When looking at the Atholl palace website, we thought we had found the perfect old Scottish castle we wanted to sleep in. But it was indeed far from perfect.
First, the reception people weren't nice at all and didn't even indicate us our room, just told us our room number. We took the very small elevator (we found only one for this huge hotel so expect to wait hours at the elevator) and managed to find our room. It was a small and cold room with no view. We ordered a small heater at the reception because the heat wasn't working but even with that, the room stayed cold during our entire 3 nights stay.
As an advice, you should stay far away from the food! It is certainly the worst I have ever tried in my life! Had you ever heard of an hotel serving fryed tripes for breakfast? Me neither! We also had dinner there, reserving a table in the afternoon and of course when we arrived at dinner the table wasn't booked for us (the hotel is so disorganised!). After having finally found a table, we ordered the menu and found out that the quality of the food (although presented in a very gastronomic way) was even lower than that of a low quality fast food. Other advice: if you make it for breakfast, respect carefully the schedule (which, by the way, seems to change everyday) because if you arrive only 5 mins late, they will strongly refuse you your breakfast but, of course, still charging it to you! Anyway, just think at what you missed and you'll realize it wasn't a big loss :-)
The only good thing was the swimming pool and the jacuzzi which are quite enjoyable when they aren't filled with kids or large groups. Don't expect the Sauna or Hamman to work!
Last thing: when we checked out, they didn't ask us to pay so I thought the money would be directly withdrawed from my credit card number I gave them when I booked... No: they called us two hours after we left the hotel and asked us to come back because they forgot to make us pay. I told them that there was no way we would go back there and to take the money from the credit card. It somehow took them 4 days and 6 phone calls to me on my mobile (at random hours) to figure out how to charge my card...
Atholl palace bears its name!

We got married there on 16th July with 130 guests staying from England, Scotland and Ireland. Not one single complaint. What a fantastic location for a wedding. The staff were attentive, the food in the hotel and the wedding was amazing and the rooms were beautiful. The Hotel is old but hey, who wants modern in the Scottish Highlands. The spa is fantastic and the staff there were really friendly. I would definately recommend this hotel.

The bedroom was comfortable with superb views, the staff were helpful and friendly but no senior staff to be seen. The location was very good indeed. The £25 table d'hote menu was pedestrian and the food dire. Two 3/4 full mains plates were removed without comment which says it all!. Escape to the a la carte with mains (including veg ) at £20+ to £30 range proved very disappointing for our friends who chose that route. Breakfast which was dreaded turned out to be ok if nothing special. All very sad ...it could be so different.

I'd refer you to the review titled "What this could be" for a VERY accurate assessment and would echo those comments. Though, I will add
that the nice website and hotel brochures, whilst not blatantly deceptive, are more indicative of Atholl Palace's apparently excellent marketing department or firm than reality. We had booked a
"valley view" room which was not available, likely due to an RBS conference underway, despite arriving before 6PM and did receive a tariff reduction, but only 4 pounds per night which was correct- if brochure photos are to be believed, we'd have gladly paid for the nicer(?) room. Ours was large albeit very spartan and lacked AC- not that we needed cooling, but it might have been sorely missed during a
warmer period. We never ate supper at the hotel owing to a rather pricey menu which we suspect did not reflect superior offerings and found (for the plentiful, if unremarkable breakfast buffet) that, as in other areas of Scotland and NOT being racist!!, there was more than a little difficulty communicating with immigrant members of the wait staff resulting in the need to repeat requests plus some errors in response. Fee-based internet access was available, however the Wi-Fi (not their fault) was down most of the time so the desk person did let us check e-mail on the hotel system and that was appreciated.
We got a sense that functions are well supervised and those facilities were impressive but, sadly, I believe there are probably some better "bang for the buck" (or should I say "pop for the pound") alternatives than the Atholl Palace in and around the lovely town of Pitlochry for families and couples on holiday.