The Stanley Hotel

This is long, for good reason: please read! We chose the hotel because I'm a big Stephen King fan and also have always wanted to see Estes Park. Re: The Shining: I knew the TV limited series was shot there and Kubrick's film was done mostly on a sound stage with the exterior of the hotel being Timberline Lodge. That being said, I was thrilled to see the exterior of the hotel and the door to (haunted) room 217, where King stayed when the story was "born". He hates Kubrick's movie and insisted that the Stanley be used for the TV version. Suffice it to say, I was pretty surprised that their little "museum" of the Shining had pictures of Nicholson and Duvall and nothing of the series. The ball room and another large room were cordoned off. There wasn't so much as a chair in either room - just big open spaces - and you weren't allowed to walk in them. At the very least, a table with a typewriter in the middle of the ballroom would have been a nice touch. On to the hotel. Talk about a disapointment! We found it to be incredibly unfriendly and way overpriced. For $400/night, we expected real coffee mugs and glasses in our room. Nope: the same crappy cups and plastic cups-wrapped-in-plastic that the Motel 6 down the road offers. There were 2 Kuerig pods. The creamer and sugar came in those little cellophane packets with the plastic stir sticks provided at Motel 6. Seriously? Not even liquid creamer? The beds and bedding were great, except for the stained sheet. The towels were good quality, the bathroom very nice. The room was comfortable, with 2 sitting chairs that were also comfortable. It was a very nice room. The highly touted restaurant was shocking. It's part of the bar. Eating a $68 steak on a hightop while watching folks in baseball caps do shooters was not my idea of high-end dining. The chili is good as is the Ceasar salad, tho'. Our server disapeared and we had to go look for her when we were ready to go. The wine bar is gorgeous and the wines reasonable. The service was very good. While we were in the lobby, cozied up to a fireplace with glasses of wine and our books, several couples came in. They walked over to the wine bar only to find it'd closed at 8pm (it was 9:15). Then they walked over to the restaurant, which had closed at 9. They went to the front desk and asked if there was any place to get a drink or a snack, and the clerk said "in town". It was 9pm! They were not happy, suffice it to say! There's not even 24/7 coffee and tea service in the lobby. If you want more than what you get in your room, you have to go to the basement coffee shop and pay for it - if it's open. When we were there, it closed when the breakfast restaurant opened. The breakfast restaurant is indepently owned, so there's no room service. And if you go during bad weather, be prepared to walk outside and down the sidewalk to get to it. The Stanley does have a coffee shop on the ground floor, but it closed when the breakfast restaurant opened (at least that's how it was when we were there). Aside from the actual hotel -which really is very grand - we saw no difference in our stay, except that the price was double, than any Hilton Garden Inn or Holiday Inn Express we've stayed at. Oh, wait: those hotels have real coffee cups and glasses, and coffee service. TIP: Go see the hotel. Get some chili in the restaurant or a drink at the bar and enjoy it in the lobby by a fireplace. Ride the really cool old elevator to the 2nd floor. Take a picture of room 217 and the creepy, long hallways. Go down to the bottom floor and look at the "museum" of the movie. Then go back to your Hilton and be happy you didn't spend more money than that.

My wife & I have stayed at a few iconic hotels over the years. The El Tovar in the Grand Canyon, the Ahwanhee in Yosemite, the Lake Yellowstone Hotel in Yellowstone National Park. We felt like this hotel surpassed those hotels for comfort. By definition, older hotels (built in the late 1800's or early 1900's) have to be retrofitted for modern conveniences expected in today's world. The Stanley Hotel has accomplished this is a nearly seamless way. The rooms were large and light-filled. The beds, chairs & TV's were comfortable. The floors did not creak. The hallway carpet insulated the foot traffic noise. Had you not known this hotel was originally built in 1909, you would have thought it was a modern hotel. Perhaps the best part was the well thought out bathroom. A large sink area adjacent to the large, glass-enclosed shower complimented by an accessible commode. We didn't eat in the restaurant but we did sit at the bar twice to have a meal. We used the Colorado Cherry Pie Company for coffee. We took the historic tour and enjoyed the whiskey tasting event. We found the entire experience to be rewarding. And overall, a much better experience than many of the other iconic hotels in the world.

