Coolfont Resort — Hotel in Bath (Berkeley Springs)

We felt pretty misled by other reviews prior to our visit here.

We stayed at the resort for two nights and ate at the restaurant twice. The second time was only because breakfast was free with our stay.

RESTAURANT REVIEW: The restaurant was abysmal, flat out awful. One of the beers on tap was flat. I sent it back and she said their system has been having issues. If you know that, then fix the issues. Don't serve customers beer that's flat. The second beer was a bit better but still not good. Weird.

I'm an average sized guy, and the chair that I was sitting on broke when I was in it. The server just said uh oh, didn't offer to get a new seat or anything. I swapped my seat and put the broken one in a corner by some other chairs that didn't match the rest. That's weird.

The appetizer portions other than the Bavarian pretzel were comical. We ordered the corn fritters which were about the size of a quarter and about 8-10 came out on the plate for $8. I thought this was a joke, I really did, and asked the server when the rest would be coming out and she said that's it, almost embarrassed to say so. Someone else in our party ordered onion rings and there were maybe 8 pathetically small rings on the plate. Yep, that's pretty weird.

My wife got a quesadilla which was so over seasoned it was gritty. She ate one piece out of four and didn't touch the rest. My burger was not great and I stopped eating it half way through when I bit into something that couldn't be identified, it wasn't meat, cheese or veggie and tasted extremely bitter. Weird indeed.

Breakfast the next morning was weird. There was an older waitress who was surly to put it nicely and was extremely stressed to even have four tables which was odd. It wasn't busy at all. Breakfast tasted much better than dinner, but our server ruined the whole experience. They forgot to make a meal for someone in our party and when we tried to get her attention she pretty rudely said ONE SECOND. Food came out at all different times. Weird.

Avoid the restaurant. 1/10 star experience for sure.

HOTEL/RESORT REVIEW: I love a good comeback story and was excited to see this place. The property itself is amazing and has so much untapped potential. I read the current owners spent somewhere around $2.5 million purchasing the property and opened it back up in 2019. For being open for four years I feel as if there are too many unfinished details and issues all around the property and in the rooms.

Our room was a pet friendly room which was HUGE and in the basement of one of the buildings. There was a dehumidifier in our room which had to be emptied as soon as we walked in. I don't have a problem doing that, but I did have a problem with the musty smell. If your room requires a dehumidifier to prevent a musty smell, you need to plumb that thing so it can run continuously without needing to be emptied. The bed was comfy but there was no comforter, only a thin fleece blanket in the closet that was pretty worn. Weird.

The cleanliness of the room left something to be desired. I'm not wiping surfaces with a white glove here, but I do expect to feel clean in a "resort" room. The carpet in the bedroom was kind of dingy. I know we're in the woods and in a pet friendly room but it wouldn't hurt to run a vacuum before new guests arrive. We found a bunch of dead bugs and other dogs hair.

Also, the bathrooms were beat, to put it plainly. Peeling paint, missing tiles, grout that doesn't match, and dirty shower pans shouldn't happen if you're charging this much money.

The property itself needs a lot of help too. Abandoned electrical wires and connections strewn throughout the property. Going down the stairs to the main lodge from our building, there's a huge gap between the broken up asphalt and the wooden stairs that's absolutely a lawsuit waiting to happen. Both hot tubs were broken at the pool.

Owners NEED to dump some more money into this property, stat. This would have been acceptable the first few months, but not after FOUR YEARS of being...

I am surprisingly very disappointed in my stay here. It started off interesting, we found the front desk (which was moved because of the recent fire) and got checked in even though the staff was a bit short with us, still kind though. My husband and I went here as a small “honeymoon” trip because we eloped this past Sunday and we stayed in the King Jacuzzi Room.

