We were looking forward to our stay at the Monteverde Lodge and Gardens. After staying in great hotels in San Jose and Arenal we were sadly disappointed when we arrived at Monteverde Lodge. The hotel itself is nice for an eco lodge. However, the rooms are awful. Our room was #105. It was dark, dingy, not clean and EXTREMELY outdated. The bed, linens, bed spread, etc were very old and uncomfortable. The room is straight out of the 70's with dark wood walls, 70's dark furniture, etc. The last day we did not have any hot water so no showers that day. On the other hand the ground are nice and the breakfast is very good. We expected more since this was one of the pricer places to stay in the area.

The Monteverde Lodge is a great, quiet, and clean place to stay. We had reserved a garden room but all of the garden rooms were full when we arrived so we were given a more expensive room for no extra charge. We could bird-watch right out our window, which overlooked the cloud forest. Our room was very clean and spacious, with no mildew in the bathroom at all. The hot tub is huge, very hot, and was not crowded when we were there. The food at the restaurant was great and we also walked to Santa Elena (10 min.) to eat at restaurants there (avoid the Tree House restaurant - yuck! but the Morpho restaurant was awesome). It's easy and cheap to take taxis to the reserves or other attractions - we were SO glad that we didn't rent a car. Roads are very rough and the driving style is "agressive." We enjoyed the Butterfly garden and the Frog place and the guided tour of Monteverde Reserve and Sky Trek and Sky Walk. The Monteverde lodge did encourage energy and water conservation, they use some solar water heating, and they have left much of the surrounding area undisturbed - another review called it "overgrown" - but good grief, it's a tropical forest and it's gorgeous!

The room smelled of mildew. Bathroom has gruesome stains or greenish black mold and fungus growing between the tiles. The cheap pillows were worse than an airline pillow. Bedspread was worse than dog blanket that I had to throw it inside the closet. The bed was very uncomfortable with springs sticking out
Nice fire place by the restaurant but the food was expensive, $30 for a dinner. Without your own car, you are stuck. Taxis to town could add up. Remember this is a cloud forest, down pours most of the time, hard to walk on a muddy road.
This hotel is pricey, $146 is a rip off for a smelly room without breakfast. Glad we checked out the next day. They refused to refund us for our unused night.
Avoid this hotel like the plague.

We stayed for 3 nights at the Monteverde Lodge and Gardens. The room and bathroom was clean and comfortable, although it had a slightly 1970s feel. We had a garden room, and had been warned that it could be noisy, but we didn't really have any problems. We were also close to the hot tub, although we didn't use it. The gardens were pleasant, and we spent some time by the scenic overlook, although it seemed a bit overgrown to offer much of a scenic view. We were given quite a bit of information on arrival about the various ways that the Lodge is eco-friendly, and also tips on the area (look out for scorpions in your room, avoid the canopy tours, etc.), which was helpful, if somewhat frightening (we didn't see any scorpions, thankfully...)

We only ate breakfast once and lunch once in the restaurant, and found it to be of generally low quality and overpriced, especially compared with other food options nearby (we especially liked the Treehouse Cafe in Santa Elena and Sofia and Moon Shiva in Monteverde).

We used the tour booking service to book a night tour of the Monteverde Reserve on our first night, a night tour of the Ecological Farm the second night, and day tours of the Monteverde Reserve and Cheese Factory on our third day. The tours were good, but rather than being packaged, you had to pay for each thing separately- the transportation was charged to the room, but the entry fees to the park were paid directly to the park, the guide fees directly to the guide, etc., which made the experience a bit more complicated than it really needs to be. Also, unless you closely read the sheet detailing the tours, you wouldn't know you were supposed to pay everything separately, which resulted in us getting a call from our guide after we had gone back to our room to come back and pay him (even he seemed surprised that we were paying him directly instead of the hotel...).

We did not have a rented car, so we spent a fair amount of time walking (abut 15 minutes to Santa Elena or Monteverde- the Lodge is pretty much in the middle), or taking cabs (which were cheap- maybe $1.50-$2 per trip).

On the whole, Monteverde Lodge was sufficient, but we didn't find we wanted to spend any extra time there. Thankfully, there's so much else to do in Santa Elena and Monteverde, that we only slept in the hotel, which was fine.