The Ritz-Carlton, Lake Tahoe

Best hotel stay of my life

Water refill never came

We traveled as a family of four and booked a room with two queen beds. We received an unrequested upgrade to a king suite. I believe the hotel ran out of double queen bedrooms although we arrived early at 1 pm for a 5 pm check-in. It would have been an awesome room except the sofa bed mattress curled up on either side and was thin and awful. There were also no sheets provided and only a blanket with a single pillow. We ended up sleeping three in the king bed and got a roll-away bed the next night. The cot mattress was excellent and worked out well for one of our kids. It was roughly the size of a toddler bed and low to the ground so it wouldn’t work out well for an adult. The room included a tub with a drain that didn’t open and close with the valve unless you manually held the lever open the entire time it drained or pulled the drain plug entirely out and refitted it by snaking the attached metal pieces back into the pipes. The shower drain was plugged up so the water pooled a few inches high. The hotel fixed the shower but it’s just odd to have plumbing problems and not inspect and make sure everything works. The cleaning service was good with attention to detail like folding the toilet paper, but the toilet had streaks and a ring that made it pretty obvious it wasn’t cleaned for at least a week. We could rarely get any staff on the phone when we called. No one picked up over multiple attempts different days—front desk, valet, hospitality. You have to spend a required daily $60 fee to park and retrieve your car so it gets frustrating when you have a schedule or need to get to the airport. Room service personnel promptly answered a call there but wow, was the food bad—burnt crust pizza with completely soggy bottom crust and no condiments for a burger and fries The hotel food was mediocre—nothing special for ridiculously high prices. We got room service the one night because the food choices in the restaurant were the same for lunch and dinner and the other restaurant option had worse choices for our family. This is a tiny ski area with walk-up restaurants in the nearby village that have an hour-plus wait time. The hotel would provide a fantastic service by offering better food quality and menu options. We also could not get rental equipment on site and had to go to the village for skis and to fix lift ticket problems in the app. The Ritz prides itself on ski in, ski out convenience and our experience was the opposite. Some of this resulted from not knowing or receiving information ahead of time on how to smoothly use the equipment and storage options. It was our first trip and any information on ski services and a map or brief explanation on coordinating lift tickets and ski rental would have been a huge plus versus a big hassle while managing kids and meeting other family on-site. We’ve enjoyed staying at other Ritz and Marriott properties but this one was a let-down with a very high price tag.

Ski and ski out of the NorthStar

It is difficult for me to write this review because I wanted to give the ritz every benefit of the doubt. I wanted this to be an annual tradition for my family (my husband and 2 little kids) but after this week we may need to look elsewhere. This is our second time at this particular resort. First time was about 7 years ago and it was an amazing experience. This time around was a complete 180. We are on our 4th of 5th night here. Let's bullet point all the incidents since we checked in: 1) Day of check in: we arrived around 12:30p with the expectation that our room would be ready at 1pm. Didn't get in until around 4pm. No problem. We hung out at the Living Lounge. Service was ridiculously slow because it was PACKED. 2) In room dining night 1. DISASTER. We ordered 2 pizzas, salad, dessert, 2 beverages. Ordered arrived with one pizza, no dressing for salad, and only 1 milk. We called in room dining and they told us they ran out of pizza dough. So basically they decided it was fine to deliver 1 pizza, charge us for 2 and not mention a thing to us. All that was offered - complimentary dessert which we obviously didn't need so late at night. My sons white pasta was watery - likely they didn't take the time to drain the pasta long enough. 3) front desk "upgraded" our room facing the alpines, gorgeous views and beautiful room, but day time they have a DJ that is LOUDDD. My 2yo toddler could not nap whatsoever. When did ritz become a party hotel?! And why when most of the guests here are families with kids and pets. When I say loud, I mean I can feel the bass in my veins loud. 4) had lunch at Manzanita, the food was beyond disappointing, and guess what after reheating the kids pasta at our kids place we FOUND a PIECE of METAL in our son's food! Luckily he didn't swallow it but pulled it out of his mouth. 5) made reservations for our son to do the gingerbread making activity for the kids. Almost got kicked out because they were full and another family lied about having reservations. They let us in but had to share gingerbread houses with 2 other kids. Got shamed when I complained because it's a "complimentary" activity. Really ritz? Do better. 6) oh yes the list goes on..., can someone tell me why housekeeping would only give us 3 bath towels when we have 4 guests on our reservation? 7) night 3 - fire alarm goes off during dinner time and everyone is escorted out into the blistering cold and of course guess what? False alarm. Probably some wild child pulling the fire alarm somewhere. 8) this is what convinced me to write this review. Night 3 we decided to treat our kids to some in room dining ice cream and cookies. My older son has chocolate and strawberry ice cream. 1am rolls around and I hear my son tell me his stomach hurts. We both RUSH to the bathroom and he starts vomiting violently and guess what comes out? All the chocolate ice cream. We're both literally lying on the bathroom floor until 2am waiting for all of this to pass. This 2 star review isn't because of ONE mishap but as you can see, multiple upon multiple mishaps. From someone who interned with the Ritz 10 years ago (before Marriott took over), I can tell you this resort has fallen far from the tree. They need either better management or a quality control team to come in and audit. Giving 2 instead of 1 star because the rooms are very nice and comfortable. The employees (for the most part) have been very nice and friendly. BUT with everything that has happened it would be hard for us to come back...

