My fiance and I live in Denver and after visiting The Stanley for the first time decided we wanted to make it our wedding destination. We took a tour on a Saturday, loved the hotel and wrote the event planner on Monday to say we wanted to book and ask for the contract. All along, we had informed her that every single one of our guests would be coming into town for the wedding (less than 10% of our guests are local) and we would need to reserve a lot of rooms on Friday and Saturday as well as their Presidential cottage. I asked during the tour and following if we would be ok taking a little bit of time to decide the number on our block and I was assured that would be fine. TWO weeks later I received our contract with a nonchalant side-note in the email informing us that the hotel had been sold out to a group on Friday, so we would not be able to have any rooms. When I said this was a huge problem and asked what our options would be, we were told we could have guests stay at a different hotel Friday and then move over on Saturday. Unfortunately due to limitations beyond our control we are restricted to the date and in the three weeks it took to receive a contract and this information and realize it wasn't going to work, some of our other venue options had booked.

Even if this buy-out came completely out of the blue and booked in a matter of time that was too short to notify us, which I doubt was the case, there was still zero compassion for our situation. We did not even receive a proper apology and a real look into some other options until we got the manager involved. We do now, however, feel this was a blessing in disguise. After telling our story to others, some just familiar with the hotel and some in the hospitality industry, we were informed multiple times that The Stanley is notorious for their lack of customer service when it comes to weddings. Not the feeling you want to get when planning one of the most important days of your life and hopefully a place you can go back to visit year after year.

Our 2 night stay at the Stanley was exceptionally pleasant. We stayed in room 219 next to room 217 where Stephen King stayed. Room was comfortable, room service with fresh coffee in the morning was very prompt. Champagne and truffles with our hotel stay along with dinner at Cascades. Five stars!

Great place for taking photos...

While this hotel is quite picturesque and in a lovely location, spending the night is another experience. We made our reservation months ago for the main house and upon arrival were told we were "upgraded" to the newly remodeled Lodge. We wanted to stay in the main house, but the upgrade didn't seem to be optional as they were booked up. So we were ready to make the best of it and enjoy ourselves. The Lodge common rooms were nicely decorated with chairs looking out onto glorious mountain views. Our 3rd floor room was nicely decorated also, but very hot. We put the provided fan on high (no ac) and went out for the rest of the day thinking it would cool off by evening. Big mistake! By evening all the heat from the old building rose and it was BOILING on the 3rd floor and remained that way ALL night. Maybe first floor would be fine, but beware of the higher levels even when temp outside is fine.