Glen Eyrie Castle — Hotel in Colorado Springs

I struggle leaving negative reviews - normally I don’t say anything if I don’t have anything nice to say but I don’t think I can’t not leave an honest review.

I wish I had read reviews before booking my stay, I’d seen a couple TikTok’s about it and thought it’d be a cool stay, the average stars here are pretty good so I booked. What I missed, is that this is a religious group running the show. I have a couple problems with that, and it doesn’t have anything to do with my beliefs. First of all, most of the “staff” are volunteers, which is just exploitative. Pay people to do your landscaping, and whatever else work! I found out that the counter people are paid, but sometimes they’ll have a volunteer that is able to do electrical work or plumbing work. The navigators are worth over 2 Billion dollars, this is absolutely exploitation in the name of God. They mention on their website that they do not do LGBTQ+ weddings. Again, I don’t care about a group’s beliefs, but based on the huge net worth, I’ll assume that they are working against human rights in this county.

The grounds and the castle are lovely. We stayed in the castle for two nights and did the “tour” the second day. I wish they’d spend more time showing us the castle, I believe we went into 3 or 4 rooms total. Some of it was cool to learn, and the tour guide was nice. However there was a lot of repetitive information, said the same things several times and he also didn’t give anyone time to ask questions. A good portion of the tour and video pre-tour was toting info about the navigators and how great they are. The gift shop is essentially a Christian book store, it’s clear that this place is more about pushing their agenda versus running a hospitality business.

The stay itself was fine, I wouldn’t come back though. During booking it sounded more like a B&B (and the tour guide called it that several times) and asked if there were dietary restrictions. I input that we do have dietary restrictions and gave details. I assumed that that meant they would be cooking us a breakfast instead of a small buffet that had essentially nothing we could eat. I anticipate this at hotels, and I don’t generally expect places to meet requirements but they ASKED. The room was fine, and it was clean. I understand that they maintain rooms to be “historically correct” but it doesn’t make any sense to me to not have basic amenities such as a refrigerator and microwave. We didn’t hit it here in a heat wave, thank goodness. The rooms are stuffy but there is a ceiling fan and a box fan. I think if we would have been here a few days earlier when the temps were crazy, this would have been an AWFUL stay.

The building gets pretty busy when they have a conference and tea time, leaving little parking for guests. Part of the parking is by a mountain, so there is a risk of falling rocks, which, this is in the mountains so DUH. It just doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t put the rock fences up.

The staff is nice but it’s a very manufactured fake, over the top, big fake smiles nice. It wasn’t genuine at all.

If I were to re-do my vacation I’d leave this place off the itinerary. It was cool to be close to the garden of the gods and it truly was a beautiful place to stay, it just didn’t meet my expectations or give me a reason to...

I attended two separate (yule) teas and two tours at Glen Eyrie this year (late November and early December 2022). TEAS: I love Glen Eyrie, but the teas this year were disappointing in a few ways. First, the first tea I showed up for the greeter seemed unprepared for us. She asked if we still had 6 people, and then she conferred with another lady, as she seemed perplexed as to where to place us. They put us in a window booth, and at first, offered an extra chair so we would not be crammed in, then reneged and had us all cram into to the space. There were no window treatments in this booth, and the sun was blaring in on one of the ladies, so I pushed the issue with the waiter to get an extra chair so we could spread out. Problem solved. At the second tea, they seated us at a larger table, which was wonderful, but they seemed confused about removing the extra place settings. Weirdly baffled. At both teas, all the waiters/waitresses talk super-loudly to their tables. I'm guessing they have been trained to do this so that everyone can hear what they are saying, but it is obnoxious in a tea environment. The overall feel regarding the staff is that they are very nice, but, everyone seems focused on hustling everyone through the tea experience quickly and harshly; it feels more like a Golden Corral experience than a lovely tea experience. It is not warm and lovely anymore. It feels like a commercialized tourist trap. To me, the most disappointing was that they have done away with selecting a dainty tea cup for the tea. Sanitized out the personal experience and fun. They have switched to what appears to be Correlle ware, which is even cheaper and feels worse than the standard plates they use. This is just absolutely sad, honestly. I do understand why they did away with the "select a hat" in the wake of COVID, but getting rid of the tea cups in favor of the cruddiest diner cup? Ugh. Last, but not least, the green meringue Christmas tree cone dessert should be eliminated. If you eat this dessert, you will end up with a green lips, green teeth, and a green tongue, and it won't come off easily! It is a beautiful-looking dessert, but it really does not make sense to serve it. Also, at the first tea, the cone was fresh; for the second tea, I took it home to eat (for the aforementioned reason), and the cone was soft and mushy. The first group of ladies I brought to this tea had done the Miramont Castle tea in Manitou Springs the year before. I asked them for their honest assessment between the two teas. It was unanimous that Miramont tea was better because it felt intimate and personal. TOURS: The two tours were quite different from one another; each lead by a different docent. I have been on many of these tours, and they are always excellent. I have no complaints with the tours at all. SUMMARY: I would love to see the teas go back to their previous charm, with warm and subtle service, and the beautiful tea cup selection. I would certainly visit again, but the Glen Eyrie tea will no longer be my...

I am surprised this has such amazing reviews, must be a lot of them for the high tea and hotel? We went on the tour, and it was the worst tour we have ever been on. It's pretty clear this is a hotel and restaurant first, and historical site second (or third).

Our 90 minute tour started with over 30 minutes of talking and videos. Most of it was repetitive as the tour guide was giving ancillary info from the movie. Then you walk around the Carriage house which is completely redone, the inside and outside are unrecognizable from the original so it really isn't interesting.

From there you spend about 20 minutes listening to extremely boring history of the owner and about the logistical details of the building like how servants moved things around. The perfect encapsulation of this tour was the story of the three pillars. The guide spent probably 5 minutes while everyone is standing outside in blazing heat telling us how the wife was used to having servants growing up, but didn't have any when they started building the castle, so she named one of the rocks a title for a butler. A boring story, that meanders around WAY too long for a minor detail that should have been said in passing.

It was 45+ minutes into the tour when finally you start walking to the castle while stopping 2 more times for more history, which is mostly repeated info from the beginning movie.

It took over an hour to even get into the castle for this 90 minute tour. Once in the castle you see the entryway, a livingroom a study and an empty auditorium. Each room has probably 10-15 minutes of stories much of which is repetitive from the beginning where you watch the video.

Every single bedroom is converted to hotel rooms and blocked off. Even the OWNER'S room was rented out and all you could do is look into it and see the hotel furnishings. The auditorium was completely cleaned out since they rented it out to groups, so you got to see... cables and AV equipment.

The tour ends outside with another 10 minutes of history and thats that, total of about 130 minutes. The tour guide was clearly way into the history, but kept repeating info, and talked about extremely boring ancillary details. I would recommend doing the high tea and going upstairs to use the restroom. You will be able to see 90% of the tour, only missing the auditorium...