It breaks my heart to have to make a review like this of a hotel that used to be so nice. My partner and I had a lovely time in North Conway, but that was not because of our lodgings. There are a lot of good things about Fox Ridge -- the location is great -- but there are dire issues with maintenance that really hold it back.
T.L.D.R. (for this will be long, as I'd like to see this hotel do better, and for others in a similar boat to me to understand the issues with this hotel): Fox Ridge Resort does not keep advertised promises of amenities, the grounds, hotel exterior, and parts of the hotel interior look abandoned, and our rooms were not maintained with the care you would hope for (or the care that used to be at Fox Ridge fifteen years ago) from a "resort". It was genuinely a little spooky for us and I am saddened to be encouraging visitors to go somewhere else.
To begin with positives, our room was quiet and parts of it were clean, like the tables, fridge, and toilet. It smelled good. We had a beautiful, beautiful view of Moat Mountain, which is the entire reason we stayed there. The room comes with a refrigerator, ice container, a hair dryer, cable TV, bathroom, and a table with two chairs and feels vacation-y. The air conditioner works very well, which is always a plus. The patio was swept and I like that room service is upon request, a nice amenity for a couple visiting. The location at Fox Ridge is phenomenal; it is off the beaten path and feels private while still being on the main route through North Conway. You're in the action without "being in the action". The few staff we met were friendly. The indoor pool is a nice temperature. It is affordable. You can get a cheap discount to Kahuna Laguna, the indoor water park at the Birchmont Resort and Spa, grandfathered in from when both Fox Ridge and the Birchmont used to be Red Jacket hotels. These are things I have loved for a long time about it.
What the room absolutely does *not* come with is a coffee maker, which is a claim made on my reservation. I wouldn't even mind there not being a coffee maker if they didn't claim there was. This is one of many falsehoods Fox Ridge claims; as many other reviews mention, there has not been a jacuzzi functional at Fox Ridge for a long time, and it was not working when we were there. Most egregiously, there is a claim that Fox Ridge does Hot Breakfast every day from 7-9 AM, which is just not true. There is a cold breakfast available until 9 AM, but there is not a "Hot Breakfast" until 9 AM. When I called asking about my reservation, I was told there is a Hot Breakfast, eggs sausage and bacon. This was further reinforced at the front desk. When me and my partner came down around 8:15 one day to enjoy this breakfast, we were highly disappointed to find that the complimentary breakfast provided was cold bagels. Again I feel somewhat betrayed by the advertising happening. I only expected a hot breakfast solely because the hotel advertised this when I asked them. It is a lie. And if they did have it before 8:15, then it's still false advertising as then the breakfast is not "until 9 AM". The hotel advertises numerous things it simply does not do, which I find to be a very, very cynical business practice. I think that is completely unacceptable behavior and it takes advantage of those of us who have built trust with Fox Ridge from the past; it breaks that trust completely.
Regarding maintenance of the hotel, it is, and I am sorry to say, grody. Speaking about the hotel grounds first: the outdoor paint is peeling badly. The roads have a severe amount of potholes. The front sign is overgrown. One of the front lights indicating the driveway is out, a bad sign for an entrance which already has poor signage. The driveway itself is not lit and goes up through a wooded area, which is a bit of a thrill at night. There are a great deal of lights out or flickering rapidly inside the hotel, which does not help the atmosphere at all. My partner and I came at what I would consider an "off season", but we saw almost nobody the entire time we were at the hotel; the parking lot was genuinely empty for most of the time we were there, with just our car and someone who worked there. The flickering lights made it feel more abandoned. The mini golf is in a state of disarray, being covered in dirt and plant debris, which is sad considering the historic Story Land theme park artifacts present. The mini golf is also not lit at night or in the evening, which is too bad, as evening mini golf is ideal when so many other places are closed. The roads were not swept at all since the winter season and were completely sandy. The grounds did not have trimmed grass at all. The disc golf stands were outside on the front lawn, but the grass was so tall there was certainly no way to play. I'd be very concerned about ticks. The walk between the parking lot and building is extremely, extremely dark at night, and long; I reiterate my partner and I were the only ones there often, and as someone quite experienced in White Mountain nature, I was genuinely concerned about bears. The hotel is extremely easy to get into as no doors are locked on the outside, only hotel room doors, which absolutely did not feel safe. Implementing a card key access for non-front desk doors would go a long way, I believe, but that would mean updating the metal keys for the doors as well. The hotel had winter themed lights still up from the winter season in May. For locals and other White Mountain people, the exterior kind of looks like how the facade of Six Gun City looks these days. You know.
