The St. Regis Deer Valley — Hotel in Park City

So many amazing things about the hotel (and one GIGANTIC flaw, unless you're a shark who has always dreamt of living in a fish cannery.)||||Now let's start with the good! Is this place absolutely magical during the holidays? Will your children get to pose with live reindeer? Yes, your Christmas cards are gonna be lit! Will they get to live out their Hansel and Gretel dreams with a full sized gingerbread house full of endless delectable meringues shaped like Santa hats, decorated sugar cookies, and freshly spun cotton candy? Yes! Will they fight in the lobby with their newly created balloon swords while you exclaim and cry globs of tears over the hilarious caricatures of them created by the hotel's artist in the lobby? Yes! Do you get to do this with the glass of Moet they just sabored? Yes! ||||Is the ski valet absolutely amazing and so accommodating, down to the nicest man running the lift tickets print out? Yes! ||||Is housekeeping amazing, is the room spotless? Yes! ||||So... It's amazing, but why, you might ask, did you give only 3 stars??? Funny thing you might ask!!!!||||We've done the good, now let's hit the food! ||||Do you ever feel like you're in the TV show The Good Place? Everything looks amazing and perfect, but then a tiny million things go wrong. At first, you're like, it's ok, no worries, no big deal and after the ten thousandth time the entire container of salt pours out when you're trying to season your food, you're like, wait, this is the bad place. (If I spoiled the show, sorry, but it's been like YEARS guys.)||||Well, folks, it felt like they had a pre-service in the kitchen as they saw me heading into the hotel to prep their million different ways to break my patient spirit because it felt like I was being tested any time I tried to get near food in this hotel.||||You're probably exhausted of me so I'll try and keep it short. (As I proceed to not keep it short.) Do you love the smell of rotting shrimp? Do you want it to pervade the smell of your room and send you spiraling into a small mental breakdown as they gaslight you? If so, this is the perfect hotel for you! I assume you must be an orca looking to book a ski vacation, so read on, as we journey together! ||||I'd like to preface this by: I have very calm and reasonable young children, who love to patiently wait for their food (sense the sarcasm?) After a number of failed meals at the hotel restaurant where my patience was heavily tested and food took over an hour to arrive (once possibly because the server forgot to put it in, or because the kitchen lost the ticket as the server claimed - it's a secret I'll never know), I decided we would try room service so at least my kids could watch TV while we waited. It's ok, I tell myself - I figured out the hack for eating and I'm prepared for this, fool me once, fool me twice - you get it. ||||Well well, jokes on me! So I order some food - a mushroom truffle pasta that I had previously that honestly truly was heavenly, a pasta with shrimp for my son and a quesadilla for my daughter. Expecting an hour wait, I turn on Disney and start packing because we have an early flight in the morning. I'm Mom of the year, I've got this, I'm firmly patting myself on the back. ||||Yeah, I don't got this. The food arrives in an hour later and immediately, I know something is wrong. There's a smell that immediately hits the room. Well, it's ok, I tell myself, I'm sure it's fine, just ignore it. It's the St. Regis, I bet it's just in my head, I'm being crazy. I sign for the bill, and I open the tray covers. Mushroom pasta, looks fine, quesadilla, looks great too, pasta with shr...? The smell hits my face, as if I'm downwind from a cove full of seals. Like the combination of a garbage dump and rotting fish carcasses, inside a formaldehyde factory. I poke at the shrimp and lift one up to my face. Are shrimp supposed to be grey after they're cooked? The parts of my brain are actively fighting now - there's the rational part that knows the shrimp is way past rotting and the delulu part of my brain that is trying to manage the fact that I'm now physically blocking my hungry children who have immediately tried to descend upon the food. Well, my brain reaches a compromise - I'll just take a bite to make sure. I'm sure it'll be ok, the delulu side of my brain confidently declares. I take a bite and immediately the rational side of my brain starts screaming expletives as I run to the garbage and start violently spitting the food out, as visions of me in United economy the next morning, puking my guts out from food