Five Lakes Spa Aveda at DoubleTree — Local services in Niagara Falls

Last week I hooked massages for my family. My wife and 7 and 11 year old. I mentioned my kids kids on the phone and referred to my son as little guy. My kids are okay to get massages in our home town. 5 Lakes has a policy.... Nobody below 15 or 16 years of age. Just FYI. Unfortunately we found out about this upon arrival yesterday. Our kids stayed in the hotel lobby and chilled. The communal waiting room is a bit awkward but there is tea and water. I guess it could be an opportunity to be social if you are feeling that way. When we arrived at the waiting room or lounge there were 4 women fully clothed and all of the chairs were spoken for. They left after my jokingly asked them where their robes were. Just a suggestion to the 5 Lakes management.....the waiting area can be awkward. Especially if people aren't wearing underwear under their robes and people in attendance aren't feeling like hanging out with strangers. We came much too early and next time we might arrive just before massage time. Changing in the massage room could and should be an option. Okay. Onto the good stuff. The hotel is awesome. The spa is great. Smells amazing. Front end staff could be a bit more friendly and clear on some things but mostly professional. My therapist. Rileigh. Friendly. Professional. Rileigh had a great gauge on pressure and also on if I wanted to talk or not. I stayed silent for about the first 30 minutes then we chatted for the rest. Her technique was pleasantly flowing with no pauses. I was warm and comfortable the entire massage. I requested a longer concentration of time on my feet and she delivered. Conversation was pleasant with no awkward pauses or weird conversation like I've had with other therapists at other spas. I am giving this review a 5 out of 5. The 5 out 5 is for Rileigh. The spa gets a 4.4 out of 5. My kids really wanted a massage and it didn't happen because of this age policy. I looked online. I could not find. Doesn't mean it's not there. I just couldn't find it and it was not mentioned once on the phone whole booking massages for my KIDS. The first question Marissa asked was how old everybody is. Clearly my son who is 7 and 11 year daughter are not 15 or 16. It was awkward and didn't need to be. We are okay with change. One other thing. My benefits provider sets a limit for a one hour massage at 100 dollars. The menu does not mention that their prices DO NOT include TAXES. It should. If it does..... again..... I could not find it. All the places I've been to has the prices with the taxes included.

We will be returning to the 5 Lakes Spa during our next visit to the Falls. Thank you 5 Lakes for working hard to...

Overall a disappointing experience.

I had called about 4 months early to book a bachelorette party for various spa treatments (massages, pedicures, manicures) and to use the pool. After calling, the spa called me three times with changes! I understand things happen, but I was booking an appointment for 7 girls and wasn't overly impressed that they kept trying to change things. They told us they only had 2 masseuses present, instead of 3 originally promised, then tried to change the start time of our appointment to 10:30 am instead of 11. When trying to change the appointment time, I told them unfortunately no, we had people coming from out of town and couldn't make it there that early.

We arrived at the scheduled time, granted we should've been maybe 5 minutes earlier, but a bunch of the girls were coming from out of town and we ended up getting there right on time. The woman at the desk insisted our appointment for one of the pedicures was supposed to start at 10:30, even though I had refused the time change on the phone, then proceeded to be quite rude. I showed her the confirmation times that the spa had sent via email on my phone, she proceeded to tell us "well you still should've been here at 10:30 to sign the forms" as though it was somehow our fault for arriving at our scheduled time. We signed the forms in approximately 2 minutes.

After some of the spa treatments had started, I went back out to the front desk to ask about the 10:30 pedicure appointment and when we would be receiving it. To which the lady said "I don't know if we can fit that in, since it was at 10:30"... after showing her my confirmation for 11 on my phone!! Eventually they were able to fit in the appointment, but not after leaving one of the girls sitting there for almost an hour after her appointment was supposed to start. Disappointing given we were the only ones at the spa, and had spent well over $1000 from 7 different spa treatments for...

My boyfriend and I stayed at the hotel and had massages and facials done here. Honestly sad to say this place truly disappointed. During our couple massage the male massage therapist doing my massage clearly had a cold and his nose was pouring out and kept coughing the whole time. The worst part is I could hear his nose dripping and heard him wipe his nose with his hand and continue my massage without changing his gloves. Absolutely grossed me out. Other than that the massage itself was wonderful. Facials however were not worth the money. All they did was put some cream and oil on our face and let a mask sit on our face which we were sitting there for 15-20 minutes at the end just waiting for the mask to sit. Felt rushed and definitely could put cream and oil on my face at home. Nothing special about it. Website also said they will consult with you and see your problem areas of the skin to customize the facials and that didn't happen either. Over $600 later and definitely...