Zalanta Resort — Hotel in South Lake Tahoe

Arrived Sunday 12:30pm on the 1st March, having requested on the 8th February an early check-in as we knew we would be arriving at lunchtime and this was a little early compared to standard policy.||We arrived during a storm and were dropped at the nearby Lake Tahoe Resort Hotel by the airport bus. This was our forth visit to Heavenly. The walk to Zalanta was short but blistering cold and windy. We had four bags and I was relieved when I got to the lobby and dropped my two bags off, immediately turning around to walk back along the concourse to meet my wife with her two bags. Clambering through the closed Zalanta lobby doors again I pushed all 4 bags through to the reception desk. It was then that I realised the 3 people behind the desk staring at me, and one of them finally offered to help. ‘Not exactly bell boy service’ I thought, but hey, this is an apartment block not a hotel so I went with it.||||I was glad to be inside and in my beloved Tahoe again, and just wanted to get in our room and relax and warm up, but upon check-in I was told our room wasn’t actually ready. That the prior guests hadn’t left until 11am, and that it wouldn’t be ready until around 4pm. Ok... I thought, disappointed but... fine.... We can go to lunch and come back at 4pm. But then we were told we couldn’t even check in - and to do the checkin later. Ok........ so basically, we were told to bugger off and come back later. No tour of the hotel, no offer to help. Ok... not a great first impression. ||||So off we went. Left our luggage with reception and had lunch and killed time.||We came back at 15:50 and thought we’d try again. This time the lady at reception stated she could see our early checkin request and apologised it wasn’t accommodated (good to know they had indeed received it). She proceeded to check us in. We got our room keys, and were about to finally head to our room when we were told our room wasn’t ready. And we would need to wait a further 30 minutes. I explained we’d been told that three hours ago, but she replied that she wasn’t aware of that because our last conversation occurred prior to her shift starting.||||So away we went again. We killed even more time around the corner from our hopefully nice room we were looking to stay in for the next 5 nights and were considering investing in outright as a purchase!||||And then we came back and tried again around an hour later. This time another (different and actually very kind and helpful) receptionist was unaware of our prior attempts and discussions and was baffled by our prior treatment and offered to get us to our room right away, where apparently our bags were waiting. ‘Great’ we thought, some good service at last. Until we got to our room door, where the our rooms keys didnt work. And then the kind gentlemen showing us to our room’s keys also didn’t work. “The system doesn’t always work” he explained.||So we waited again. In the corridor. While he went off again to get new keys.||||Finally, we got in our room. The room itself was nice. Overlooking the Gondola with a balcony as described. We immediately checked out the balcony, and it was great, but unfortunately upon re-entering the room the balcony door couldn’t be locked.||The kind gentleman from reception seemed distraught, as it was clear this wasn’t the first time this had happened tonight. Upon our request, he explained we should talk to his manager, as ‘she was the only reason he was still here...’ but she wouldn’t be able to talk to us until the morning. I asked to speak to the manager on the phone today. In the meantime he would request an emergency engineer to attend our room to make it secure. Within 5 minutes an engineer arrived and tried the door. He helpfully pointed out that it had an issue, and it would need a fully qualified engineer to look at it.||||I then spoke to the manager on the phone, who explained that my early check in reservation should not have been confirmed by the agent without speaking to the hotel (even though the earlier lady on reception apologised for failing to meet our request) and could I forward her the email I had received stating that the hotel had accepted our request, and that they had offered to have our room to us only 30 minutes late from policy and the room door is due to be fixed asap. I started to feel like we were causing an unnecessary problem.||||I explained my open and honest feeling to the whole experience right from the first impression I got from struggling with my bags in the lobby. She replied that she was one of the three behind the desk at that point earlier today. My heart sunk...||||Another 30 minutes later, and the kind gentleman from reception confirmed that the emergency engineer would not be able to attend our to our door tonight, and offered the room across the hall. We thought about this long and hard - the security risk of staying where we were versus moving all of our stuff out and then back in to our room during our holiday. But it was now around 6pm, we’d been trying to check in for 5 and a half hours, we were tired and hadn’t unpacked and my wife had started to fall asleep on the sofa in her clothes. So we decided that with some makeshift barricades in front of the balcony door we would stay where we were. We asked the kind gentleman where the safe was to keep our important personal belongings.... It turns out that in these private owned, group rented units, not all of the owners buy safes, so our room didn’t have one! So no safe and no locking door!||||The room was a little cold and so we tried to get the fire going - after a few failed attempts the receptionist explained that unfortunately the fires were a little temperamental... but we finally got it going.||||We had somewhat given up at this point. The kind receptionist left us to it, and we began to try to settle in. The first thing we noticed was the rooms are quite complicated. There are three remotes but with no instructions to what they do. There are a lot of light switches that don’t seem to do anything, and you just got the feeling you were in someone’s house as opposed to a hotel room which is setup to be user intuitive to a different guest each day if need be.||||Finally, just as were about to call it a night, the emergency engineer revisited us and put some gaffer tape over a latch on the balcony door which enable the main lock to work when it was closed. (Photo attached) Not exactly ideal, but it seemed secure and so we agreed that would be ok for tonight and they would look at it again in the morning.||||I’m writing this as we try to get some sleep after a long and pretty painful first day in Zalanta, with our investment ideas now very much focused in other areas.||||Tomorrow is a new day and I really honestly hope I can come back and edit this by the end of our stay which a much...

