We have been coming to Cedar Glen for the past 9 years with our kids, usually staying for about a week. The location is great, and we love the cabin and site amenities. After our stay summer of 2022, the property changed ownership. We were excited and hopeful that our experience this past July 30 - Aug 6 would be just as memorable. Unfortunately, that was not the case. tl;dr - Checked into same cabin we have stayed in past years to find: dirty dishes in the dishwasher, bedding that gave my son bug bites in the back of his neck, and old sponge for kitchen use. Asked housekeeping to change linens due to bug bites, and what we received was a plastic bag dumped in front of our door with new pillows in them. Except for Charlie, who was great, remaining staff seemed unknowledgeable or unwilling to help with many basic requests. ************** The details: 1) After the first night, my son woke up with 3 bites on the back of his neck. We weren’t sure if it was from the sofa bed or maybe mosquito bites from sitting by the firepit. But after a second night where he woke up with 4 more bites in his neck, I went to the reception. I told the lady at the front desk that we don’t usually do housekeeping during our stay, but could we have someone change out the sheets and pillowcases on the sofabed. She asked if we wanted to replace the entire pillow and I said yes please. Also asked for bath towel replacement and informed her that we would be out around 11 am. She said she would have housekeeping take care of it around 11:30 and made a note. We arrived back to our cabin around 5:45 pm and found a huge plastic bag with 2 replacement pillows and 4 bath towels dumped in front of our door. I had made sure the Do Not Disturb sign was NOT on the door when we left, so that housekeeping would know that they can enter. So instead of changing the sheets and pillows, they were expecting us to do this? Went to the reception to tell them of the situation. No one was at the front desk, but I tracked down the employee, Liam, onsite. When I told him the situation, all I got was “I’m sorry I don’t know anything about this. We don’t have any housekeeping staff here right now.” When I asked how this can be fixed, he repeated that there was no note left on the situation and there is no one he can call to change the sheets. So it is essentially my problem. I pointed out that there was a note left, otherwise, why did someone dump the bag of pillows / towels in front of our door? After that, he acknowledged there may have been some note, but he wasn’t aware of it. Liam said he could give me more pillows and make a note in our account on the situation for the manager, Charlie, the next day. This is the only person on-site for guests to reach out to. I don’t think the service we receive should suffer due to a lack of communication between the staff. For $500+ a night, I would expect that this issue is something they can resolve real time. In the past 9 years we have been coming to Cedar Glen (before the ownership change), we have never received multiple bug bites from pillows before. I met Charlie the next morning, and he was very responsive. Took responsibility, stated that the situation should not have been handled that way, offered to have housecleaning come in and do another thorough clean, and genuinely wanted to see what could be done at that point to improve our stay. I appreciated that but told him it wasn't needed, since that specific issue was resolved by us changing the linens ourselves, there were no new bug bites on my son the subsequent night, and I had done another wipe down of the cabin myself already. 2) On that first night, we were making dinner and I noticed we did not have a complete set of 4 plates that I know is in that cabin’s kitchen. After looking around, I saw that there were dirty dishes sitting in the dishwasher when we checked in. Again, I went to the front desk and asked for some extra plates so we could have 4 plates to eat. When I explained the situation, the man at reception said “oh, ok” and found me two extra plates. No explanation on why housekeeping didn’t catch this when they cleaned the cabin for our arrival or even an apology for the situation and comment that they would follow up with housekeeping. Similar situation when it came for us to wash the dishes after dinner - I found an old sponge was left for us. I had to go again to the front to ask for a new sponge. These expectations are not new. We expected consistency with prior years, which included basic clean supplies in our cabin kitchen, clean bedding, and staff that is responsive. The cleanliness issues are concerning. 3) Less critical, but still annoying were other small things that had changed. Free nightly s'mores is a highlight that the kids love. I was told it started at 8pm (though the check-in note said 7 pm). We arrived back one night at 8:35. Walked in to request a s'mores bag, and was told they were out. The guy said that a bunch of people came earlier and they ran out. When I brought it up to Charlie, the manager, the next morning, he stated that there were definitely enough supplies dropped off the day before and acknowledged that the night staff may have been too lazy to assemble more bags. Afterwards, I did see Charlie have that employee make more bags to ensure there would be enough that next night. If we were paying for an economically priced motel, I still wouldn’t be thrilled but figure some of this may happen. But this should not be the experience at Cedar Glen when I am paying 20% more than last year for the same cabin AND experiencing all these issues for the first time in 9 years, which is when property ownership changed. The prior owners were amazing and we loved our annual trip to Cedar Glen (see my other review from 8 years ago). Our experience this summer seems to be that service, cleanliness, and quality has dropped. Still an amazing location, but I’m not sure that justifies the cost for that experience going forward. I'm torn on whether to try Cedar Glen again next year. It has been part of our family's cherished traditions for almost a decade, but this last trip was disappointing and stressful. I find myself checking reviews, since I'm really hoping to see that senior management is making improvements to get things back to the level it used to be. 1) These issues should not have occurred; 2) the onsite staff's response was not acceptable in those instances; and 3) Charlie's responsiveness was great, but we could only provide feedback after we had to resolve these issues ourselves since he was not onsite when it happened. …
This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.