We stayed here on one of the Hotel's 5 night deals last week, which represents excellent value for money. The staff are all very friendly and make you feel very welcome. The food is of a very high standard, and very tasty. In the evening you can come down to the bar/lounge area, have a drink, served with a selection of canapes & choose your meal from a different menu every night, the menu offers four or five choices of starter, main & dessert. The lemon bread & butter pudding was my favorite. Coffee & sweets finish off the evening, with more drinks at the bar, and a game of Trivial Pursuit from the selection of games/books available in the lounge.
A very good base for walking, Ambleside is within walking distance with numerous walks availble. A good " Regent" breakfast sets you up for the day (you won't need lunch!), and then you can look forward to a great dinner in the evening after a long rewarding walk.
The rooms are clean & well decorated, not large, but they have everything you need and are cosy. The bathrooms are small, but have what you need in a bathroom!
We have been coming to this Hotel every year for over 10 years, and will continue to come back, as we cannot fault the service or the food and are made extremley welcome.

We stayed at the Regent Hotel in January for a 5 night break with our eight month old baby. Having read some critical reviews on Trip Advisor, particularly regarding babies I was a bit apprehensive.

But I needn't have been. The staff could not have been more welcoming and although the hotel isn't particularly orientated to babies and children we were in no way made to feel we were being awkward. High chairs were provided when necessary, food heated if required and the receptionist even looked after our son for a while one night so we could eat our deserts in peace!

We were in room 1 on the first floor of the main building, which was a family room with a travel cot, double bed and single bed. There was plenty of storage and the en suite bathroom was modern and clean, very powerful shower was great. Our room overlooked the front of the hotel and over to Lake Windermere. Have no complaints about the room at all, was lovely.

We ate in the restaurant, sometimes at the earliest sitting at 6.30pm with our baby, or leaving him in the room and eating later with the majority of the residents. The waiting staff were lovely and the food was absolutely top notch. Our dinners were included in the package which was amazing value. There was a small supplement for a couple of items on the menu each night (usually prawn starters and steak mains) but even taking this in to consideration still great value. We enjoyed every meal we had, and breakfast was lovely as well with a great selection available.

The hotel is about 10 minutes walk from Ambleside which has loads of shops, restaurants etc. Hotel also has loads of parking in the grounds.

We used the swimming pool every day, it was nice and warm and clean and in the summer there are sliding doors on to the central courtyard. The pool has a jet machine too. We also used the hotels DVD library.

We had a great stay, and had a super deal which appears to be on every winter, five nights for £199 pp dinner bed and breakfast.

Brilliant, would definitely return!

Stayed at The Regent on the Lake last week - can thoroughly recommend. Had a room on an internal courtyard. Nice small indoor swimming pool but best of all the location right next to Lake Windermere. Lots of parking. 5 minute walk into Ambleside for shopping. Got a realy good deal midweek on the Internet.

We stayed for a couple of nights in one of the suites - room 31. Managed to get a pretty good deal through the hotel directly - £159 pp for the 2 nights DBB.
All in all for what we paid it was very reasonable. The restaurant/bar area was very modern and the food, although quite small portions, (talking about 8 chips with your steak here) was lovely (they have an AA rosette to show for it).

The room we had was enormous. We decided to pay and extra £10 supplement pppn for room 31 as it had a jacuzzi and (apparently) a lake view. essentially room 31 is a separate "granny annex" to the main part of the hotel. Accessed by walking round the back of the hotel, this was a bit of a concern from a security aspect.
Although I would recomend staying at the Hotel if you can get a good deal, I would book either one of the Garden Rooms of the Sail Loft

A few negatives:

The room didn't have curtains up at the windows - just badly fitting vertical blinds. As the bed was directly under a window, and a walkway passes right by, this meant that anyone walking by could see into the room...a little unnerving as you slept. It also meant that the room got very cold at night (not helped by the fact that the heating was turned off by the hotel throughout the night (this was the middle of winter and freezing!) and there was no thermostat in the room itself.

The lake view that we had paid a supplement for could only be seen from the dining area at the back of the room, and even then, only by craning your neck....not worth paying the extra. I would guess that if your wanting a lake view your best option is to go for the Sail Loft.

If your thinking of staying in a standard room, take note of the earlier comments - these looked VERY small and shabby and a bit run down (reminiscent of the chalets on hi-de-hi). Garden rooms however, appear to be quite newly decorated.

On the plus side, service was very good and the breakfast is to die for.