Eastwind Hotel - Lake Placid — Hotel in Town of North Elba

My husband and I stayed here in August and had a lovely time. We had one of the Lushna Petite cabins. They are indeed very tiny (170 square feet), but they are light and airy, and the floor-to-ceiling window makes the room feel bigger. Each cabin also has a little porch (with a porch light!), which adds some extra space. Anyway, you don't need a lot of space when you're mostly just using the room to sleep and shower (and BTW, the showerheads are really nice).

The Petite cabins feel like they would be just enough space for 2 people, but we had our 40-pound dog with us (they are dog-friendly), and we did feel a bit crowded. Maybe next time if we have the dog with us, we'll upgrade to a Lushna Suite cabin (400 square feet).

Note that none of the rooms or cabins have TVs. But they do have state-of-the-art heating/AC units mounted on the wall where a TV might ordinarily go. They come with remotes and are more fun to play with than any hotel TV.

Also note that you supposedly only get about 15 minutes of hot water at a time in the Lushna Petite cabins (I imagine the larger Lushna Suites have correspondingly larger water heaters?), and then it takes about 45 minutes for the water heater to replenish itself. I say "supposedly" because that's what we were told, but we never tested it, as it was August and we didn't want hot showers to begin with. But "15 minutes" of hot water must equate to at least 30 minutes of cool to lukewarm water, because it never ran cold on us. We also coordinated our showers so we were never showering at back-to-back times.

The showers are so nice, though, that I can easily imagine someone losing track of time and running out of hot water. The showerheads are those huge wide ones that make you feel like you're showering in the rain or under a small waterfall. The bathrooms also have high windows that reach the ceiling and give you a view of the treetops. The showerhead combined with the high ceiling and windows gives you the overall sensation of showering outdoors.

If you've never showered outdoors, let me tell you what you're missing. When I was growing up, we had a beach house with an outdoor shower stall on the back deck. It was fully enclosed by 4 walls, but no roof, and it was equipped with hot water. Ostensibly it was for rinsing the sand off your body and out of your hair and bathing suit before coming indoors, but a lot of times we used it for our full regular showers. It was just so pleasant to bathe with the sun and the breeze on your face, and the sky above your head. Naked outdoors, but in complete privacy and serenity. The showers in the Lushna cabins give you much of the same sensation.

The fire pits are a really nice touch. Every cabin has its own little private fire pit, plus 2 chairs, and there's also a large communal fire pit for those who are staying in the rooms, or who just want to socialize. They also have s'mores kits, if you want to make s'mores on the fire.

The breakfast basket is really good, 10/10 would recommend. Also there is free coffee in the office until 11 AM, and also a cute little cocktail bar.

There's also a kind of park in the back: a trail leads down to a huge grassy field with a large stream running through it, and a wooded area off to one side. The trail picks up again at the wooded area and leads you around to the other side of the stream. It's just a beautiful property overall.

The only thing I can really think of to complain about is that I wish the pool was heated, just a little bit. It doesn't have to be 85 degrees, but maybe 75? Even in August, the days are not hot enough to make swimming in an unheated pool comfortable. I tried a few times, but even in the heat of the mid-day sun, the water was just too cold for me.

Oh, also, it'd be awesome if they installed some kind of retractable awning on the cabins, so you can hang out on your little porch even when...

Let me start with we have stayed at both of the other Eastwind properties so we were extremely excited to stay for our first time in the Adirondacks with Eastwind due to our phenomenal experience at the other two locations. We would HIGHLY recommend the two locations in the Catskills, unfortunately I cannot say the same for here.

The good: Location was great, it was close to everything including hiking, dining, shopping and site seeing.

Patrick was phenomenal, he was very kind, went above and beyond and took care of any request we had. One of the nights we went to get a bottle of wine and he passed us one complimentary because of our frequent stays at Eastwind.

The bad:

This property isn’t as large as the other two, they only have one sauna and not as much outdoors to do at the property. The main communal area is much smaller, doesn’t have as much to do as the other two properties (I.e games, etc) and the indoor fireplace was not working, one of our favorite things to do at the other two properties at night was to sit by the fire with a cocktail and play a game. This brings me to my other point, they advertise a small menu, wines, beers, and cocktails. During our stay they were not offering any cocktails only beer and wine. In addition one afternoon we wanted some small bites and the woman working (never introduced herself) told my wife “we don’t have A menu” very rudely, then proceeded to tell her “all they had was the charcuterie board.” We had a few interactions with this woman and none of them were pleasant, she seemed bothered with any request and when we checked out we stopped by and I asked if we could just leave the key at the bar as we are checking account, she looked at me and said “I guess that will work.” No thanking us for staying, hope we see you again soon, she was very cold and unwelcoming.

The room, we stayed in Lushna suite E. As others have said the bathroom smells strong of sewage, the keypad for the door was broken so had to use a key. The suite was not thoroughly cleaned before our stay, we found toenail clipping and confetti under the couch. We needed to request new bed sheets and pillow cases, there was what looked to be snot and dried blood on the sheet and pillow case. No one came around for fresh towels, toilet paper, garbage collection, etc so anytime we needed something we had to ask and aside from Patrick being very accommodating if the other woman was working we seemed to be bothering her.

I would highly recommend either property in the Catskills but this property we will not be back to and would stay elsewhere in the Lake Placid area which was unfortunate. They need friendlier employees, better work on upkeep of the property and rooms, fix things that are broken, and not advertise drink and food items that they do not offer. I hate to Leave this review because of our wonderful experiences at the other properties but because of the price and our experience I would not recommend a stay at...

My girlfriend and I stayed at this hotel and I'm not sure if our specific room is cursed or something, but we had the same room as a couple of the negative comments I've seen in these reviews. The King Champlain room. We arrived and thought the room was very nicely decorated, the people were somewhat friendly, and the common areas looked nice. The location is good and is walkable to some delicious food. There are also complimentary bikes offered, but we didn't use those. The property sits near the Chubb River, with plenty of outdoor space, but the green area by the river had one spot with dog poop out of a bag and another spot with dog poop in a bag lol...also, no big trees in an open area unfortunately so it's hard to hammock or set up a nice picnic area. I appreciated the green space, just wish it wasn't an open field.

The bad: Apparently no hot water in our room. I told one person and she said she'll let the manager who comes in later know...she mentioned that there was a major water leak in the room below mine, so it might be related to that. Fast forward several hours I stop by again after testing the water again to no avail. This time the manager tells me that the building our room is in just doesn't really have great luck with hot water, but he's gonna look into it more. Fast forward another few hours and I see him again and he said it should be hot water now. This happens maybe 1-2 more times that day. Breakfast basket was advertised as $30, but after all was said and done it was a $40 basket...with some small pastries, one yogurt, one small glass of OJ, some bread/jam. Not sure if my idea of a good breakfast basket is skewed, but it really didn't seem worth the money to us. Nail clipping on the ground by the bed...not a huge deal, but worth mentioning. Some sort of poop/toilet smell in the Champlain house stairwell. Not sure what that was, but I think one or several of the other guests near us noticed it too as the stairwell door was left open every time I went down there (even though it says to leave it closed).

Anyway, our main issue was the hot water. We went into the communal sauna and then came back to rinse off and that's when we first discovered there was no hot water. It's really not ideal when there's almost an expectation to have hot water in a hotel (especially when paying a few hundred dollars to stay there). The fact that employees told us more than one reason for the lack of hot water tells me they have no idea why, but then the manager joking about how that building never really gets hot water is where it starts to get frustrating. If it's a known issue, then do...