Gary D.
Yelp
The Old Faithful Inn Dining room is a beautiful dining hall in the Old Faithful Inn. One could step in the huge voluminous dining room and imagine themselves back in the 1930's and 40's and being served delicious meals after enjoying all the wonders that Yellowstone National Park has to offer. But today, one's imagination would be shattered once they started eating the bland, room temperature "food" they serve in this gorgeous setting.
If you like good food, don't go here!
As I have said in my review of the Old Faithful Inn, the company that is currently running the Yellowstone Hotels and Restaurants, "Xanterra" in my opinion is failing miserably at delivering excellent customer service. They do NOTHING to provide their customers a positive experience, zero WOW moments, no "I can't wait to come back here!" thoughts.
Our first nights stay we had dinner reservations at 5pm, we went directly to the buffet as suggested by our server because the line was short, she said the line sometimes gets as long as the exit which is approximately 100 feet long! There was a fairly wide variety of things to eat, salad, rolls, beef short ribs, huckleberry bbq chicken, wild rice, string beans and mashed potatoes, I took a sample of everything. Nothing stood out as being delicious, nothing stood out has having much of any flavor at all. I remember thinking to myself, "This is what prison food must taste like".
Two days later we got a bit of a late start, so we decided to try the breakfast, they open at 6:30am and we came in around 8:30ish although there were many empty tables we had to wait about 15 minutes to be seated. We immediately headed for the buffet and I was pleasantly surprised! The food was all pretty good! The oatmeal was hot! The eggs weren't watery, biscuits and gravy were delicious, and the bacon and sausage were both hot and delicious! (This is the reason for the third star.)
Our last day at the Inn we decided to have breakfast again, this time we got there at 6:45am, again we went straight to the buffet, and waited in line for about 10 minutes to get to the food. This experience was a complete 180 degree turn from the previous day. With the exception of the oatmeal and biscuits and gravy, everything was room temperature! The eggs were watery, and the sausage was completely different from the previous day, instead of being hot and delicious, it was cold and shriveled up!
My impression of Xanterra is that they are doing the absolute bare minimum for their customers because they know that most of them won't be returning, and the customers that do come back know better than to stay in one of their facilities. But they have a never ending stream of first time guests they can bilk out of their money.
Needless to say we won't be returning, unless the Park Service changes their "hospitality" contract.