Ponderosa Lodge — Hotel in Estes Park

The bed is right in front of the door, so that was kind of a surprise walking into the room. But, I guess they do that so that your living area can be by the river, so I'll give them that one.

However, a bigger issue was the inability to sleep with the window/back door open (screen closed, of course) because there are bears in the area (some even visited on the first morning of our stay) and the back porch is wide open to their exploration! There's literally an open walkway for them to walk right up onto the porch and into your room if the door isn't kept closed. In fact, your back porch is actually one long porch you share with all your neighbors. So, if you keep your door open, any of the other guests could actually walk right by and inside, too! There is a screen door, but, since it almost seems like people are actually encouraged to walk the length of the porch, if you so much as leave your curtains open, you essentially have zero privacy. In fact, even in the bedroom, the blinds on the door are of very little help. At the right angle, you can see right into the bed from the outside! Not at all what I was expecting.

I was looking forward to listening to the sounds of the river as I slept. That's even why I was willing to pay a little more for the room. What's worse, since the rooms don't have a/c, it actually got a little warm during the night with everything closed up. Fortunately, this is Colorado, not Texas, so I don't think I ever reached the point of sweating, but I did have to kick all the bedding off, so I'm sure my husband was miserable, because at home, he's hot even when I'm shivering under the extra big heavy blanket.

The other biggest issue was office hours and location. We arrived around 8pm and no one was in the office. A key had been left for us, though, along with a note to come by in the morning at 8am to take care of check in. But we were there to hike, and that meant starting out on the trails at 6am in order to miss the heat of the afternoon.

Which brings me to the issue of the location. Being on the northern-most road into Rocky Mountain National Park, it takes a solid 30 minutes to wind your way back down to most of the good trailheads. And, if you don't get to the trailheads by 6:30am, you don't generally get a parking space. Which means you have to park at the Park and Ride and take the shuttle in, which can cost you an additional 30 minutes or so. So, sticking around until 8am meant we lost about 3 hours of hiking time by the time we could get to the Trailhead. Very frustrating since the whole reason we stayed in Estes Park was to spend as much time hiking as possible, because there is so much to explore and we only had 2 full days to see it all. Strike that. 2 full days minus 3 hours of the best hiking time. 😔

If the manager hadn't been so cool and clearly such a nice guy, we would have been very upset and possibly even moved to a different location over it. But he really is a nice guy, and the limited hours seem to be because it's a family - run establishment. So, instead of getting upset, we were able to be understanding. I just wish we had known ahead of time, because we would have planned...

I may just be a victim of circumstance here, but as someone who travels for leisure monthly I have a pretty good feeling about places now and this one is just a step beyond terrible.

For starters one of the main reasons we booked here was the hot tub on the river. We had allotted two times that night for hot tub use and planned our night accordingly.

When we arrived around 1:15 pm they were in the middle of cleaning the hot tub which is great. The girl when I checked in told us it would be ready and heated by around 6pm. I went down to test the waters at 6pm and it was ice cold, same thing the next morning as it was never powered on.

Next issue was Room #1. There is a set of very old wooden stairs right outside the bedroom wall. Anytime someone walks up or down it shakes the walls and makes terrible noise. We were also unfortunate enough to have a family with small boys staying above us. Running back and forth all night and then very early in the morning.

The room itself was adequate. Pretty clean and nice sized. Was kind of odd to have the house cleaner come knocking just after 9 am though when checkout is 10.

In the end, for the $160 USD or so this room cost made me feel very regretful and cheated. Hands down the worst experience I have had with lodging and highly wish I had looked else where.

A completely different experience to the "magical" time to be had at Pine Haven Resort, where the grounds are immaculate, cabins are great, and the STAFF is extremely friendly to the point you felt like family. They even gave my girlfriend a free gem necklace upon checkout. (See my review and everyone else who raves about it) All of this for the same price by the way, for an individual cabin with private decks.

Speaking of checkout at Ponderosa Logdge, it was as horrid as some others had listed here. The guy asked how my stay was, I explained all the issues I had, and instead of being sympathetic or working to make things right, he just went off on a tangent to make excuses and rush me out the door.

Needless to say we will not be staying here again, and I would highly encourage (specially for the cost) you look to the many nicer places in the same area for...

I stayed with my two groomsmen in the River View cabin the night before our wedding and LOVED IT. The deck is right by the stream and was comfortable to sit on the well built patio furniture. Beautiful. We had deep talks into the night. The interior is comfortable also, and we had a wood fire in the fireplace. The shower was great, the beds comfortable, the kitchen fully functional. The bathroom sink didn't drain well because the drain plug doesn't stay up on its own, but that'll be an easy fix for them. Perhaps best of all is the fact that they rescheduled us, TWICE without hesitation, per our request, because our wedding kept getting postponed due to covid. AND, they had a change of ownership just a couple of months ago, which caused some weirdness in their records, meaning that the new owners didn't know if we were actually going to show up on the day of our reservation or not. But instead of letting the cabin go to someone else, as many greedy business owners likely would have done in this day and age, they held on to our cabin for us clear up to the time we arrived. I was sooo grateful for this because so many of our wedding vendors had let us down in some way. Also, Ponderosa Lodge is way better than Castle Mountain, in case you are considering them. On our wedding night, my wife and I stayed in the Castle View room at Castle Mountain, which is supposed to be one of their nicest rooms, and I told my wife upon entering there, "Wow, Ponderosa Lodge is WAY better than this place." Even though she didn't see Ponderosa Lodge, she was also not impressed by that cabin at Castle Mountain. So, I would happily recommend this place to anyone and will likely plan to stay there again next time we have an event in Estes Park. Oh, and they had soft drinks and fresh baked cookies there in their office. Very cool. Thank you,...