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ktmoomau

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I spent a long weekend at the Homestead this past weekend for my Brother In Laws wedding.  I will admit I am a little biased against the Homestead, as I am a Greenbrier girl.  But if you are paying essentially $700 for a weekend, I expect the quality to be like the Greenbrier, and every stay I have ever had at the Homestead it just isn't.  The Greenbrier even in bankruptcy just knocked it out of the park.  Having said that- the new outdoor pools at the Homestead with the lazy river area, is really nice and if you had kids, I am sure it is a great way to get them worn out.  Our room had a lovely view of circular fan, which fine, we got a discounted room from a wedding room block, fine.  But the clock in the room was blinking and had the wrong time for the whole entire stay, clips from the curtain weren't attached so you couldn't pull the curtains all the way closed over the blinds, which meant our room was never really completely dark.  There was only one outlet in the room, and one in the bathroom for plugging in things to charge.  The worst was our first night we were woken up by an incredibly loud buzzing and banging sound at 3:00 am.  All the rooms around us probably got woken up too, as it was really loud.  We had to call a maintenance person at 3:00 am it took over 15 minutes for them to get there, and this sound was so loud, I wanted to go somewhere, but was in my pjs and couldn't.  Apparently they forgot to switch our room over to AC, it was still on heat and for some reason that made it made this sound, even once we turned the unit completely off.  So at that point our room was really hot, we were really tired and annoyed.  They didn't do anything to acknowledge this, no note the next day with some vouchers for a coffee, nothing.  MK is part of the omni club so we were supposed to get two items pressed for free and shoe shine, but you had to take your shoes down to the bell stand and then get them, and they took over 30 minutes to get the shirt, and Matt had to go to a groomsmen event, so he had to take the shirt down to concierge, I got a call an hour later, they still hadn't sorted out where the shirt was, despite us asking the concierge to please call them and let them know we had to go to events and were dropping it off.  My Mom booked on Hotels.com because the room block expired and the deal they would give her was more expensive than hotels.com and it said on the charge it covered the resort fee, but the Homestead charged it to her anyway, Hotels.com apologized and is sending her a refund, although they didn't get the money, the Homestead did, but they just nickel and dimed everything and didn't have great service.  Anyway, the wedding itself was lovely.  And there is a restaurant in town called Sam Snead's that they just reopened which was very good.  I had steak, asparagus, Brussels sprouts and Caesar salad which were all very good and they had nice foccacia bread.  Anyway, still not convinced to ever go back to the Homestead.  I just don't get why people are so smitten with it.

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23 hours ago, ktmoomau said:

I spent a long weekend at the Homestead this past weekend for my Brother In Laws wedding.  I will admit I am a little biased against the Homestead, as I am a Greenbrier girl.  But if you are paying essentially $700 for a weekend, I expect the quality to be like the Greenbrier, and every stay I have ever had at the Homestead it just isn't.  The Greenbrier even in bankruptcy just knocked it out of the park.  ......

Oh my.  Sounds terrible, and worse considering the build up the Homestead gets (as does the Greenbrier).

Must admit to not visiting either place in 20 years or longer, but before then I visited both several times each.  Reading this is a bit nostalgic. I must admit those places gave this North Jersey boy from a mixed blue collar/white collar kind of community the skeeves!!!!!   As I recall the experiences were similar...and I left each place each time a little depressed and unable to feel comfortable in either.  At that time and that period this guy had a hard time reconciling the upper crust Southern gentility perspective with his Jersey background that kept popping up in my mind.  Seriously long before the Soprano's came on TV I was dining and recreating at either the Greenbrier or the Homestead and wishing I were in some "joint" that gained TV fame and reasonably good visual perspective a decade later on the Soprano's.

Its been quite a while but I roughly recall meals and experiences were quite posh and nice...its my perspective at the time that couldn't handle it.  I think the thing that got me the most and still sits in my head was the pretty plush flowered wall paper in the rooms.(I'm thinking that was the Greenbrier and not the Homestead...but alas I can't pin it down)  Ooooh that really creeped me out.

Sorry to hear about the accommodations and service glitches.  Glad to hear the wedding went well.  But how was the food????

 

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23 minutes ago, DaveO said:

I think the thing that got me the most and still sits in my head was the pretty plush flowered wall paper in the rooms.(I'm thinking that was the Greenbrier and not the Homestead...but alas I can't pin it down)  Ooooh that really creeped me out.  Yes, that is Dorthy Draper who did the interior design, she is quite famous for it, I kind of enjoy it as it really is a gentle push back against the traditional Southern style. The Homestead has lots of flowers too, but more demur, less in your face prints.

Sorry to hear about the accommodations and service glitches.  Glad to hear the wedding went well.  But how was the food????  The food for the Bridal Luncheon was quite heavy to be honest, a huge piece of salmon with a sweet glaze, that was a little dry, and it just didn't sit well the rest of the day.  It sounded good on a menu, but it just didn't eat well, I think the portion was too big, and glaze needed more acid.  The dessert was a really good mousse that tasted like tangerine, but I heard it may have been peach, with a soft pillow of cake in the middle and fruit on top with a small meringue.  It was quite good.

The rehearsal dinner food was a salad with goat cheese which was fine, your typical big group first course.  A roulade of stuffed chicken with sauteed vegetables which I thought was quite good for such a big event.  I forget what dessert was.  The wedding food had a great tomato salad with burrata to start that was very good.  We had steak and it was normal wedding steak- all cooked to medium, and lacked crust of any type, but it was acceptable for a huge event.  For cake, the bride and groom chose carrot cake, and I just thought it was a strange wedding cake choice, they tried to make it a little lighter and less sweet, but it just made it, not a dense moist carrot cake, and not a good light airy cake of another variety.  They had a dessert bar with macrons, truffles and some other good things.

We had brunch the next morning, and they have a nice brunch- egg station, waffle station, pastries, grit or porridge bar, fruits, a few vegetable dishes that I liked, I always miss vegetables in most brunch buffets, they had roasted carrots with goat cheese that was good and this salad with greens and grapes that was interesting, but good interesting.  Eggs benedict, meats, etc.  A nice selection.  Nothing was exceptional, nothing was bad.  I would have thought it was better had I not just stayed at the Intercontinental in Bali, whose breakfast buffet was just out of this world, but it wasn't bad at all.  I have no idea what it cost, I am sure it wasn't cheap, but it suited everyone well.   

 

 

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19 minutes ago, ktmoomau said:

Yes, that is Dorthy Draper who did the interior design, she is quite famous for it, I kind of enjoy it as it really is a gentle push back against the traditional Southern style. The Homestead has lots of flowers too, but more demur, less in your face prints.

Well thanks.  I just learned something.  "in your face prints".  Absolutely.  I recall the impact to this day!!!!:blink:

So Homestead meals sound "event" okay.  Now that trip overseas must have been terrific!!!!

 

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