Nice, but overpriced for what you get
We spent the weekend there for my daughter’s birthday because she really wanted to see Lake Louise and the hotel. The hotel is nice (although dated) and it does feel relatively clean, even though I did find some thick black hair in my bedding.
The food and drinks are really overpriced. I understand that it will cost more to transport food to the hotel, however we are in the Village of Lake Louise and the prices seemed much more reasonable. The “continental breakfast” that was $45/person (kids under 12 eat free) was lacklustre, to say the least. $45 for a bagel with old salmon that had been sitting out? No, thank you. The other restaurants were just as overpriced, and the unfortunate thing is that everything closed really early, around 9:00pm, and there wasn’t anything to do after that. There is a bar in the “basement” of the hotel that was open a bit later, but again, it was way overpriced and there wasn’t a lot of options for snacky food, unless you want to pay $30 for chicken wings (I, myself, am vegetarian and the only there I could have was $45 nachos). I wouldn’t mind paying the prices if the food seemed worth it, but frankly it wasn’t THAT amazing, everything was okay.
We thought there might be something cool happening when the waitress of the bar gave us a business card thing with a riddle on it that was supposed to gain you access to a “secret” bar located in the Walliser Stube steakhouse. Thinking that it would be interesting to check out, we went right from the bar in the basement to the secret bar upstairs. As soon as we got there, a group in front of us was turned away for the same thing we went up there for, stating they were closed… and it wasn’t even 11:00pm. There should have been better communication between the 2 establishments. The waitress gave us the card as we paid, then we left and went straight there, and it was closed.
There is literally nothing else to do there, so people party in their rooms and disrupt other guests (like the group of teenager girls in the dance competition on our floor who were yelling all night). We had kids with us, so we weren’t looking to stay out all night or anything, but when you pay over $600/night for a room (oh, and an additional $40 for parking even though you just paid over a grand for the weekend there) you would think there would be SOMETHING to do after 9:00pm.
It seems as though the Chateau only caters to wealthy, old people who go to bed early. It is a shame because they could be busier if they had some better accommodations.
Oh, also, there was a bunch of construction happening, so the “beautiful castle feel” of the hotel was lost. And no, there was no discount offered.
All in all, I was glad we got to experience it for the kids, but next time we will be staying in Banff and making a day trip up there if we ever want to return. It is honestly not worth it.