Big Meadows Lodge — Hotel in Luray

I've come here over the decades a number of times and I think my most recent visit will be my last visit. The rooms are just outrageously overpriced -- cheaper to stay in a decent hotel in the Swiss Alps or on Capri with breakfast included -- and have not been adequately renovated. Meanwhile, the food is worse than ever.

I stayed in two rooms over three nights. My first room was a "preferred room" with a rate of $219 before tax and fees. Although I specifically booked a normal room with two queen beds, I was provided with an accessible room. This was annoying, because the institutional bathroom is a bit depressing and the beds were not as comfortable as a normal room, with them being just a foot off the floor and resting on plywood. Despite providing confirmation of the original reservation, reception refused to provide the booked room and instead offered two $10 coupons for the dining room. What if I had been traveling with kids who needed a tub? Tough luck? This room was also not particularly clean: cobwebs, the a/c unit was filthy and barely worked (unnecessary in the mountains anyway, but the room didn't have operable windows!), and the toilet had a puddle of yellow water on it (urine? rusty water? who knows?) and other urine stains. This room did not have body wash and I had to go and find some.

The next two nights I moved to a room in the Mountain View cabin, which features a large screened porch, although the screens had a lot of holes and cobwebs were everywhere. Inside, there was institutional carpet -- other rooms seem to have had the carpet removed and wood floors restored -- and some stained chairs. Inside the chest of drawers, I found an open sugar packet and mouse droppings. I put the sugar and coffee pods in the ice bucket to discourage another "visit" by mice. Given the rodent issues at Big Meadows Lodge, would it kill them to put sugar and coffee supplies in a box? The windows are original and in poor shape. The bottom of the cabin is rotting. One of the glass panels on the door to my room was missing a piece of glass. Each cabin is also divided into two rooms, so you can hear your neighbors really well. The broken-down cabin rooms have modern mini-split a/c units, which is interesting -- those could be installed, but general maintenance couldn't be done to keep rodents out and fix rotting wood? The rack rate for this cabin room is over $150 before taxes and fees.

Given the obvious rodent issues, it's incredible that the lodge isn't at least removing trash from rooms everyday. What happens when a family leaves a pile of take-out boxes in their room for three nights? Or dirty diapers?

The main lodge is in pretty good shape, but the balcony outside the great room needs to be painted and somebody needs to come around every few hours to wipe down the tables -- not because of Covid, but to remove coffee stains.

It's a bit pathetic that Delaware North is not able to do basic maintenance on the rooms at this lodge. Yes, the cabins are 90 years old, but they are simple wooden buildings. European hotel operators keep much older buildings -- with ornate architecture -- in a state of good repair. The buildings should not be rotting; they should not have exposed boards and nails that could injure a dog or young child; they should not have rodents that can spread disease or make guests feel unease. Enough with the excuses! European hotel operators keep much older buildings in good repair. Hotel operators in developing countries keep rooms in tropical rain forests tidy and free of rodents, dust, and insects. I did see that the manager(?) was going around and placing flowers around the main lodge building, which was nice. I suppose everyone is trying their best and staff can't necessarily be blamed for the federal government's contracting decisions.

Food is not great at all in the dining hall or...

Set in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, these cottages are very rustic and create a nice atmosphere for a quiet and relaxing get-away. The few staff members we interacted with were friendly, the restaurant had tasty food, and the view from the lodge its self is breath-taking... but unfortunately, those were the only highlights of our stay here.

I had been planning and saving for this vacation for my significant other's birthday for months and decided to make Perseid's Meteor Shower the main attraction of our excursion. We stayed in one of the historic cabins, which upon first look, is very quaint and lovely. However, ALL of the fireplaces were undergoing maintenance, and none of them were usable which was a huge disappointment. The bed had been made up with at least five pieces of mouse droppings in the covers, the shower ran hot water for only a minute at a time before pelting you with freezing cold water, and the toilet was not secured to the floor as it wobbled when you sat down.

Our cabin was apparently modified to try to accommodate more parties as we only had a thin wall and a questionably locked door separating us from our rude neighbor. The walls are paper thin, and if we talked above a whisper, we'd hear loud banging on the wall. However, at dawn the next morning, it was perfectly fine for said neighbor to show off his side of the room to his friends in a loud, boisterous tone.

The worst part of all was the door to our room. When I first entered the cabin, I went in alone with a few bags and used the lone room key while my boyfriend attempted to find parking (which ended up being a 12 minute walk carrying luggage for my poor disabled boyfriend). When he arrived, he simply pushed open the locked door. Our room door had 4 locks on it and NONE of them worked. NONE. We had no food, and plans later. What were we supposed to do? Go drag all of our stuff back to the car every time we needed to leave? We ended up throwing all of our stuff in the bathroom, covered it with a dark blanket, and tried to make the room look unoccupied so no one would think there was anything to steal. We had a knife from the Skyland gift shop with us that we kept nearby in case we needed protection, but it was still really unnerving and hard to go to sleep, even after a day of travel, exploring caverns, and staying up to see the meteor shower.

P.S.- After spending $54 on food at the restaurant, it would have been nice to have even a small refrigerator to store our leftovers. More than half of my dinner...

This was our first time staying at Big Meadows Lodge. We stayed in late May 2023 with a number of family members in different rooms. We booked the 2 twin and 1 full upstairs bed room. We were in Cabin 13/14 which was amazing. It's just right outside the main lodge building. It was on the end. The front has stairs that go up to the second floor. Room 13 had the two twin beds and a small desk with chairs. Rustic but cleaner than many other "cabins" we've stayed in. There is a bathroom with sink, toilet and shower. The windows looking back were amazing during the sunset the night we checked in. There is also a tiny "hobbit" door that opened to room 14 through the bathroom which had another set of sink, shower and toilet. There was plenty of mirrors as well and hairdryer. The shower water knobs were a bit finicky. All hot or all cold it was hard to find a medium sometimes. They had hot water radiators for heat and it was pretty great. There were extra fans in closet and blankets too. They fireplaces are decorative and should not be used. Room 14 had the full sized bed which was a cozy. Watch you head when you're sleeping. We never hit our heads but was still interesting use of space. The BEST part of room 14 was the "side door". There is a side door that leads out and down a set of stairs on the size of the lodge. In the morning we noticed light coming through and there was no sign that said "do not open" so we opened it and were blown away. It's a small balcony with stairs down to the ground BUT it was the most picturesque view of the sun rise in the morning. It looks out into the woods and deer were just walking by. You could even pull the chair up next to the door and sit down with nice cup of morning coffee/tea and just stare out the window. Absolutely amazing.

Staff at the main lodge for check-in were super nice and very informative. We order to-go from the dinning room. We got the fried green tomato appetizers. While not worth the price we paid, they tasted amazing! There was also no arugula as the description stated. The dinning room was about to close but we were informed the tap room downstairs would be open much later and also had food. We ended up going down there to get dessert. The blackberry ice cream pie is a must get! Worth the price too. The chocolate torte while tasty was a tiny slice and wasn't worth the cost.

We chose to stay here with family as the next day we wanted to do a number of hikes in the park. It was great! Gas was still not available when...