The Kona Mansion Inn

Recently, my family and I had the opportunity to stay at the Kona Mansion Inn in Center Harbor, New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesaukee. At first, my family of six had been set to stay in one of the cabins on the lake, but for reasons described in my review of The Cabins at the Kona Mansion Inn, we ended up moving our reservation to the inn itself.

Although my opinion and review of the Kona Mansion Inn is largely a negative one, there were some positive aspects that deserve to be highlighted. The staff at the Kona was extremely nice and did their best to meet our needs. One gentleman offered us the use of his personal laptop computer to order fishing licenses and the members of the staff always did their best to accommodate us. Aside from an uncomfortable moment when staff members overheard me joking with family about the establishment, the help at the Kona Mansion Inn made our stay tolerable.

We ate at the inn twice, and both times the food was fine. Other people in the family raved about it, but I thought that it was just fine. I did have to mentally block out the vision that I had as to where it was prepared, but seeing as how the food didn't make me ill, I would assume that the cleanliness of the kitchen area must have been adequate.

Another positive aspect of the Kona was its proximity to a local wildlife reservation. I'm a distance runner and I love trail running. Only minutes from the inn was a great set of trails, but only for someone who loves "true" trail running. I ran across mountains, through puddles, in mud up to my ankles, and through open fields. If that doesn't sound appealing to you, these trails would not be a positive feature. While it was nice to reach my destination by foot, I think that I would have preferred to have stayed somewhere nice and driven to the state park, even if it did mean getting mud in my wife's car.

The only positive aspect of our stay that made being at the Kona Mansion Inn worth it, however, was being there with family. We had approximately thirty family members at the inn, and some of the memories will stay with me for a lifetime. Some of the greatest comments that I heard from family members while at the Kona were, "For the first time in ten years, I didn't take a shower this morning," "It's kind of like staying at Nana's old house if you had to use the bathroom in the basement," "I've stayed in worse before, but never in this country," and of course, "I hate this place!"

So what was there to dislike about the Kona Mansion Inn? For starters, it was an uncomfortable place to be. My family was the first to show up, and we were the only people at the inn. That feeling that some may have described as cozy, felt more like eerie to me. Though I was not scared, I could understand where Stephen King came up with some of his horrific story ideas that are set in New England. Even when other people showed up, the main lobby was not an area where anyone wanted to be. On past family trips, the hotel lobby has always been a place where the family congregated and the hotel bar has been a place where people stayed until two or three in the morning. On this trip, everyone in the family spent their time trying to find something to do in an area built around doing nothing, just to get away from the Kona. Once back at the inn for the night, everyone went straight to bed.

The rooms were gross. I made my kids wear socks all night so that their bare feet never touched the floor. The blankets should have been replaced about ten years ago. Paint, presumably lead paint based upon how frequently things in the inn were updated, was peeling off the windows. A hole in our bathroom doorframe had been stuffed with tissues. The bathroom was absolutely filthy. I showered with my sandals on in a stall that was so small that I couldn't effectively wash my legs. In an effort to clean my feet, I had chills sent down my spine when I accidentally rubbed my side against the slimy shower wall.

In addition to being disgusting, the rooms were uncomfortable as well. I believe that our mattresses may have been ancient artifacts that came over on the Mayflower. They were so soft that when I laid down I rolled right to the middle of the bed. I was afraid that my mattress was going to smother me in the middle of the night. Also, our air conditioner didn't work and our room never got below eighty-five degrees. In addition to that, unlike your standard hotel room, our room did not have a latch that could be unlocked from the inside only, leaving me pushing furniture in front of the door at night.

Room sizes varied with the prices of the rooms, but the level of filth was equal pretty much throughout the inn. A room that was $75 was basically large enough to fit a bed and give you room to shimmy around it while a room that was $180 was large but still had a filthy bathroom. Most rooms ranged from $120 to $150 a night and the televisions in the rooms ranged from 9" to 13" in size.

The outdoor amenities of the inn were a joke. The golf course was a small par 3 course with greens that were about thirty feet wide, and that was their best attraction. The tennis courts really needed to be mowed, but that wouldn't have been such a big deal if they were grass courts. These were hard courts that had vegetation growing up from the cracks throughout them. The beach was a twenty to thirty foot stretch of dirty lake frontage. After our first visit to it, where my children came across several used condoms, we didn't return to the water.

Of the four reviews currently posted on tripadvisor.com, only one of them shared the same experience that I had. I assume that the other three were either planted or posted by friends of the owners. One review was of a wedding and I guess that I could understand getting married there if the prices reflected the atmosphere, but the Kona is expensive. Honestly, if I got married there, I'd probably get divorced just so that I could have a nice wedding down the line.

I don't think that I had completely absorbed the impact of our trip to the Kona Mansion Inn until I was sitting in my office working a few days after we came home. Typing away furiously, I heard my two oldest children playing a game where they were running in the woods from bad guys. The bad guys were trying to capture them and take them to the Kona Mansion. I sat back and said our family's new catch phrase, "That's so Kona." In all seriousness, if you're looking for an overpriced vacation where you can come away with a week's worth of horror stories, this is the place for you, but if you're looking for a nice getaway at a good value, stay away from New Hampshire.