Glacier Bay Lodge

I stayed at this historic lodge with my three young adult children for a week in June. The setting was stunningly beautiful, surrounded by a temperate rainforest of Sitka spruce and alder, with Bartlett Cove opening to the west. Our room’s view was of the forest, and we loved it. The rooms are fairly basic but sufficient and clean: two comfortable beds, table and chairs, coffee maker, bathroom with tub/shower. This isn’t the kind of place where folks spend a lot of time in the rooms. Several beautiful hikes start right outside the lodge doors, plus kayaking (see my review of Glacier Bay Sea Kayaks), and boat tours (see my review of Glacier Bay Tours). The rooms are separated from the main lodge, but easily accessible along boardwalks that give the whole place a treehouse feel. The main lodge is the only place you’ll find WiFi, other than the NPS visitor’s center a short walk away. If you must get online, it’s possible, and you’ll be in a comfortable place to do it. Large stone fireplace, squashy leather couches and armchairs, large windows looking out over the cove. There’s also a deck and the WiFi reaches there fairly well. I spent several mornings working remotely from the lodge seating area or out on the deck, before heading out on hikes or kayaks for the day. The lodge also houses the dining room, which is the only place to eat during your stay, unless you take a taxi ($$$), hitch, or hike the 9 miles to Gustavus. And it’s good food! A little pricey, but good quality and tasty. To make our budget stretch, since we stayed for a week, we packed a collapsible electric kettle and ate some meals in our room: instant oatmeal, cocoa, dried fruit and nuts, ramen and dehydrated veggies and shelf-stable chicken packets, etc. Friendly staff all around—both the lodge employees and the NPS folks who are around. They seem to work collaboratively in many ways. Someone from the lodge meets every flight, so you’ll have shuttle service to and from your flight. Overall, we loved our stay and would do it again. Highly recommend.

Staff, led by Dimitri, go well beyond expectations to be provide friendly and hospitality can-do service. Rooms are clean and food experience is solid. Andy at front desk is exceptional. Of course the place and boat trip to glacier is world-class.

**NPS-- please read this when considering contract performance of Aramark*** First the good: the bus transport from the airport is convenient and included, and the location is great right there in the park. The day boat tour of the glaciers was amazing and we saw all sorts of wildlife and the gorgeous glaciers. Staff on the boat were great too. Overall the boat tour was a 5-star experience. We had several issues at the lodge though. Our room did not have hot water and we had to complain 4 times over 3 days about this and we didn't particularly enjoy cold showers and having to expend time and energy dealing with the front desk about this problem. They were not able to fix it either. There was poor communication from the front desk to the maintenance crew and the front desk just told us that it was "due to too many people showering at once", which wasn't true since our parents 2 doors down had hot water at the same time. Nobody checked our room to see if the water was actually hot after they "fixed the boiler". To his credit, the manager did make it right in the end though with some money back. The room was old, musty and very poorly lit, with a mildewy shower curtain that was too long and pooled in the shower. The beds were comfortable though. As for the restaurant, the food was decent and fairly reasonably priced but the service was awful. They were completely understaffed and ran out of food early. You had to wait a long time for drinks or other things and hardly ever saw your server. Sometimes we would have to get up and find them to order something or hunt them down to tell them that there is hardly any food left on the breakfast buffet. Aramark needs to ensure that all of their staff stay until the last day the lodge is open as it isn't fair to the customers who pay a lot to stay and eat there. There is no other choice for dining so everyone is stuck using that restaurant. Staff need basic customer service training too.