I visited this Ritz multiple times. The most memorized one was during Covid, when service and food are at very satisfying level. Also to note, my kids were not at skiing age then so we did not even ski then. This time we decided to celebrate our new years’s eve at Ritz, booked skiing and new year buffet. There is no more convenient place to ski at northstars than this facility. We were impressed by the mountain cocerige service they provide. Super cool and staff super helpful. However, this is the least satisfying trip to Ritz I ever experienced. I have been to a dozen Ritz Carlton hotel, and the experience was the poorest among all of the trips to Ritz. I received a call from Ritz two days before check in to confirm my arrival time. I told them 10:30 am. They told me the guaranteed check in time will be 5 PM but they will make sure staff know and room will be ready upon arrival. Upon arrival, they told us the room is not ready, but given people check out at 11, it will be soon. The room was not ready until 3:30pm. Which is fine, but caused kids do not nap, and I will be fine if they don’t set false anticipation. During the call before arrival, I also asked for a crib. Upon arrival, I was informed that they ran out of it. We got a pack and play, but kids did not sleep well in it. Come on, this is Ritz… The new year buffet was disappointing. There was just no hot food. The steak was even not warm enough and the food quality were worse than casinos… come on this is Ritz, and new year eve. During the stay, we went to have food at lobby, it’s hard to get attention, upon food was served, we got no forks… the staff were just the staff we met a few years back. We could have just set the expectation wrong… but this is not pleasant.

The staff and service were excellent, and we had a great time. There was a leak in one of the faucets in the bathroom (both handles) which flooded the counter and ruined some make-up materials. Only that was negative. Our room number was 579

Loved the Christmas setup and programs

I stayed at the Ritz Carlton Tahoe for my birthday this past weekend. I would say my experience was nothing short of phenomenal. Matthew S. (the front desk manager) made sure that this weekend was surely one to remember. He went out of his way to help me with a reservation at the Ritz restaurant, Manzanita. I especially want to thank Chef Christopher for his amazing food (best filet mignon I’ve had), our wonderful waitress, Brigette, and sommelier, Lesley. They were knowledgeable, friendly and welcoming. I would highly recommend this hotel for weekend getaway to go skiing, celebrate a birthday, or to relax with family. The property is beautiful and it is literally on the ski lifts making it very convenient to have a great day skiing. Thank you once again! It was the staff that made this a memorable weekend.

You know that the Ritz-Carlton should be good, but I wish I could give the staff at this hotel more than 5 Stars! On short notice, I planned a trip to the Ritz-Carlton this past weekend to propose to my girlfriend, and every person at the hotel that we encountered went above and beyond! To say that Jessica made memories happen for us this weekend, would be an understatement! If you're planning for an important and memorable life event like a proposal, birthday, or wedding at the Ritz-Carlton Lake Tahoe, reach out to the concierge and ask for their input! Jessica might actually be a magician to have pulled off what we asked of her on short notice, but she and her coworkers are also incredibly thoughtful, caring, and went above and beyond for us! I'll write a second review for the restaurant, but because they all worked together as a group at this hotel and coordinated a memorable weekend, we also had an amazing dinner at the Manzanita restaurant! Neil, the bartender, is awesome. He made a fantastic dirty martini, was knowledgeable about many different bourbons from their huge available selection, and made the pre-dinner drinks an event on their own! The dinner was also amazing, but it was more than memorable when the chef and the manager, Justin, stopped by as well! The people working at Manzanita are wonderful! Our room also had incredible views, was very clean, and the staff added such an incredibly personal touch that we are worried that no hotel will match up to this in the future...so we will just make sure to come back for our anniversary!

I would like Ritz Carlton to work harder to improve their guest services past the surface level. We had several issues with their various guest services. We had to call twice, then actually walk down to the concierge to ask for the third time before we got some extra towels. The property has a ski/snowboard boot locker of sorts on the lobby floor - the apparent purpose is to minimize their guest walking around in their ski wear - and they had almost misplaced my snowboard boots and went scrambling around 20 minutes to find them. This ended up costing me some early morning time on the slopes. Their obligatory valet is not great, taking around 20 minutes to get my car. When we were checking out, we called ahead for bell service but they never arrived. Look, it’s nice that there is staff all over the property greeting their guests and I appreciate their courtesy; but you are working with bunch of Silicon Valley engineers who are paying attention about some work being accomplished. I appreciate the politeness, but I wish that they would look into improving their guest services that deliver more tangible results.