownies, cookies) were good||||The Bad:||The food was quite shocking to be frank. I want to first say it is not really on the chef, but rather what the chef was given to work with. For how expensive this lodge is, you would expect some quality food. All of us in our party could not believe how little/no seafood we were served (it's Alaska!). Also no choices or menu whatsoever, whatever they serve you are eating (a lot of pork/chicken/beef). The one night out of the 7 we were served seafood it was halibut, but wasn't very good in my opinion. What about the fresh salmon that comes out of the river a few meters away? We never even got a bite of it the whole time, we really couldn't believe it. Not what we were expecting. We only had salmon once we got back to New York and went to a grocery store. Also lunches were bagged sandwiches every day...no fresh lunch. Again, for the price we paid we were expecting to enjoy and look forward to the food each night, you will not get this experience here. ||||They do not even provide water bottles for beverages for you on your trips. Other lodges I have stayed at the guides bring a cooler with ice and your favorite beverages. Such a simple thing, that makes guests happy. But no, they at GAL do not even offer water bottles (they make you pay for them). ||||The UGLY:||1) Oh boy, here comes the ugly. This lodge is quite close to Anchorage. Therefore, they offer a bus from Anchorage to the lodge. But When you return, they (for some reason...we know the reason now is to make $$$) do not offer to drive you back, instead basically force you to take a flight to Anchorage (which makes little sense for the distance, you don't even save time after you go to airport, wait for flight, etc). Also they make you take a flight with all people at the resort, no matter your flight time out of anchorage back home (again, we realized later they did this to make money and did sacrificed their customer's convenience for this $)||||||Anyways, this flight back was "optional" and you could find your own transportation back if you wanted. Therefore, since our eldest son has a van and lives in Alaska, he was going to drive us back to save on the money. Long story short, the day before the last day, the head lady of the lounge told us we had a flight the next day. When we told her we didn't, she said we did and already paid for it. We were confused and upset, but decided not to argue with the lady to avoid making this ruin the trip. It clearly states that this was optional, and we never opted in for it, and never agreed to paid for it. In our bill, they never itemized this expense, but INSTEAD they hid the expense into the total of our bill. So yes, we did pay for it, but we had not noticed it as it was not itemized and we never agreed to purchase this and it was optional from the start, and even mentioned to them our plan. So we had no choice at that point, as they said they could not refund the tickets. ||||NOW if that was not dodgy and suspicious enough, as we were going to the airport we did some research. It was so dodgy they didn't provide transportation back and force you to take the flight (~$175 a piece, total over $700 for 4 of us). We looked up at the airport the cost of this flight list price, it was around $110-120 (fixed price for 1 ticket all season) (Grant Aviation or Ravn airlines both operate this route). So what Great Alaska does is force you to fly back to make money from your ticket. This whole experience was quite disgusting. ||||2) They do not offer any room cleaning because of "COVID". This makes little sense, as they also put everyone into one little dining room with no masks and eating together...but a maid can not go into an EMPTY room with a mask to tidy up the room for a few minutes. Of course, this was an excuse to make more money, but they covered it up as a COVID thing and that "that is what all the major hotels are doing". ||||Not honest people. Food was extremely disappointing. Not...

Pass this by if at all possible. We only spent a night and a day here, and for that I am grateful. What I am not grateful for is the terrible quality for such ludicrous prices. The food is among the worst I have ever had the misfortune of encountering, the wifi is a hassle and doesn't even work, there is no television, the AC system consists of a space heater and a fan, both about a square foot. Our bathroom door did not close, there was used and stinky toilet paper wrapped around the toilet (which did not flush properly), and you have to make a special request in order to lock your room door. We also opted to go salmon fishing on the accompanying Kenai river, (the whole point of our visit), which was a disaster. Our guide was rude as hell and demanding (we didn't end up catching any salmon either, though that is indifferent to this establishment's asinine service). Did I mention the terrible food quality? This lodge wouldn't be so horrendous if it was a simple 2 star inn running $100/night. But it isn't, it is extremely and unreasonably expensive, and for a rather miserable experience. This is to say nothing of their eccentric manner of awakening their guests. Avoid...

I had an absolutely amazing time here. It was the whole adventure package that made it so life altering. The guide was the best I have experienced. He even woke us up each morning with a cup of coffee at our door. The food was great. Our week included Bear Camp where we saw dozens of bears, bald eagles, and my first experience with glamping. The people who operate the camp were all memorable! Their chef is even scheduled to compete on Chopped.

Other activities we did were hiking to glaciers, a day on the sea with sitings of whales, otters, seals, and more glaciers. Travel to Homer with a half dozen activities there and kayaking were also remarkable. Some of our group fished for salmon. This was an active and wonderful experience that was so much better than a cruise.

This visit marked my 50th state to visit and would not change a single thing about it! My mind was blown!

Please note that ratings are either 1 or 5. I would honestly suggest you suspect the 1s. I have had 1-rated experiences. This was definitely a...