Moving on to the inside of the hotel, the indoor pool has paint chipped off the bottom of it and had towels lying around on the grounds inside it. The ceiling of the indoor pool has numerous disconcerting bumps, gaps and holes in it, I presume where the original Fox Ridge pool lights used to be, or maybe the kites which used to hang from the ceiling, which have been replaced with nothing in this modern iteration. A lot of the lights inside the pool grounds were out. There is a game room with about three games in it with screens that do not function well from the 90's. The stairs are kind of scary to go up and down and some stairs are leaning forward a little. It is easy to catch a foot on them and trip, especially troubling when carrying suitcases and bags as one does at a hotel. There was someone at the front desk at all hours though they were usually sitting in the office and not actually at the desk. They were the only other people we saw for the first four days of our trip, and it was not consistent; I think in total we saw ten people, including three front-desk workers and three other parties who were there. Three parties. In the whole hotel besides us. Spooky! The non-front desk entrances had a lot of leaves and dust in them. I did not see an accessible elevator anywhere, though it probably exists? I do not think a thing at Fox Ridge has been updated in a very long time.
The inside of our room had a decently clean carpet but a few notable issues with cleanliness. There was hair inside the bathtub and on the bathroom floor which belonged to neither of us when we entered the room, which I have a real thing about, I think it's very gross. The bedskirt had great big slashes in them on both sides. The sheets were cleaned, but were stained with various red bits, maybe lipstick, maybe alcohol, maybe blood, who knows, and some were lint-y. The lamps had two different shades of LED in them, which might not bother some people, but matching lights is a very small factor that would just make the hotel room better; to me it indicates a carelessness that maintenance is done haphazardly and without thought. My partner, who is tall, cut his hand on the (DATED) popcorn ceiling not once, not twice, but thrice. There was a decently sized dried up dead spider above our door that my partner had to touch and throw out. Its dryness to me indicates two things: one, nobody has been in this room for quite a long time (we stayed in a Mountain View room with a very good view, so, like, why?), and two, nobody vacuums above the doors. I don't know how much housekeeping they actually hire given the on-call system. Again, the keyword at Fox Ridge is "disconcerting".
A waitress at a restaurant we visited was shocked to hear people can stay at the hotel as in her words she "thought it was abandoned", an interaction I wish I was joking about. It does look completely abandoned from the outside from both the road and from the front of the hotel. We'd visited Kahuna Laguna at the Birchmont which, as many of you may know, had an entire wing burn to the ground a few years ago. The lawn was perfectly mowed and green, the playground was maintained, the outdoor pool was beautiful, and the white paint on the hotel itself and the Mountain Room near the outdoor pool was beautifully maintained, as though the whole hotel hadn't gotten deepfried. Why Fox Ridge cannot match and exceed this level of care from a hotel that is currently undergoing extreme heavy construction is beyond me and, frankly, just makes me so, so sad. It would be so much better if they painted, or swept, or mowed the lawn. Did a little extra vacuuming. Updated the game room, or pool, or keys. Kept promises they made. Took extra care. Little things. It could be so great.
Thank you if you have made it to the end of this review. Please enjoy wherever you stay for your White Mountain adventure. I really wanted to make the most of the trip and so took as "nice" photos as I could (which I am including), but I feel it's important to be honest here. I wish it was better. This is easily a three star hotel if they took care of it and could be so much more if they put love into it. The bones are so lovely. I wish they would give it the love it deserves.
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