Partner Reviews: Blue Iguana Inn
Emerald Iguana almost ruined Ojai for us!!!!
My now husband, and I searched for the perfect property to host our 3-day, wedding weekend celebration for our families and friends. It wasn't until we stumbled upon this gorgeous hotel, that everything else fell into place. We ended up renting the ENTIRE property for 3 days, for our entire family. And if you're doing your math, people, that's a little over $8,000 the owners made off of us. Everything was fine until my family began to arrive on Friday. I'm African-American, my husband is Jewish. The owner became tense, rude and began demanding deposits that hadn't been mentioned before. We'd already settled the bill with a great lady that worked in the office, but then the owner came in and, after locking the rooms that had already been opened so I could put gift baskets in them, wouldn't hand the keys over to me until I paid her the extra money. Where I come from, that's called extortion. We paid, because at that point our guests had arrived, entire families, some of whom live across the country and hadn't seen each other in 10 years. After a few hours of her sitting in the office, glaring at everyone as they gathered by the pool before leaving for the rehearsal dinner, she left, and was replaced by a wonderful employee. I was so devastated about the owner's outrageous behavior, I didn't attend my own rehearsal dinner. When we confronted the owner about her behavior at the end of our stay, there was no remorse on her part whatsoever. It's sad because we would've been loyal customers who returned every year for our anniversary, and my husband's family is a HUGE, warm (wealthy) family that loves to travel, renting multiple homes in the summers together, and had fallen in love with this place as well. But now that they know how my family was treated, they're never coming back to this establishment again. We all will be taking our business and our money elsewhere. At the end of the day, we're just good people who didn't deserve to be treated this way.
NOT RECOMMENDED / BAD EXPERIENCE - cute hotel with BAD SERVICE
We did not get our romantic get-away as we hoped in Ojai. Their website looked cute so we took a chance. We knew it was a kid friendly hotel, but it was more like a daycare environment. There were kids in the room above us that were loud all day long starting at about 6am. There was another family with young children that were really noisy as well. Our room was cute, but the kind size matress we were promised was nothing but a really OLD & UNCOMFORTABLE queen size bed. When we called the front desk to ask about this situation, she insisted that this matress measuring 60x80 was a king (do your research people). The bed was really uncomfortalbe and we were disappointed that it was a queen. We woke up early due to loud children in the hotel so figured we could take advantage of their breakfast set up. They serve it in a room smaller than a small bathroom stall that was supposed to accomodate 30 guests. There was no place to eat our food, so we had to hike all the way back to our room that was all the way in the back of the property. I knew it was a hotel, but nobody told me that I had to deliver my own food. NOT FUN. The SERVICE was LOUSY, The front desk was RUDE AND CONDESCENDING. Instead of trying to accomodate us, they insisted on arguing and trying to prove us that we were wrong. Nice service. DON'T STAY HERE UNLESS YOU WANT BAD SERVICE AND RUDE FRONT DESK. It's too bad because it's a really cute hotel, but just not run properly. You want friendly and cozy service if you're staying at an intimate place like this is described on their web site. We drove all the way from orange county for a lousy visit. What a waste of a weekend and our money. BLUE IGUANA IN GETS OUR 2 THUMBS DOWN : (
A Great Nights Sleep
My favorite place to stay while in Ojai. Wonderful rooms. Amazing staff. If the Blue Iguana is booked you can always stay at the sister site. The charming Emerald Iguana. With higher priced sites in Ojai they haven't even come close to charm of this lovely place.
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