Dr. Jekyl & Mr. Hyde situation. Or... it started off ok, but went downhill.
First off, the hotel's a bit out of town, which had its perks and drawbacks. The views were phenomenal, and you definitely get more of a "I'm in nature" feel (at least from the Waterfall building). We had a room on the top floor, we left the balcony door open at night to get a nice cross breeze (as there was no A/C and it was rather warm). I really liked the view and feeling. There is a bus that stops right outside the hotel, or it's a 20 minute walk downhill to get to town (the walk back however is a bit brutal... long/gradual hill), and that's where EVERYTHING is. The bus isn't cheap, costing $3.50/$7.50 one-way (depending on the driver). The first driver we had charged us $14 round-trip for two ppl, and I swear, every time we got on the bus, we were quoted something different... for the exact same pick-up/drop-off location. Shrug. If you're there for more than 3 days (without a car), buy the 7-day pass for $42/pp. During peak times, buses come every 30 minutes, non-peak, every hour.
Where things fell apart... the hotel staff. Generally they were friendly enough (shout out to an awesome bartender!), but there were several hiccups. Most notably, we asked the front desk to reserve a shuttle to the airport the day before we left. We checked back with them several times that afternoon/evening, and were told they were working on it. When we went down the morning of our departure, the request had been lost and nothing had been done. We asked them again to make the reservation, they called and nothing was available till after we needed to be at the airport... Spoke to the manager, who said he'd call to see if he could make arrangements. In parallel, we went on the shuttle website and booked ourselves, in time for the manager to come back and say nothing was available and there was nothing he could do, with about as much apathy as one could muster. No offer of covering the difference of a taxi (only slightly more expensive than the shuttle) or anything, That was effectively our parting experience with the hotel manager/staff.
The breakfast buffet was good, and reasonably priced at $22 NZD/pp (this was listed as a special price, marked down from $32). It included coffee and juice. There's a pool, though we didn't use it. Bikes for rent.
The room was nice/clean/spacious, and as we were there just before peak-season, we got a good price (half what it would be two weeks later). I prefer being out of the hustle/bustle of downtown, and the views were fabulous. The shuttle mix-up and apathy of the manager really irked us, dropping it from 4 stars to 2. read more