Williamsburg Woodlands Hotel & Suites, an official Colonial Williamsburg Hotel — Hotel in Williamsburg

My family has just returned from our eighth stay at The Woodlands in the last several years and noticed a significant decline in many areas. We would not stay there again unless things change. I did fill out the survey from the hotel and heard back from the manager, who apologized again, as well as escalated our experience in an email to Colonial Williamsburg. I received a confirmation email and was told they would respond in 3-5 business days. Since it has been almost double that time period and I have heard nothing, I am writing this review.||In April, we reserved two adjoining rooms for October 3-5. On September 4, we called to see if we could extend the visit and arrive a day earlier with the adjoining rooms. We were assured that it would not be a problem and the rooms would be adjoining. Our daughter has special needs, so it was important to us that the rooms be adjoining – we would not have extended the stay if it was not possible. When we arrived on Thursday to check in, we were told that the rooms were across the hall from each other (they were actually next to each other). When I pointed out that we had confirmed they were adjoining, we were told that no adjoining rooms were available due to the students from William & Mary who are staying there until their dorms are completed. ||Cameron checked us in, he was very polite but I could see this issue was beyond what he could change. I later spoke with Paula, the manager that night. She was also polite, professional and frustrated that the students were still staying there beyond the original deadline. She told me that the call center took our September call and confirmed adjoining rooms when they should have transferred the call directly to the front desk. Everyone at the hotel was professional and polite and frustrated that their hands were basically tied, which is why I tried to escalate to Colonial Williamsburg.||On Friday morning, I returned from breakfast (which has gone further downhill, more on that below) to find a giant cockroach in the bathtub in our room (see picture). After killing it, we went to the front desk and spoke with Jasmine, the manager for the day. She offered to wash any clothing, had housekeeping thoroughly clean the room again and took a night off our bill for that room. If I had been able to find other accommodations, I would have checked out and gone elsewhere but due to family weekend at William & Mary, nothing was available. The morning of checkout, there was a large centipede in the tub (see picture). Just outside the room, there were a number of bugs near the ceiling in the hallway (see picture). I have never experienced issues with cleanliness or bugs before at The Woodlands, but it is gross to stay somewhere and encounter this many. I was very glad we were leaving. We did let the front desk know at checkout.||The breakfast no longer includes hot sandwiches, just “hot” pastries held under a heat lamp. The fruit cups are gone, only oranges, apples and bananas. The first morning, there were so many fruit flies on one of the bananas with a gash in it that I showed the woman who was in charge of breakfast and told her I was throwing it out. It made eating any of the other fruit unappetizing due to the amount of fruit flies flying around. The cereals are no longer individual, meaning they also were affected. There were grinds in the coffee and open containers of yogurt in the fridge. Between the lack of quality and cleanliness issues, we didn’t even eat breakfast there the second morning.||The Woodlands is very tired, it needs a significant overhaul – our shower head had mold on it, the sink wouldn’t drain properly, the last few rooms we have stayed in have had issues including chipped tiles/counters in the bathroom, wallpaper coming off the walls, sagging baseboard “mouldings” and holes in the coverlets. The fact that there are no king rooms connected to double rooms (the ideal set up for a family) boggles my mind. The beds are doubles, not queens, and not comfortable to sleep in as a couple.||I can appreciate that the hotel staff was put into a difficult position with students from the university staying unexpectedly, but we did not receive a phone call in advance to let us know we wouldn't get adjoining rooms nor were we paying less or being compensated in any other way for our inconvenience. It seems that Colonial Williamsburg has farmed out some areas it used to have more control over to the detriment of visitors. The shuttles are now run by WATA with rude drivers and shorter running hours and the restaurants have become so expensive that they are basically out of reach for a lot of families. Very...