You do not want to stay here, it is very overpriced ($1900/night with taxes and fees for a 2 bedroom over President's Day) and borderline untruthful in their marketing. The website and room descriptions say "AT the Heavenly Village" but what they don't say is that the property is across from the village separated by a busy highway-it is not really at the village. So if you are thinking you are going to take kids and they can go down to the village to hang out, no way. The property is next to an aging Starlight motel. The "mountain view" units are mostly a view of this highway. The "pool view" units are really a view of a parking lot and a pool (we know because we moved from the mountain to the pool preferring to look at a parking lot vs. a highway). Another guest was moving at the same time we were due to a noxious smell in their unit. The lobby looks like a glorified Hilton Garden Inn. Some of the staff are good, some terrible (even rude) and the overall service is not good. They are understaffed, and on President's Day we went down to get our skis at 9AM from the advertised "valet" which is really the front desk person, when they have time. The one staffer that was on duty there was deep in discussion with a guest about an overpriced bill (not surprising) and when I asked if we could get our skis, I was told there was only one person on the property to help. On another occasion, we phoned down to ask if we could get an extra blanket and we were rudely told they did not have any. The bedding and sheets are very poor quality. On the last morning we were woken up at 7:15AM by loud drilling in the unit above us. They are trying to sell the remaining units and it seems they needed to spruce this one up ASAP. Oh, also there is barely housekeeping, and I had to call the first day at 6PM to ask if someone would make our beds up. I would check the positive reviews of this property for whether these people actually paid the $2k/night or were comped the fees. I left a message for the manager to discuss our disappointment with the property and never heard back. Save your money and book at any one of the less expensive, and probably better serviced hotels/condos...

Okay. This Is an up (pros) and down (cons) review. Cause we were happy (at first) until the unknown hidden charges started coming our way. There's not a lot of information in the fine print, so literally you'll end up with a couple surprises. But about the experience. It's location is perfect, right across the street from the heavenly gondola, and this place is absolutely stunning. The layout was paid very close attention to detail. Rooms are comfortable and if you get mountain side you get a awesome balcony view of the gondola, it's awesome to have a full kitchen with stainless steel appliances, nice bar with plenty of room, kitchen table, and very comfortable large living room area between the rooms. Out-door patio furniture with a BBQ and all that good stuff, it was also pretty cool to see some modernized features like smart TVs that support iOS and Android Cast/Airplay and the lights around the room were seriously pretty cool and definitely set the mood just right! They have a nice gym, great heated pool, with a 2 good sized jacuzzis as well as a really cool fire pit to hang with your friends.

I would've originally given this a 4.5 stars because of the friendly staff members and as well as the awesome room, But I'm being very lenient with 3 just cause I had a good time, cause with these 'surprises' it kind of makes this place deserve a 2 star rating with especially the way they handle these hidden fees in a clueless way. but I don't blame the staff particularly. They are just not very informative about these certain charges and kind of all tell you some what different explanation every time the surprises come up. So expect a 10% fee after the stay, as well as paying an extra $35-40 a night on top of the giant bill you've already paid for from the start! Absolutely ridiculous. So if you've got alot money to kinda toss away (basically paying for an extra night that you're aren't staying.) So beware of this...