Mountain Edge Suites at Sunapee, an Ascend Collection Hotel — Hotel in Newbury

Your average guy traveler review.

Background: born and raised in Iowa. Served in military and been around the world. Now a husband of over 15 years and dad of 5 kids (4 girls 1 boy who has autistim). We have recently started traveling as my career and life allow and it should be noted my wife pretty much books everything. I’m pretty cheap, have lifelong Celiacs and I stereotype.—get over it. Here is my review:

Mountain Edge Suites at Sunapee, Ascend Hotel Collection.

Lodge type place. Judging from the reviews, many come here for weddings. Very safe-feel but it should be since this is about $75-90 more than we pay per night when we stay at hotels. Front person was a sort of 40 year old liberal-type gal, but very friendly. I joked about needing a gummy after a long day and she chuckled and told me there’s a few places in Vermont 38 miles from here—specific. Held the elevator door for me while I was coming in with a trolly full of bags and groceries, as we had stopped at a Wal-Mart over in Woodstock, VT prior to.

We rented a 2 king bed, 1 shared bathroom. Kitchenette. Nice, separate area.

The front door has a mini-entry, so you walk in, then it’s awkward to get the trolly through both doors if your cart is full. Trolly was average. No door-person to assist, but we checked in late, probably 8 pm. All the floors were tile in our room.

Master bedroom: its own room. Not a suite with a bathroom. Pillows arranged very nicely. Clean bedding. TV: couldn’t figure out anything other than local channels. Weird mid-sized door in the room leading to an HVAC. I opened it to find discarded aluminum tape and some loose insulation lying on the floor. Filter was a cheap blue one but it didn’t look terrible, however it did look like it had water stains on the cardboard edging, like it got wet during storage.

There was a floor unit AC that vents directly out of our 1st floor window. That actually surprised me. I could get curtains closed for privacy but the blinds would stop short before the bottom by about a foot (due to the vent). Had to rearrange a plug from the lamp next to my bed so I could charge my phone (the lamp plug was a flat one that has to be plugged in on the bottom to avoid blocking the other outlet). Small closet but similar to a hotel room with the iron/board and hangers.

2nd king bed room had a tv and an egress to the aforementioned mini entry.

One thing to note was that there was a pullout couch and 4 extra pillows throughout the storage areas. Bonus: the pullout couch was already made for us (pulled it out and it was made).

Kitchenette was convenient. Smaller regular sized fridge/freezer. Couldn’t find the trash easily but it was in a pull out cabinet. There were pots and pans my kid discovered when we were looking for the trash- right away when she opened it I saw a grease splash about the size of a golf ball that was very visible and should have been caught by the cleaners. Nice sized kitchen sink.

Right away I noticed with this place that the plumber was not good. Things were loose and spouts were wrong and/or missing pieces.

Overall I rate this place slightly above average. They tried to be fancy, but must have run out of money when building it — or they are just...

The issue with non-potable water was beyond your control and we understand this. We appreciate the email prior to our arrival so we knew what to expect. What was unacceptable was that email was the only correspondence we received from management. If a hotel remains open under these circumstances it is reasonable to assume everything possible would be done to help guests feel safe and comfortable. Your staff was kind and polite but they could not answer questions, provide supplies with the exception of bottled water. We requested in advance for ice to be in our room and several gallon containers of water. I made the incorrect assumption that hand sanitizer would be in place at all sinks throughout the hotel. How did your staff wash their hands??? Those items were not in our room. We asked for ice and was told there wasn’t any. We asked for hand sanitizer and were given two individual packets and told that all they had. Upon arrival my husband went out and purchased ice and a case of hand sanitizer to give out to guests. No I do not have receipts. We asked for paper plates and utensils because your staff couldn’t tell us if the dishwasher was hot enough to sanitize dishes. We did get our plastic and paperware then logically said we wanted the same items placed in all rooms of our guests. We were told they didn’t have enough. (Add paper plates and utensils to our list of purchases.)

We are the parents of the groom and we quickly learned we would have to ease the concerns of our guests coming to your hotel. NOT our job and believe me we had many many other responsibilities to handle. Young children were checking in with their parents and the health postings from the DOH were at times contradictory to the email we all received and we were placed in the position of interpreting and providing advice.

We were so frustrated. My response to your hotel was go out and get the supplies necessary to properly run your hotel! It was all so unprofessional, unacceptable, and extremely embarrassing for us and my son and daughter in law who spent months planning every detail of this weekend. And your hotel couldn’t figure out in advance you needed hand sanitizer and paper plates? Your front desk person took $65 off our bill. I just shook my head. I don’t know what price to put on the time, energy, and stress put on my husband and myself during our visit. I await...

I'll nutshell as much as possible. This was our second time staying at this hotel. Our first time was not very good (no hot water in our room), but the hotel gave us one of our two nights free. Not great, but not horrible. Last week, we stayed again for 2 nights, and it cost $105 more than last time (2 years ago). This time was an all-around bad experience. The first thing that happened was when I was in the middle of preparing dinner the first night. I discovered our stove didn’t work. After watching the front desk guy spend 15 minutes trying to fix it and then waiting another 15 minutes for the maintenance guy who never show up, we ended up repacking everything we had already unpacked and moved to a new room, which wasn’t as nice as our original room. Then, the next morning I discovered our toaster didn’t work. Arg! My spouse had to go downstairs and find someone to exchange the bad toaster for one that worked. Oh, and the TV has maybe 15 channels. Not only is there no HBO or any other movie channels, but it’s also not a smart TV, so no Netflix, Hulu, or any other streaming services. Just 15 super basic channels. Amazingly, after the stove, and the toaster, and the move to a new room, our TV totally froze up on us one night. The front desk guy came to the room and messed with it for a while, but couldn’t unfreeze it, so he left and went somewhere in the hotel to reset it. We had to wait for the TV to turn off and back on and then recapture all 15 channels, or something like that. (So don’t get engaged in any show because you may get locked out for 20-30 minutes!) My advice is, if you’re going to stay in this hotel, first thing is to check to make sure you have hot water. Then I would check the stove, toaster, refrigerator, TV, and any other basic stuff you think you might need, because it’s very possibly broken.

So, how did the hotel compensate us for having a stove that didn’t work, a toaster that didn’t work, a TV that froze up, and having to repack and move to another less desirable room? We got points. I seriously don’t know what the points are for or how many. I totally lost interest as my spouse was telling me about it after her conversation with the manager. She didn’t understand what the points were for either. In other words, no...