When the idea of writing a blog about boutique hotels came to mind, one of the first I wanted to be sure to include was a profile of The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. The hotel has such a unique history and such an iconic place in pop culture, I couldn’t resist. The Stanley Hotel is also a part of my personal history as it was one of Dave’s and my stops on our honeymoon where we stayed for a few days. I’m not going to regurgitate the hotel’s history and significance to anyone who considers themselves a fan of Stephen King or The Simpsons. I find an insider’s view far more interesting. And you can expect no less from me here. Dave and I enjoy long-leisurely road trips, the kind where you the drive is just as significant as the destination. An professional academic, my husband prepared a playlist of Stanley-specific podcasts for us to listen to as we traveled from Kansas to Colorado. By the time we arrived, we were well versed on all the folk stories, supernatural lore, and urban legend evolution as the hotel changed hands and perspectives. At the time of our visit, a marketing shift had re-written many of the hotel’s stories from dark and foreboding to friendly and benign. As scary as this may sound to Shining fans, this isn’t that unusual. Many hotels have found steering away from a ghostly image is better for business. But Dave and I agreed The Stanley Hotel did an excellent job of balancing both the family-friendly tourist trap and the horror and freak followers. We pulled into Estes Park around nine in the evening, well after dark. The trip had been relatively uneventful except for a couple construction delays we encountered as we neared the town. The waits we experienced were excessive. Dave and I are both used to flagmen and construction crews stopping traffic so to allow oncoming cars to use the same lanes, but crews in our part of the country stop traffic for no more than ten minutes at a time. Colorado road crews must switch directions of road traffic when they run out of moving cars. We sat in line for twenty minutes the first time, close to thirty minutes the second. So I was eager to reach the hotel by the time we emerged from construction-Dave even more so. He practically chewed on the steering wheel in frustration as we pulled into Estes Park. Not that we recognized the town right away. Estes Park was plunged in darkness. At first, we thought we had perhaps arrived as the town experienced a power outage, but this was not the case. The town simply didn’t have its street lights on-even though we could see the silhouettes of lamp posts reflecting the lights from our Jeep. We experienced much of the same as we circled the town and entered the grounds of The Stanley Hotel itself. None of their street lights-or sign lights we on either. This wouldn’t be a big problem for an average hotel where the confines of the building are well defined and all you have to worry about is where to park and where to enter. But The Stanley isn’t like that. It’s a sprawling campus of similar-looking buildings. There is a separate restaurant, a residential condominium site, an event center, an outbuilding of specialty suites, and parking lots and gardens scattered throughout. With no lights to illuminate our way, we had no idea where to go. And Google? It announced we had arrived when we pulled into the main driveway before it cut out. We made our way slowly and cautiously through the maze of driveways, stopping every once in a while to shine a light from our cell phones and read the signs. With our budget in mind, we avoided splurging on a specific suite or room and were very pleased to acquire a room on the fourth floor without any special request or cost. The fourth floor is known for being particularly spiritually active. Stories go that during a time when the privileged elite took the family to a resort getaway, parents would book a room for themselves and adjourn to the sprawling grounds, ballroom and other amenities and leave their kids and the nanny on the fourth floor in virtual abandonment. It is said that the younger guests ran amok on the fourth floor in unrestrained chaos. As a parent myself, I can see the arrangement attractive from both ends and while I’m sure it wouldn’t have been advertised openly, I have no doubt a few whispers would have been motivating. Our room was quaint and homy. Located at the front of the hotel with a small dormer as the only window, the ceiling was close and in some places obstructive. Seating and closets were strategically placed where it would be more difficult to stand. The same layout was used in the bathroom with the arrangement of the toilet versus the shower so while the ceiling was a concern for those concerned with unexpectedly smacking their heads, it was never an issue. The drafts and climate concerns that go hand-in-hand with