Lake San Marcos Resort, San Marcos

We use to love coming here. Now it seems run down and shabby. Found out part of hotel is now being used for long term low income rentals. During visit, saw numerous security & police visits to hotel. Kind of scary.

If you are considering getting married at Lake San Marcos “Resort”… DON’T DO IT!!! Believe me, you will regret it. My beloved and I recently got married there, and the service that the “resort” provided was nothing short of nightmarish. Although my parents are homeowners in the Lake San Marcos community, the resort took advantage of us at every possible opportunity. I could go on for days… Accommodations: In January, the wedding coordinator at this so-called “resort” quoted us a blocked rate of $99 per standard room. 10 days later, the Red Cross blocked 100 rooms in the hotel, leaving us only 8 rooms to reserve for our guests, most of which were smoking. The hotel would also no longer honor its original rate, and raised it to $129! The wedding coordinator assured me that more rooms would be released and made available to our guests one month before the wedding. However, when 40 more rooms were, in fact released, the hotel demanded a nightly rate of $250!!!! And this hotel is a DUMP. It is a Motel 6 on the water. The air conditioner in one of our guests’ room was broken, and it was about 90 degrees outside. There was a leak in the ceiling of another. When one guest arrived, she discovered that the sheets on the bed were a size too small. When she requested service, a hotel employee went to her room to drop off a set of sheets. When she requested that he actually make the bed, he replied that he was off the clock, but if she didn’t tell anyone, he would help her. He was afraid of being reprimanded for providing quality service to a guest. It is the type of backward attitude that permeates the place. Professionalism: The staff of Lake San Marcos Resort is the most incompetent, unprofessional, and negative that I have ever encountered. A culture of unprofessionalism pervades the place from the bottom down. The new “wedding coordinator” was negative from the beginning. She has horrible communications skills, she doesn’t show up for meetings on time, and she is very fake in her demeanor. She doesn’t listen when you are speaking to her, and her answer to your every request is either “no, you can’t do that,” or “that will cost you extra.” Every family member of mine who interacted with her had a very negative experience. For example, the resort charges $1,500 for the use of the reception room, and it includes set up and break down, amongst other things. We hired an outside caterer. Never did the wedding coordinator, or her predecessor, EVER mention that we were required to hire additional staff to “scrape the plates” and clean up the dishes. However, during the middle of the reception, she began badgering my caterer about whether or not she was going to have her staff scrape the plates. My caterer rightfully asserted that it was not her responsibility, as the plates and everything else belonged to the resort. The wedding coordinator proceeded to argue with my caterer, and then my mother, telling her that she should have our guests scrape their plates into a trash can when they were finished eating!!! My mother refused. Well… when we were ON OUR HONEYMOON, the wedding coordinator wrote me an email to “congratulate” us on our wedding and let us know that she had charged an additional $400 to my credit card for clean-up of the dishes. She made sure to clarify that she was going to charge us $800, but that she was “helping us out.” Oh yeah – they also charged us $149 for a room that a family member had booked and not used. There’s nothing like being robbed of $550 when you’re on your honeymoon. Our “Honeymoon Suite”: I confirmed that we had a mini-suite reserved on our wedding night on at least three occasions. When we went to check in on the day of our wedding, however, the front desk staff said that no room had been assigned to us! They eventually worked that issue out, but completely failed on another. Again, I could go on and on… You get the picture. Don’t do it. You will regret it!

As this was a last minute reservation for the 4th of july, we should have been suspect that this was the only hotel close to san diego with a vacancy. There were bugs in the bed, every day. House keeping finally came to change the sheets thinking this would solve the problem. next morning i woke up to a screaming girlfriend because there were bugs crawling on our sheets, walls etc. k, lets go to the beach, oops, the bugs got into our suit case and managed to hitch a ride on my board shorts. there was no manager there, simply a desk clerk. After getting ahold of the director after calling her about 30 times and leaving voicemails she said that the stay would be compd for our inconvenience. Well that was nice of them. get a phone call the next day saying they were no longer refunding our stay because they had an "inspection team" look for bugs LOL what a joke... housekeeping is not an inspection team, of course they wont say there are bugs because its their job to clean them up. if you think this is a fake review, please refer to the link below.. it has the hotels card on it with our critters on it. http://tinyurl.com/npanyv food was decent.

Noisy; built with exterior entrances of cheap motel and inside like one; windows not openable; heard cricking of beds during sex; entire building shook during footsteps to 2d floor and door closings; computers and phones from late 1980s with wrong directions; maid service did not replace tissues; showers shook whole building; waited 10 minutes for service in Gordon "Country Club" restaurant charged $9/day resort fee for and left as did not get seated at all during early lunch (8 servers, 5 eating); televised events were days ago past; very few TV channels of any interest on old 23" sets of 1990s. Obviously losing money, including closing of QUAIL restaurant for a "Barn Burner."(A great name for location inside fire-prone area.) Boat rentals not found. Lacked peephole in door or hotel safe, contrary to CA law. Econo Lodge experience superior; checked out early even tho paid for 1 more day nonrefundable.

