The Lodge at Lake Guntersville State Park — Hotel in Guntersville

We went to an event at the state lodge. The room barely had any hot water , even put on full hot. Then it runs out on a quick shower. Some guys at the event said they had no hot water and had to shave and shower in cold water. You have no control over the thermostat in the room. It was hot and the lodge had the heat blowing , no air conditioning. That’s stupid. They have the cheapest thinnest most worthless toilet paper made. You have to pull off 4 feet to fold it up and get one square to be like real toilet paper. The food at Pinterest was a huge letdown. We did the buffet on Thursday night and we walked in. It has a sign that says wait to be seated. There were 22 tables available but they wouldn’t seat us. The girl kept ringing up people and another girl was cleaning off a table. At least seat us and then worry about a table. We stood there at least 10 minutes. If I was at a real restaurant and not staying at the lodge I would have walked out. The next night the same girl saw me and said we won’t make you wait tonight. Like she meant to do it it sounded like. On the buffet they put it out once and that’s it. The shrimp on the boil just kept cooking and was hard and inedible. The chicken was dry and hard as a rock. Everything was cold. The fish tasted like dirt ( catfish ). So at lunch I wanted to order a hamburger but they said we have to get the buffet. You can’t order off the menus. So they force you to pay $28 for a buffet that sucks. Then on Saturday night I called the restaurant at 8:44 pm to ask a question. They said oh we are closed. They don’t close until 9:pm. , the whole place is a circus. , So this is a state run place that our taxes pay for and they want to be cheap on everything and charge an arm and a leg for way sub par food. It’s ashamed. Then a guy was telling some lady employee ( Karen type ) that the doors to the event room won’t lock from the outside like they are supposed to and anyone can open the doors when no one is in the room ( we had 100 tables of expensive items on display ) he said it has been like that for years. Karen said “ we’ll call maw maw ( governor ivy ) and tell her to give us some money. It’s not my problem.” Like they don’t have a maintenance man that can’t fix a door in 5 years. I won’t be coming back , in fact we are going home early. The rooms at a reduced rate for the show are still way more than Vegas none the less other events all over the country. Now we go to check out and the girl says how was it and we said the food wasn’t very good. I told her we tried to get a hamburger last night and they said they were closed ( before closing time ) she said well we aren’t a fast food restaurant . And this isn’t the Hilton ( wtf) then she says in one day 2 cooks and the kitchen manager and 2 waitresses quit. Someone got fired , someone is on administrative leave. They are 14 people down because the pay is too low. Looks like they need to figure out they need to raise the pay and maybe steal some fast food chefs from McDonald’s. Then when we are checking out the girl charges us too much money. She said she can’t do anything unless the manager was there. She said she was in the office , then 2 minutes later the manager isn’t there so we can’t get our money back. They sent us out the door with a “ we promise we will get it right. “. BEWARE. We were the only ones at the desk and check out took...

The Lodge (as well as many of the attractions in Guntersville) is not handicap friendly. Otherwise, the lodge is decent. Full review: My husband and I stayed at The Lodge at Guntersville State Park from Friday, 8/11/23 to Sunday, 8/13/23. The handicap parking spots at the entrance (2) were full, so we parked in the handicap parking section for the right wing of the lodge. The ramp was long and steep. I doubt my husband (who uses a wheelchair) could have pushed himself to the entrance. Once we got to the entrance, we discovered that one of the handicap accessible door buttons did not work. We arrived at the check-in desk around 1:30pm, but we were told that our room was not ready because check-in is at 4:00pm. Several other guests ran into the same problem. While we waited, we explored the common areas of the lodge. We found that none of the interior doors were handicap accessible. The doors were heavy and the thresholds were high. My husband could not access the gift shop at all due to the narrow spaces inside.

Once we checked in, we discovered that our handicap accessible room was on the lower level at the far end of the right wing of the lodge. My husband would not have been able to push himself that distance. The door to our room had no handicap button—or anything else—to hold it open and the threshold was high. I had to hold the door open with my body while pulling my husband’s wheelchair into the room by the footrests. The room itself was handicap accessible once I moved the coffee table to the side of the room. There was a half bath near the door and a full bathroom near the bedroom. The full bathroom had a roll-in shower and a tub/shower combo. The interior was clean and nicely decorated. The room also featured a patio area with a nice view of the lake.

My husband and I enjoyed the pool and bar areas. The bar has pool tables and other activities. The dining room was large and featured live music in the evenings. However, the food isn’t great. I would suggest eating elsewhere during your stay. (I suggest Homecoming and Co.) The outdoor walkway/ramp from the recreation area to the right wing of the lodge is not lit at night. We had to use the flashlights on our phones to see.

Overall, the lodge is decent for those who are not handicapped. I would suggest that handicapped people try one of the hotels in town near Top O’ the River. Also worth noting, most of the shops on Gunter Ave. are not handicap accessible/friendly. Fant’s and Moody Brews were the only ones we could...

It is such a shame the lodge is not nearly as nice as the location and view. We booked two chalets 5 months in advance and specifically requested that they be side by side because we had a reunion group. I was told this would not be a problem. Upon check in, found the chalets were not together. I was told several bold faced lies by the desk clerk: "due to scheduling of different stays, and due to the availability of the different types of chalets, we were not able to put you together. We did the best we could to get you as close as possible." According to their own web site, the chalets are all IDENTICAL except for a couple of upscale ones. There was almost no one there, 90% of the chalets were EMPTY. The chalet in between our two was EMPTY the first night. So CLEARLY it would have been very easy for us to be put side by side. The desk clerk was extremely nasty. Said several times "we did everything we could to get you side by side but we just couldn't" which was very clearly a lie. When I complained, and explained that we had made the reservations FIVE MONTHS in advance so we could be side by side, she said "do you want to check in or not." Absolutely zero effort was made to accomodate our request. The unit we had, #411, did not appear to be ready for occupancy. The chairs were piled on top of the table, the outside grill had not been cleaned. The couch cushions were outside on the outdoor chairs. The fireplace in our unit did not work, we were told "they are turned off", however the fireplace in the second unit, #409, DID work, so clearly they were not turned off. The kitchens are bare bones to the point of absurdity. No hot pads so to use the oven we had to use bathroom towels. One tiny towel for kitchen dishes. All the towels in the bathrooms are piled on the bathroom counter, leaving no room at all for toiletries, while the towel shelf in the bathroom above the toilet, where access to bath towels would be convenient, was left empty. The whole lodge, chalet area, pool appear to be poorly maintained, the deck area on both our chalets was not clean. It is clear that this whole enterprise is extremely poorly managed. Such a disappointment, because it is an incredibly beautiful location, and could be such a stunning place to stay, Instead it is just barely tolerable. I strongly suggest that this lodge hire new management. Existing staff did not give a darn about...