older houses half the hotel’s age and size were reasonably remedied with the addition of a portable heat and air conditioning unit. This too, was placed in the lower corner of the room. The furnishings were older without being opulent. The television on the dresser had a basic cable package one would find at any hotel with the addition of a Stanley channel that rolled continuous advertising of hotel-specific entertainments. The hotel places a great emphasis on it’s value as an entertainment destination. Secondary entrances were adorned with posters of comedians and other upcoming events. We did experience our own supernatural event while staying there the first night. At eleven thirty, Dave and I were startled by the thunderous sound of laughing children tearing down the hallway. We opened the door to find nothing there. Nor was there any way we would have heard the footfalls of anyone running by. Over the next couple days, we saw plenty of people run and walk past without hearing them at all-whether our door was open or closed. In my own ‘scientific’ experiment, I jumped up and down furiously right outside our door and bounced back and forth down the hallway attempting to recreate the commotion myself. No luck. At three am that same day, Dave was awoken by light and sounds of a lamp and the television turning on spontaneously. A centered man who can handle anything before him, my darling husband simply sighed and said, “Thank you, but we’re good for now.” As he rolled over to return to his slumber, the lights and television turned off in the same manner as before. For such an old and open structure, the hotel is surprisingly quiet. Quite the opposite of modern Hyatts and Holiday Inns, The Stanley Hotel is a place where you barely hear other guests-even the ones staying nearby. The upper levels are restricted to hotel guests only, a welcome security measure, but the main floor is a space to behold in itself. Although roped off, the hotel’s ball room is still able to view from the lobby as well as many of the original furnishings and adornments. A gift shop off to the side hawks the hotel’s logoed ware. A formal restaurant with a gourmet menu and many locally-inspired dishes is a must stop. Dave and I were eager to visit the hotel’s bar which wasn’t used in the movie The Shining, but was still a place we wanted to be sure to stop. Who can resist a chance to sit at the bar, cocktail in hand, and look in the mirror and say, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”? The lower floor is home to a coffee shop, a hotel replica used in the miniseries version of the Shining, a high-end wine and liquor shop and a ticket booth and meeting area for the hotel’s various tours. We explored all of them. While it would be easy to drop excessive cash in each of them, visitors can avoid a scare in their wallet by making careful, but not horrific choices. Many great experiences like walking the grounds, enjoying the patio and exploring the gardens are free. Dave and I did take part in one of The Stanley’s nightly ghost tours. Aside from learning the official version of many of the stories we had heard during the drive, the tour allowed us a chance to see even more of the hotel’s grounds. As an admirer of old homes and buildings, that was a treat by itself. The tour also allowed for frequent breaks at which participants were allowed to take pictures in hopes of collecting additional ghost evidence. Dave and I didn’t get anything on camera, but one of our fellow tourists may have. She and my husband were taking pictures of the same spot during our time exploring the underground tunnels beneath the hotel. Nothing unusual appeared in Dave’s shot of the shadowy, dirt-lined walls. Hers included two symmetrical reflective lights, resembling eyes. Creepy, huh? My takeaway: stay for a weekend, longer would be a horror show for your wallet. Do you have a hotel or inn you think I should review? Let me know on Facebook, Instagram or shoot me an email at toilandtroublemediagroup@gmail.com

The bed was great. However, we had no heat. Two days in a snowy town. Painful. My friend slept on the couch & said it was killing his back. Food was fine at Cascades but really expensive...and ice cold. Hard to eat when you are freezing. They dont have room service. HUH? They do not change the sheets daily. HUH? At these prices that is insane. The dry sauna did not work. The steam room was great. Staff were lovely. We asked for a handicap room. They put us in a regular room. So we had to move our luggage AGAIN. There was no handicap parking.

If we could rate it a zero we would! If it were not for the shining being inspired by this hotel it would have been torn down a long time ago! Be prepared for no heat and no blankets and over $300 a night! This place owes Stephen King big time. The only bright spot was the restaurant.