My husband and I stayed at Dancing Bears B&B on the last night of our recent 9-day trip to Alaska. Having had a wonderful experience at the nearby Hidden Creek B&B (also in Girdwood), we were interested to see how Dancing Bears would compare.

It did not do well. We stayed in the Midway room, which is at the end of a narrow hallway cramped with a washer and dryer. The room was clean and relatively spacious, but the bed, although comfortable, had only ropes for a headboard, which made watching the small TV difficult. The bathroom was nice, but having no shampoo was not.

Breakfast the next morning was not at all what we expected. We were told the night before that we could help ourselves to anything in the kitchen (which was very nice, our host Derek's work), and we were surprised - we generally don't plan to cook the breakfast part of a bed and breakfast ourselves! But that is what we were expected to do here - we had to search the kitchen for a pan and spatula so my husband could make himself eggs, I settled for a bagel, and we decided to just get coffee at a nearby bakery. We were asked (on a note in our room) to "tidy the kitchen" when we were done, and didn't know the extent to which they expected us to do so - were we supposed to do our own dishes at a B&B? Our dining experience was diminished further by the sounds of feet running overhead - our host and hostess's children.

My husband and I are generally not this critical of places at which we stay, but at the Dancing Bear B&B, we really felt like they took our money upon our arrival and left us to fend for ourselves. Attention to detail was really lacking, and having to fend for ourselves for breakfast was a really unwelcome surprise. Add to all that the inability to get internet access (although the website claims it is offered), and I think it is pretty clear that we will not be staying here on our next trip to Alaska.