Breakfast is great, distance to Williamsburg is great, but overall it feels rundown and not so great. The breakfast is easily the best hotel breakfast I've had over a few hotels on this vacation, nominal continental breakfast plus breakfast sandwiches, oatmeal and grits packets, fresh fruit, cereal that's not just sweet junk food, granola bars, waffles, and coffee that is actually not beyond horrible like at a typical hotel (I didn't have to add cream, not saying it's super good or anything, just that I wasn't required to have coffee with my cream in order to drink it), so a win win all around. It doesn't have hot eggs and bacon and stuff like normal, but at this point in my hotel stays and my age i just want healthy options, so I'm happy. The one downside is there is often nowhere to sit, it's just so crowded. You can take a bus to Williamsburg, but we had no trouble finding parking there (though the pay options are annoying but that's unrelated to the hotel). Oh, and I should add that my wife likes the hotel's kid activity options, though we didn't do any of them it's nice they exist, especially if you're here for a few days. As for the bad.... The halls all feel so dated and humid, I don't think they have AC on the inside except in the rooms. The wall paper in the halls and rooms is so old feeling. The halls all have these ugly framed pictures of trees, probably about 4 total that are just everywhere. The vending and ice machine seems to just not work in about half the rooms, I had to go looking around to find ones that are powered, and even further for ones that are actually making ice at all. What a mess. And the vending machines that do work are heavily under stocked. They have a little cafe place to eat onsite, but it seems closed even when it's open. Maybe it's not really shutting down, my wife thought maybe we could get real food, but the way it looked about 30min before it closed is that they only had chips and cold sandwiches and stuff and they put those machines in front of the kitchen, so idk, we just got our kid some chips, so it just wasn't clear. There was no microwave in the room, but that's not a big deal. Oh, and for the beds, we are supposed to have two queen beds, but there is no way these are queens, they are at best twins, I have no room with my wife and I in the bed, these just are not so great. The bigger deal is there is no safety security latch on the room door, so you have no way to secure the room against the normal digital entry which staff can use (or maybe that's not accurate, there is the usual deadbolt twist lock by the handle itself, just nothing beyond that). We also had one of those adjoining room doors, and similarly no way to secure those other than the little deadbolt with no obvious sense that it's really locked. Several times we've heard sounds of someone trying to get into rooms nearby or maybe ours, we don't know, so we don't have a high sense of safety. Another thing on the outside, the pool is nice and big, but they had it padlocked both times we looked at it, and idk why, it wasn't late. One time was after a storm so maybe they didn't reopen it, it just seemed odd. So, overall it's just fine, it works, and there are high points for sure, but it feels rundown and they just need to dot a few i's to be better, and the odd thing is that they have not done that yet, which makes me wonder about the management...

Pros - Location. You are right at the visitor center. If you're coming to visit Colonial williamsburg, you can't get any closer. This alone makes this hotel the best choice if you're visiting Colonial Williamsburg. Our kids loved the giant model of Williamsburg. We spent a lot of time there. Kids activities. Kids loved the huge pool. Little kids would love the splash pad. It's a nice set up. We played mini golf one night and kids enjoyed that. The play ground is teeny tiny. Room was clean and bathroom is big. The property is huge and attached to the visitor center. We enjoyed just walking around and checking out all the buildings. The employees are great! Every person we talked to was exceptionally friendly. Cons- (None were real issues and don't change our love for this hotel) We stayed Friday to Monday. 2 bus tours pulled in Sunday night. Monday breakfast was a mess. We went down to breakfast at 730 each morning. Saturday and Sunday there were lots of other families eating but we had no trouble finding a table. Monday morning!!!! There were NO tables. The tours over loaded the breakfast. We ended up sitting outside (in the rain.) Luckily there are 2 tables with big enough umbrellas to keep the seats dry. Unfortunately, they took all the seats and all the food. There was no issue with food the other mornings. But today, there was more food put out and less food left. We didn't have any issues, but anyone coming down after us might have. Just be aware that staying on a Monday does not guarantee less people. The bathroom ceiling was peeling off. Not really an issue but definitely unsightly. Full sized beds are just too small. They need to upgrade to queen sized beds. Some of the ice makers and soda machines didn't work. We were on the 3rd floor and had a hard time finding an ice maker that worked. There were either no vending in some areas, or they weren't working in others. We had to go down to front desk to buy a soda there.

If coming back to CW, I'd definitely stay here again. People complaining about kids, chose to come to the hotel with the best kids set up during CW homeschool month so yeah, there's going to be a lot of kids. That being said, we didn't see many other families at all. Most other people were older adults 50s+. Which worked out nice for us because the kid activities were never busy. Families with small children I would 100% recommend Woodlands.

BREAKFAST CHOICES Each day there was bread, bagels, muffins with 2 rolling toasters. There were packages muffins (chocolate, blueberry, and banana nut) milk cartons (which as homeschoolers our kids find fun!) There was also oj and apple juice available. Hot breakfast choices Canadian bacon egg and cheese croissant, Canadian bacon egg and cheese biscuit (unedible) a spicy chorizo egg and cheese pop over, and a bacon egg and cheese burrito. These were not all offered each day it changed daily. They were prepackaged and heated. All of them were eh. Nothing I would be excited to eat again. But free is free. There was also lots of fresh fruit each day. And an oatmeal bar. The breakfast was fine and everyone found...