A Great New Year's Visit
Written: Oct 24 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Terrific setting, good service and food.
Cons: Pricing over holiday periods, slightly tired finishes, average bathrooms in the casitas.
The Bottom Line: A well run, beautifully located resort.
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| jditen's Full Review: Enchantment Resort |
Summary: The Enchantment Resort is a terrific place to stay if you want to enjoy Sedona and its surroundings, and can afford the upscale pricing.
My wife, 5 year old son and I stayed for five nights at the Enchantment Resort over New Year's Day, 2003. We reserved a one bedroom suite -- bedroom with adjoining living room (with Murphy bed) and kitchenette.
Reservations: In researching price, I found a wide variety of room rates for the Enchantment, so I recommend covering the bases before staying here. The Leading Hotels of the World site (www.lhw.com) gave the best description of the rates -- although the rates listed were not the cheapest. The best rate in fact came from calling the hotel directly.
Price: We were staying over New Year's -- so paid appropriately ($700-800/night). The rate dropped significantly for the nights after New Year's eve.
Setting: The Enchantment is truly in a beautiful setting. It is far enough from the town of Sedona that you feel removed from the "strip mall" setting of much of the town, and yet close enough that it was not difficult to return to town for dinner. The red walls of Boynton Canyon beckon immediately behind the resort, and much of the view is of the pinyon pine-juniper forests on the plateau of the surrounding country. Hiking is available immediately adjacent to the hotel.
Rooms are in individual buildings -- I think they call them casas and casitas. Our building (typical of the majority) contained three rooms -- which can be interconnected or let separately. A small bedroom with bath on the left, a large living room with fireplace and bath (and the Murphy bed) and kitchenette, and a large bedroom with bath. Each room had a balcony. The living room's balcony included an outdoor grill (too cold to use over New Year's, alas..).
The lodge building contains a lounge, 2 restaurants, banquet spaces, a gift shop and facilities for the main pool. I saw smaller pools elsewhere on the property.
The Rooms: Spacious, with comfortable beds (and sofas and easy chairs in the living room). The finishes of our suite were just ever so slightly tired -- I'm thinking the room should be due for a rehab soon. The bathrooms were below average for this price category (relatively poorly lit, and the tub/shower combo was standard issue Holiday Inn). There were only swinging "saloon" doors on the entry to the bathroom off the large bedroom -- so once the wife got up, so did I.
The large bedroom had a coffee station -- nice touch. The kitchenette had a refrigerator, coffee station, microwave and two burner stove.
The living room (once the bed was stowed) was very large and well lit (we faced West, so in the afternoon the room was sunny and bright). There was a gas fireplace in the corner (for the some reason the pilot kept blowing out, so I had to light and relight it). The bathroom off the living room was functional.
All of the room spaces were very clean, and housekeeping was attentive during our stay.
In the mornings, a newspaper and orange juice were delivered to the front door.
The Public Spaces: There doesn't seem to be much reason to spend time at the lodge, other than to eat and browse the shop. There is in fact not all that much room there for other than those reasons.
Restaurants: The lodge contains the formal restaurant and an informal restaurant. The formal restaurant is the Yavapai Room, the informal Tii Gavo. There is a cafe at the spa -- Mi Amo -- but we didn't try it.
In cold weather, the main attraction of Tii Gavo -- an extensive outdoor dining area -- is not available. So we found Tii Gavo fairly cramped and uninteresting. Happily, one can order from the Yavapai Room's menu, so the food quality in Tii Gavo wasn't an issue. Service was unexceptional.
The Yavapai Room is an attractive space with views down toward the surrounding plateau. Breakfast (there was a nice buffet when we were there) is served there. The food for dinner was very good. The service decent (albeit during our New Year's Eve dinner the server actually dropped our bottle of wine while pouring). Appropriate apologies were issued, and complementary after dinner drinks served.
The prices for food were, to no surprise, very high. The quality made up for some of that.
Other: The resort is very spread out, so some rooms were very far away from the lodge building. In the evening, that makes for a long, cold walk in the winter.
Our 5 year old spent New Year's Eve at Camp Coyote, the resort's children's facility. He raved about it -- and wants to go back just to visit there again. I perceived from viewing activities during the day that the children's activities are well thought out.
My wife visited the spa for a treatment, and raved about it.
One annoyance: At checkout, a three dollar per night "service" charge mysteriously appeared on the bill. When paying $800 night for a room, I expect that everything is included. The charges were promptly and graciously removed on my objection.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jditen
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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