Before getting to our room we noticed a lot of unmarked parking, it is very difficult to figure out where to park and it’s all gravel/hilly. The room itself was very nice, cleaned pretty well, had a good amount of space, the water was ALWAYS warm in the bath (however I wish the jacuzzi had slightly more of a deep clean because there were some random floating pieces of gunk), the air conditioning was perfect, we had a couple extra sheets/blankets that we used for the pullout couch (which was unfortunately where the TV was instead of in front of the bed), and overall pretty comfy! The WiFi is good however you can’t connect any Roku devices for Netflix/disney/etc to the TV or they will “make you pay to have someone come fix/look at the building” because all of the TVs are connected to the same dish. Not to mention, the TV comes with Netflix etc. downloaded but it doesn’t work and you can only watch cable.

Moving on to the pool. This was where we planned to spend most of our time for the weekend. Incredibly disappointed and disgusted. We went in and got towels (all of their body towels are just an oversized hand towel, even in the main rooms), which is fine for us because we’re smaller people. When we walked into the pool, the floors were concrete, cracked, and dirty looking. Immediately the temperature was cold in the room and did not smell like “clean pool”. We didn’t even step foot into the pool because it was so cold and the moment we got into the hot tub we were completely still because it was too cold to move. We literally felt cold water being pushed into the tub because so much of the water was draining into the pool itself that it couldn’t keep up. The jets didn’t even work and neither did the sauna. Worst of all it was so dirty! Even light regular routine cleaning could’ve prevented this. You could only sit on the edge in the hot tub so that you weren’t sitting in some sort of dirt or sand or something…

I did have an annoying experience when my husband and I needed towels, we asked for some extras and it took probably about an hour and a half to have anything dropped off. I ended up going to grab pool towels from the separate building after 40 minutes just so we could shower.

Overall there are decent prices but it needs quite a bit of maintenance. From the cracks in some windows, the outdoor dirtiness… everywhere… and extra staffing wherever possible, I would rather pay an extra $200+ at a regular hotel or Airbnb.

On the bright side, downtown is so fun and there’s a lot of good food options plus it’s not too crowded but I don’t recommend...

Easter Buffet at Coolfont’s Treetop Restaurant - laid a big egg.

We made reservations for Coolfont’s Easter Buffet. I made sure to tell the restaurant that we’d be celebrating not only Easter but a big birthday too, and that we were always given a window table in the past. We were assured that we would be made happy and given a time to arrive. On Easter, we were met by a surly young man serving as maître d (apparently). He blocked our entrance to the restaurant saying we were too early and must come back at exactly our time of reservation. So, since we were a few minutes early we sat in the lobby. Fifteen minutes later the same brash host led us to a tiny, little table that two plates would barely fit on (and not by a window). We indicated to the obdurate youngster that we made reservations for a nice window table and that we had been coming to Coolfont for more than a half-century. He matter-of-factly said that it was this little table away from the window “or nothing.” We walked out of the restaurant and directly to speak to the front desk. The manager interceded and corrected the situation that young Brendan created and exacerbated. She seated us at an adequately sized table with the view we had expected. She apologized for Brendan (though he never did) and handled the situation with aplomb. Our waitress, Cadence, was also apologetic and very sweet. Next, we looked at the buffet. The food was a huge disappointment. Instead of carving stations, with real meat, the meats advertised were all subpar. The (so-called) roast beef was virtually unrecognizable, the turkey was processed/pressed, and ham was so fatty and thin, it was difficult to assemble an edible mouthful. It was embarrassing that they would serve such low-grade products to anyone, much less as a feature on Easter Buffet. We should have walked away and let the manager know the food was subpar and more suited to a rescue mission. We were, however, very hungry and had driven a long way. After the battle to get the table, we decided to make the best of it and eat. On the positive side, the salad and dessert were fine. The view was wonderful and the company of my beautiful wife made the day a success. . . in spite of the hostile host and subpar grade B-meats. In the spirit of spring and the promise that His rebirth brings, we hope if Coolfont’s restaurant continues with buffets, they do it with the quality and professionalism this location's preceding owners offered. Also, the young host needs to take a crash course in manners. Hospitality is not...