Okay, I was not expecting the best hotel ever given the price jump between this hotel and the next one when I booked, and I got what I expected.

The positive. The common hotel areas are very nice (see the pictures they provide). Nice deck looking at the lake, beautiful dining room, pools, work out area, etc. These areas have the best view of the lake.

Then, there is the room.

From their website http://hvmuskoka.com/viewpage.cfm?PageID=3 we can see this:

"Hidden Valley Resort is proud to offer stunning, newly renovated guest accommodations, featuring 93 superbly appointed guest rooms. Choose from beautiful lake view or slope side view accommodations, to spacious suites with queen or king size beds and full baths, to guest rooms with cozy fireplaces or warm jetted tubs."

We booked a "deluxe room" through a travel site. Not really sure what this actually got us other than a room facing the lake which we could not see from inside the room. And, a hill full of geese that made more noise in the morning than you could imagine (also made walking down to the lake less pleasant than possible). Between the hotel and the lake, there is a row of very high private condos (or the like) which block most of the view of the lake. The farther you are from the common areas, the more of the view these places block. And we were near the far end.

To make things worse, from inside our room, a large shrub outside completely blocked our view of anything. Nice for privacy, but crappy for the view. If we went onto the balcony and went to one end, we could see a small bit of the lake through a gap in the bush. So, one of us could see the lake while sitting out there.

It appeared that the room had been recently painted, but they failed to take the final five minutes to put the vent cover back on the bathroom vent. And, the bathtub was chipped. The TV was a historic tube type, so I can't really say anything positive above their recent renovations other than they are far from complete and it might be nice when they finish. I do have to admit to being a bit stunned by things as they suggest might occur.

I have no idea what room is spacious and has a cozy fireplace. The "deluxe room" didn't have these things. We requested a single queen bed, but got two doubles. We requested a fridge (due to food allergies we need to bring some of our own food) - we even called and confirmed our room had a fridge, but there was no fridge when we arrived. This was fixed by a quick call to the front desk who delivered us a very small but workable fridge complete with a half consumed bottle of Jägermeister in the freezer. Oops.

The fridge had a very short code and could really only be put in the way of the patio door, or behind the table which we moved out into the room (and it was then in the way). The place needs more outlets.

We stayed two nights and when we got back to our room for the second night, we were surprised to see that our room had not be made up. Now, I have run into this more and more, but the place normally informs you that they won't be cleaning your room every day.

As other reviewers have stated, there is no elevator so you carry your stuff up and down stairs and down a long hallway as all the rooms are in one hall you enter by the front desk.

When we checked out, I asked "What was so deluxe?" I was told that my booking agency could only categorize the rooms as standard and deluxe (my heavens, what would a standard room be like if this was deluxe), so the resort mapped lake side to deluxe. They went out of their way to stress lake side vs. lake view because I guess they knew where I was going with my line of questioning. However, I see that their website favours the more misleading lake view.

I went on to inquire about their room care standards and whether we should have expected to have our room cleaned. They were quick to answer that our room should have been cleaned and they would pass our concern to housekeeping. Thus I paid for a room to be cleaned and did not get this service. I asked if all they were going to do was pass this to housekeeping and they said "Yes". So, I feel obliged to tell all of you. No "We're very sorry", no "Please eat breakfast on us", nothing at all. Sure, this is a minor point, but why wouldn't they make some very small effort to entice me to come back?

Overall, this was a low end three star place from the perspective of the room. It was just a place to sleep for us and was reasonably quiet. If you used the other parts of the hotel, this would be better than just a low end motel / hotel. The room was far from superbly appointed as promised.