I'm a college student who works hard for my money...my wife and I both work full time will in engineering classes full time. So when we go on a trip like this, we have to be careful about budgeting to ensure we have a good time.

The hotel valet and bellhop staff is first rate, as expected from a Ritz. The front desk staff on the other hand, are not so brilliant. Upon checkin, I wanted to use a specific card for the rewards, so I made sure I had the full $750 available on the card, assuming that would be more than enough to cover the $583 room charge and an incidental charge as well. Upon checkin, I was told that the card would not cover the amount of $800 they were trying to authorize. I asked what that covered and they said they have the room plus $125 incidental charge. I may only be an engineering student, but last time I checked $583+$125 is not equal to $800. Instead, we charged the room to the credit card and $100 incidental to a debit card. No big deal, that just meant I would use my credit card to pay for gas and food on the way home. In addition to the hotel stay, we also had valet parking, attraction tickets, breakfast, and a $50/night hotel credit included in our rate. Unfortunately, the $50/night credit seemed incomprehensible to the hotel staff upon checkout. While I understand that using two separate cards is a wee bit unorthodox, I clearly explained to three different desk staff, on three different visits to the desk, that we had a hotel credit. The first person was in training so her confusion was excusable, although not that of the person helping her. She told us that we had not used all the credit, that we still had $35 left, and that she was going ahead and sending the $100 hold back to the debit card. That was apparently not the case, as when I went back after buying a candle in the gift shop ($37.50) the person checking the bill said she was sending that back now. Then I was told that our total charges where $102.09 so we had gone slightly over the credit. I asked, so $2.09 will be put on the credit card, correct? She replied yes, and proceeded to put $102.09 on the credit card. She made sure to put the print outs in an envelope, so I didn't see the fact that she had charged it wrong until we went back to the room. I went back downstairs and talked to the third person, who supposedly put the entire $102.09 back on the credit card and cleared out our balance. Fortunately I left some extra money to pay for gas home, because a day later, despite the person's reassurances that it would go back on my account, neither the $100 hold nor the $102.09 charge have been credited back to my debit/credit cards.

The room itself was nice, if a little dated, and the bathroom was rather small with the annoying door that swings practically into the toilet on its way to block entry to the shower/tub. Also, the magnifying mirror refused to stay pointed anywhere but down and the light stopped working while we were there.

On the second night we missed turndown service as they didn't place a card under the door saying they had come by while a privacy hanger was out. The first night they left a card so I called and had them come back. The second night, they left a voicemail but it was too late as they waited until we were out. They offered to come back at midnight, but it's more than a little awkward when you are in the room.

Also, the lack of a pool or at least a hot tub was missed.

One great thing was the $25 rose petal turndown. While it was romantic, it was also a lot of fun as we ended up throwing the petals at each other and laughing.