Had reservations for a lake view room. Checked in and they assigned me to a pool side view. A big song and dance later, they deducted the $9.00 per day resort fee. I had the ground level room. I could hear the floor noise from the people up-stairs and running bath and toilet water througout the night and early morning (up-stairs and to the side of me). Had to try to sleep with the tv on. The rooms were a bit out-dated (70's). The carpet had stains, but the room was clean. The beds were worn.

We took the family for a spring break trip to Legoland, etc and we booked this hotel for the week March 11-16. My oldest son suffers from asthma and we had requested a room that was smoke free. We got a room with fresh air. No perfumes to cover up, no smokey smell the room was wonderful. The colors were neutral, the room clean and comfortable. The service was great! We requested extra towels due to the kids wanting to go swimming all the time and they provided them every day. They left extra coffee and tea, lotions and soaps as well as the towels everyday. The lake was beautiful and serene. The night lights made the lake almost seem like another world. The staff were friendly and helpful. I would recommend this hotel for everyone wanting to get away and have some peace and quiet.

If it wasn't for the friendly informative staff i would have walked out. The lake water smells, i found hair in my sheets moved rooms and found more hair and the carpet was stained. The walls are paper thin might as well not even be there. The dinner house on property close at eight leaving you stranded for food, if you go to the store to buy food you pay 10$ a night for a microwave that is dirty!..............!!!!!

The facilities are dated as stated in another review however the grounds are beautiful with many very nice areas for outdoor weddings, of which several were going on while my husband and I attended a conference nearby. We both love the outdoors and were hoping to get in some fishing but there is no fishing or boat launch available to the general public. The lake is not meant for water recreation and also very few locals were even on the lake although pontoon boats were at every available dock space. The pools look nice but they are not heated so we were not able to use them, the light is still out in the east pool and the spa is so small that only a few guests can use it at a time. Maintenance is needed in several areas around the campus and when we informed staff of a dangerous stair case their response was "yes we know about it". It was still in disrepair 3 days later without any work done at all. The Quail resteraunt has a wonderful view of the lake, very good food and very nice reception rooms for parties, the prices are a little high though. With the very fine resteraunts nearbuy on resteraunt row the compitition puts The Quail to shame. I would not reccomend this hotel for young families due to a lack of recreation but it is great place for older golfing couples and wedding parties

I have booked a stay here and will add to this review upon returning. However I am already dissappointed as there is no public fishing permited as per the concerage desk.

Extremely disappointing for a property that calls itself a "Resort." We were first located facing the street and the parking lot, when poolside rooms were available instead. We were switched to poolside when I asked, but should have been there from the get go. The room were dated and not the cleanest I have seen. There was dust/smoke stains coming from the vent and staining the ceiling. The porch light was out, as were many others I noted. Any staff or cleaning person that you pass on the sidewalk did NOT speak or great you. When the staff is cleaning the rooms, they place the bundles of dirty linens in the middle of the sidewalk for you to dodge. The property is far from spic and span- even to the point of a partial roll of toilet tissue lying under one of the stair wells. The electric launch available for rental, as well as most of the dock area, was COVERED in bird droppings. Clearly no one went out there with a hose in recent times. The pontoon boars appeared to date from the 60's, and I was not tempted to use one. The billiard room looked like something from a church basement, and again I passed on going in. In my mind, you do not tout a billiard room with a 25 year old table. All in all the entire resort and our stay was "Ok." I might as well have been in a Comfort Inn The "heated" pools were so cold, that a polar bear would have found them uncomfortable. Neither myself nor my daughter were able to swim. When we went into Gordon's on the Green, we felt like outsiders invading the inner circle. Some of the obviously wealthy matrons gave us a look like _"Harumph, OUTSIDERS!" The menu offers NOTHING for kids, and my young daughter was not even offered a glass of water when we first sat down. Because of this, we walked out, and headed up to Restaurant Row. This was actually one of the worst snubbings my wife or I had ever experienced, and I refused to allow my daughter to be treated this way. I was not impressed with the cleanliness, the atmosphere, and really did not feel welcome. If Gordon's prefers NOT to cater to young people, the brochure should say so up front. The property is dated, and needs a major freshening. You can clearly tell it dates to the 60's, as little has been done to the place since then..We wanted to try somewhere different in the San Diego area,Lake San Marcos after an internet search. We found By the way, when leaving, I left SUBSTANTIAL comments of this nature on the comment card upon leaving, and NO ONE from the property contacted me in reply. I found that unprofessional to say the least. It would appear that unless you are a wealthy retiree, they really do NOT want your business.