poisoning, swim in my head. ||||It's ok, I tell myself, as I calmly call the front desk. At this point, I cannot consider the idea of eating, so I tell them to just take the shrimp pasta off and we will share what we have left. I hang up. My son starts weeping at the prospect of eating pasta with mushrooms. Normally, I can handle this like a normal parent and use this as a teachable moment. But, in this moment, I am only consumed by the fact that my mouth tastes like I have just licked the liquid that pools at the bottom of a garbage can when you take the full bag out. I cannot handle life currently and I attempt to take the easy way out and I call the front desk back and beg them to make a pasta, but plain, please, with no shrimp anywhere near it. ||||The children eat the quesadilla and we wait for the plain pasta to arrive. I have brushed and flossed and gargled with every ounce of mouthwash I have found. Unfortunately, it's taking a while, and wooden cabinet in which the garbage can (where I threw in the shrimp) is no match for the smell. The smell is actively now leaching out, and marinating the room. This of course, makes me more patient, and rational. ||||It's been about an hour and the children are now way past their bedtime (I've fed them all the snacks I brought from home and they're wired), the room smells like the inside of a diaper pail, and the pasta still has not arrived. I just need to get the kids to bed. I call the front desk to tell them to cancel the pasta, they put me on hold for about 5 minutes, and then I suddenly hear a knock on the door. It's the pasta and a server who looks like she wants to be here in this moment as much as I do.||||At this point, I'm truly about to lose it (remember, I still have to get the kids to bed, pack, and it's been two hours since I originally ordered dinner and I have two young children). I am still on the phone with the front desk and I am simultaneously telling them and the server that I need to send the pasta back because we actually do not have time to eat it. I am being convinced by both sides to accept the food and I just want it all to go away, so I just tell the server to leave the pasta on the table. Ok, she says, but... I'm going to need you to sign the bill because um, you have to pay for the replacement pasta. ||||Anywayyyyyyyy, soooooo, I definitely don't start sobbing at this moment. I take a look at the bill (I think it's like 25 dollars or something cray) and I immediately start blubbering about how I just need her to leave with the pasta ASAP. She then begins to ask me what was wrong with the shrimp, which elicits what feels like the longest stare from me. I respond, "Can you not smell it?" To which she responds that her manager was asking her lots of questions about how we knew it was spoiled. Wait... am I being gaslit by the St. Regis?||||Anyway, she does leave with the pasta, along with my pride and sanity and I manage to get the kids into bed. As my sanity returns, I tie off the garbage bag with the shrimp and leave it on the room service cart in the hallway, telling myself the room will just air out in a few minutes. I try and shower the smell off and I get into bed, resigning myself to a lifetime of smelling like a tuna cannery. As I'm drifting off to sleep, I'm awoken by my husband standing at the foot of the bed, having just come back from dinner and drinks with work colleagues. "What the (BLEEP) is this smell? What died in here?!"||||I feel vindicated. I'm not crazy! I then, as a sane person might, immediately start bawling. Through my sobs, I tell him what happened. It's ok though, I tell him, because my coat already has a base smell of ketchup, so this is just achieving a perfect layered eau! Oh, did I forget to mention that they spilled a container of ketchup on my coat when I was in the bathroom at lunch one day and told me they had no idea how it happened and I had to use baby wipes I had in my bag to clean it up? (I mean, it's not fur, it's a ski coat, I just machine washed it at home a few days later, but still.)||||My husband leaves to go to the front desk where they offer to send someone to clean the room, if we wake up the kids (LOL) and they pass along his number to the food services manager. The manager does comp the room service bill, so I will give that to them... But, St. Regis, if you read this, please please fix your restaurant service before high season. And if someone put you guys up to testing my patience to see how far it would go, please... Let me know who that was, I definitely want to know because I have some words for them! I promise you, they're...

