The Inns at Equinox

Whatever you do, don’t get married at the Equinox Resort in Manchester. Let our experience help you avoid a nightmare. The setting is undeniably stunning, and that’s how they lay the trap. As soon as you’ve signed the contract the bait and switch begins. There are 2 fundamental issues, the event staff is woefully underresourced, the the hotel desperately needs a major renovation. To be fair to the one employee who was consistently incredible, Jackie, who managed the room blocks, you are great. But the organization of the room block doesn’t make up for an underperforming events team. There is also a fundamental assumption to note. For our family, the $100k - $150k+ in revenue the wedding brought to the hotel is a lot of money. A lot, a lot, a lot of money! It’s the largest amount of money we’ll spend at one time. That’s a college education. For the Equinox Resort, that makes you 1 of 3 weddings they’ll do that weekend with 3 more the next weekend, and they know you’re not coming back again. Any corporate event or corporate client is going to be more important than you are, and that's not an inference, the Head of Sales said that specifically. Think about it with 3 weddings most weekends, they don’t have 3 bridal suites, they just say any room in the Orvis House is a “bridal suite.” After seeing how dirty our room was when we arrived, the front desk tried to move us to the largest ‘suite’ in the Orvis House to apologize. The head of sales stepped in, “It’s reserved for the MInister's conference, they come back every year.” The room was so bad we had to find another place for the Bride to get ready off-property the morning of the wedding so it didn’t ruin the getting-ready photos. The event staff. They’ll tell you everything is set up, and by the time you get to the event, it’s too late to have them execute all the details they’ve missed. “There’s just not enough time,” you’ll hear. Your choice is to spend the most important hours of your life fighting with them over all the things they failed to execute or spend the time with the people who love you and came to celebrate your big day. They prey on this fact, it’s predatory. Get to the finish line and then say we can’t possibly do all the things we told you we would. If the details are important to you, go somewhere else. Ultimately, if you can bring in your own event staff to overcome their deficiencies, and you tell your guests to stay somewhere else, it’s possible to have a great event. You could work around them, but if you have to spend that much energy, just go somewhere else. Our original wedding coordinator quit, and after a month of unanswered emails, we reached out to the staff. As soon as we’d signed the contract it was harder to get her to reply, which made it more difficult to notice when she’d stopped replying at all. When we called, the hotel’s response was, “oh she quit weeks ago.” Was someone going to tell us? Then we were ping-ponged back and forth between other coordinators throughout the rest of the time. No one had ownership, and that continued so much so that there wasn’t even a wedding coordinator at our ceremony. I repeat, the Equinox did not even have a wedding coordinator at our wedding ceremony. When the Equinox shuttle forgot to pick up the bride, there was no one there to assist. 15 minutes after the wedding was scheduled to start and all the guests were all seated, the bride decided to walk herself up from the Meadow House fearing the shuttle would never arrive. AND THERE WAS NO COORDINATOR TO ASSIST. You can stop reading now if you’d like, but there is so much more. The night before at the rehearsal dinner, they set up one very nice table for 64 people. Unfortunately, the executed, agreed event form was for 68. Their team's disorganization is immediately obvious when you're at the venue, and so I took the time in the middle of the rehearsal to count the seats. I personally told the event planner Ella, there are only 64 chairs. She looks at her paperwork showing 68 guests, and she says, no there are 68. I told her she should count them and then went to be with our guests at our wedding. Ella did nothing, and then as everyone was seated there were 6 people without chairs, standing in the middle of the venue. (6 because 2 seats were still empty at the 64-person table, but no one wanted to take the last 2 when there obviously wasn't room for the entire party). Now with people eating and speeches about to begin Ella has the team rush to put out another table off to the side to seat the 6 people standing. Then, and this is the real beauty of it, she doubles down. She tries to say that we invited too many people, that we had 74, instead of 68, which is why she was forced to make another table. No apologies, and in fact, they are so understaffed they have to blame someone. When they screw up, expect them to try to blame you. The hotel itself is in desperate need of a total renovation, desperate. They've been putting lipstick on a pig with new paint, but even individual rooms have multiple previous partial updates that are incongruous. Our room I called the divorced dad room, because it looked like the apartment a dad moves into after a divorce. I'm describing a "bridal suite". It had a 1980s glass bar display that hadn't been cleaned in weeks, a completely disorganized 1990s kitchenette (again Bridal Suite), and cheap Ikea furniture everywhere else. I've stayed in nicer Hampton Inns. When it says 3-star hotel on Google, you should believe them, and it's absolutely tragic given the history of the "resort." No indoor pool or falconry can make up for the fact that even the door looked like someone had recently broken in. If the ownership group can't afford to keep the hotel up to the National Historic standards, they should sell this and allow someone else to restore its beautiful bones. If nothing else, a few pieces of advice: 1) Have the actual hotel room you'll be staying in for the wedding in the contract. Make them show you the room. They're going to try to tell you the "bridal suite" is in use when you're touring the property. Demand to see the room and make them put it in the contract. 2) Have the tasting date in the contract. They'll tell you they can't schedule it in advance because the next year's menu isn't finalized (lol), and then when you try to schedule 6 months ahead of the venue, Wednesdays are going to be the only days they're available. They're going to make it as inconvenient as humanly possible, especially if you're traveling from out of town, again, they're criminally understaffed, and they need to focus on getting more people to sign contracts. 3) Hire an independent wedding planner, but not a local one. We tried to do this to try to have an independent advocate who could help manage their chaos. However, the Equinox staff just used our planner as their wedding day coordinator, so they could use their event staff at other weddings and events on the property. We didn't have an Equinox coordinator at our ceremony because they'd deputized our planner to do everything. If you're going to do a ceremony here, bring someone in to manage their event staff. You'll need it.

