Lost Pines Resort in Bastrop

Sylvia and I drove out to the new Lost Pines Hyatt Resort in Batrsop yesterday to check out the Grand Opening and see what was happening out there. The resort is still under construction, or incomplete in many areas. Vegetation and landscaping is not finished, but the buildings are substantially done and they are taking guests in the hotel.

Overall, we were very impressed. We were planning to take the kids to Port Aransas in a couple of weeks to play on the beach and relax for a few days, but now we are thinking “Hmmm, this is just 30 minutes from our house …we save a whole day of not driving …” Whenever we go to the beach, the kids spend most of their time in the hotel pool anyway.

There is a water park with a fake river that tubers can float on, traveling from pool to pool. There is a sand beach in one of the pools, volleyball courts, fly fishing lessons on the Colorado River, horseback riding, golf course, and a full luxury spa among other things.

We were feeling pretty good about the place until we decided to eat at 5PM. The restaurant we tried was newly opened, but not prepared for business. The service was slow. It took more than 45 minutes to get two salads and 2 cups of soup. A fly buzzed us the entire time. A parade of people kept checking on us every 7 minutes, asking “how is everything?”, and we’d say, “Not too good. Can you get rid of this fly and find out where our salads are?” But nobody seemed to have any authority or know what they were doing. (Note to Hyatt: Only allow people who can actually solve problems to ask guests how things are going) They would simply says something like “oh, we’ve been spraying for those flies.” or “I’m sorry, everybody in the kitchen is kind of new”. It seemed like mass confusion. Even though they were grossly over-staffed, they still didn’t even have any of the entrees out on the buffet 15 minutes after opening. The soup was luke warm, but the Cobb Salads, once they did arrive, were excellent.

You expect some glitches on opening day, so we won’t hold the bad dining experience against them unless it happens again. But if it’s going to cost $40 for two soup and salads with slow service and flies buzzing around, they’ll get a bad reputation real soon. We’ll probably spend a night or two out there soon and I know the kids are going to absolutely love it.

You can check out the resort online at http://lostpines.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/

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