Let me first say that this hotel is great. The rooms are stellar, the service impeccable, and the amenities and little “extra’s” that you receive rival any SPG hotel that you will travel to. Our rooms were serviced multiple times during the day and the help and attitude of the employee’s we interacted with was spectacular. As a hotel, this really is one of the best in the United States.

However, there are issues. Less importantly are the athletic facilities. Basically what they term the “fitness center” is a not much more than a hallway that leads you to the pool. Yes, there are better and more machines than you would typically find at a normal hotel; however, at (what is considered) the pinnacle of SPG properties a more complete athletic club would be nice.

Nevertheless the biggest issue my family found with this hotel was the J&G bar and restaurant. At the bar, our appetizers were initially forgotten twice when we ordered on two separate days. The real issues though we found at the J&G Grill. On one night it took a half hour for our dessert to be served, incorrectly, and during our second night (Christmas dinner) our drinks were forgotten about and one individual in our party got their meal served incorrectly again. Moreover, for the price (around $650 including tip for a group of five) the portion sizes were incredibly small. We considered the food good but not stellar.

Look, we may have been picky. However, for the money our party was spending every night and specifically at this restaurant I think we have the right to expect near perfection. The restaurants here are considered to be some of the best in the state and the crown jewel of the SPG family. It should reflect these high expectations, yet this was not the case for us. Yes, there may have been a lot of stress during the Christmas season but fundamentally we have eaten at better restaurants for less. The restaurant needs to take it up a notch. With this being a consistent problem over several days, the staff is not as experienced as they should be for a restaurant of this price.

What it came down to is that the wait staff made silly mistakes. Along with everyone else at this hotel they were extremely courteous but - specifically at the restaurant - they need more experience. All restaurants should strive to attain the level of service these individuals strive to maintain but proper service needs to be backed up with proper training. The hotel should match the quality of their five star resort to, what it hopes, is its five star restaurant.

A breakdown of our review:

Room Comfort: 5/5 - You won’t find much better

Staff Met My Needs: 4/5 - All are extremely attentive and are willing to bend over backwards to meet your needs. Only because of the restaurant has this rating been brought down a star.

Room Cleanliness: 5/5 - Staff comes in at all hours of the day to make sure your room is kept top notch

Facilities met my expectations: 4/5 (needs improvement) - With the exception of the Athletic club and restaurant the hotel greatly exceeded expectations. However, I am basing this rating upon the review above. I am giving the hotel a four star rating due to the fact that these two aspects need improvement. All the other facilities were impeccable: the spa was great, pool amazing and the access to the ski slopes unmatched. SPG Recognition: 5/5 - Voted best ski resort in the US and it shows why.

Would you recommend this hotel?: 4/5 - Definitely for the rooms and staff, thought I might look elsewhere...

This hotel is average as 5 start hotels go and on a price adjusted basis it is low quality. Avoid it !!!

What should your expectations be for a premium resort at SUPER premium prices ? Are my expectations too high ? We booked one of the residences at Christmas. Peak prices and demand - I get it. When we checked in nobody showed us to the residence which was large and had a lot to figure out. None of the lights were on. Nobody had checked it because the TV did not work properly. The residence is meant to have butlers that take care of you but all ours did was answer the phone like an operator instead of, you know, ACTUALLY taking care of us. The room service menu was on the tv and after a long day I could not order anything (because the tv wasnt working) and I was hungry. It took them one hour to print out a copy of the menu. Everybody who came in told us they weren't really sure how to solve problems in the residences. If that is true then St Regis should not rent them out. The fire in the living room ceased working and it took them a day to fix it. What I found annoying as well was staff would come up to us (I am guessing having been informed we were not having a good time), and ask us if there were any further issues. It was nice to be asked and I would tell them the remaining problems. But it appeared they never passed on the information as the issues were not addressed. The restaurants were fully booked for the most part - which again, I get, but the room service menu was extremely limited. They ran out of chicken for a chicken sandwich (holidays was the answer), then they ran out of bacon. They charge a 25 percent service fee for room service but still left the obligatory column for a "tip". A massage was USD 300 for 50 minutes before tax and tip. I sound like I am focused solely on cost and I'm not, but this place is just not that good and certainly not worth its' prices. Before we booked we were told the concierge could not take care of rentals and ski passes because they were separate. I found that to be weird even though true. Other examples of poor attention to detail or just poor quality was the gym. We were there for more than a week and two of the 4 treadmills were not working. The only cable machine as well had one side out of service the entire time we were there. How can you not fix those things at a resort that charges these prices ?

We ate lunch and breakfast at the Stein Eriksen lodge. Now that place had good service and great food. I wish we had checked out the rooms there and if I ever go back to Deer Valley I will think about staying there.

The snow wasn't great but the skiing and short lift lines made the skiing experience itself enjoyable and I will definitely return to Deer Valley.

It is interesting how variable experiences can be across the same hotel group. The St Regis Bali is amazing and the service, rooms and food are incredible. I don't know whether that makes me feel better or worse but it did make me realise one thing.

There is only one high end hotel chain that is incredible across all countries and locations I have visited. I have never had a bad experience there and I would love to understand how they maintain such quality consistently across the world because very few others seem to be able to do that. So my recommendation is - if you get the chance, stay at a...