After hearing about this place for years from friends we had to try it. Oh my gosh has it apparently gone downhill. It is worn down from the moment you step on the outdoor steps to enter. Inside isn't much better with worn furniture and peeling paint. From the photos on the website we were looking forward to a nice cocktail at The Falcon Bar but what we got was a "dirty martini" which was more like a coupe glass filled with olive juice by what looked like an 18 year old bartender. 2 drinks were $45 and there is no food available (even bar bites) until 5. The outside firepits had not been cleaned up and there were dirty glasses all around them. I am so glad we stayed down the street at the wonderful Kimpton - doubtful this place will survive much longer unless big changes are made, which is a shame because its a beautiful property.

So disappointed. After reading great reviews from a favorite blogger of mine, I had such high hopes for this resort. I requested an ADA room because I prefer a bathtub and I think this is where things started to go wrong. Really old and dated decor. Unkempt and unclean bathroom. Zero amenities within the room (no coffee pots, no mini fridges, no robes, etc). Keep in mind for a 4 night stay, my average per night was almost $900. I have stayed at Holiday Inns that were nicer than this! Restaurants closed before posted hours (9pm) on a Saturday night without notifying guests and leaving us with no place to eat (there is no room service either) so we had to try to find something in town quickly because apparently all the eating places close before 9pm as well. We found ONE bar open on a Saturday evening that served minimal food. That’s it. I will say most employees we encountered were lovely and willing to help if they could, but this place needs to shut down for a year and undergo a complete renovation if it expects to stay relevant for these prices. Take my advice and look at newer or more charming properties in town to stay in. There are several options to choose from. Equinox Resort has seen better days.

Room worn out, no bath robes and coffee in rooms, poor guidance to room, rude service at breakfast For the money we expected much more The spa was great especially the massage with Alek Hot tub not working Setting beautiful No gift or happy hour like the do at the taconic

The worst place you can imagine for a $500 per night. From terrible smell to short staff, it's a shame to leave this hotel in that shape. The structure is falling apart, bathroom with hanging curtain for a $500/night stay? And it goes on. Have the owners even visited this place to see it?