Hilton Santa Fe Buffalo Thunder

We came gorxav2 day stay for a meeting. We had been here before, and wanted to return for a get away. E had an issue with our reservation, but Alex took charge and was able to get us a fantastic room. We had a king size bed, ADA accessible room with a balcony overlooking the pool and a charming fireplace. The decor was a lovely Southwestern motif. Here are several places to eat, plus a large casino. This hotel is convenient to many attractions such as Nambe Falls, Chimayo, Espanola, Santa Fe, Pojoaque Reservation and Pueblo ruins. It is a charming get away and you can do as much or as little as you want to. I highly recommend it.

The property is amazing! Get ready to walk if you decide to stay here because this place is massive!!!!!!! I'd say the property is the size of a Las Vegas resort with very nice amenities such as 2 large pools (1 indoor pool) , 2 large hot tubs (one indoors). Tennis courts, arcade for kids, several restaurants and bars. My absolutely only complaint is our A/C never worked in our room all night so the room was a horrendous 78 degrees despite thermostat being put on 66. This seemed to be the trend through the property as most places such as casino, walkaways were extremely muggy and hot with no airflow. With all being said we still very much enjoyed our stay and will probably stay again in the winter time.

The rooms are at a price that is way too much! The decor is awesome, but only because the decor must be donated by the locals! One restaurant is expensive, and in the deli, they run out of popular items. One bar with a limited space to sit or no music! The other bar is closed for renovations. It use to have band playing in the bar and just a fund place to go on the weekends. Not any more! Looks like all they want is for you to do is play slots! Slots that don't pay and slots that so old, it really is time to get rid of them! No Santa Fe's playground anymore!! No fun, just a boring place!

Having read both 5-star and 1-star reviews of this hotel, I can say that they are BOTH right. My wife and I visit Santa Fe to go to the Santa Fe Opera, and we're really not interested in the downtown shopping thing. We are also casual gamblers, so the casino is a nice -- but not necessarily important -- perk (more on this later). The location really works for us, as we don't have to deal with downtown traffic on opera nights, and we do the pre-show dinners at the opera, so dining isn't critical either. PROS It's a pretty nice hotel overall. Pool is large and has a nice bridge feature. Rooms are spacious and clean. We haven't experienced any issues with our rooms. The wait staff in the food places has been polite and helpful. Casino dealers are friendly-ish. Front desk personnel have been OK. Some better than others. The main restaurant is really great. Good food, nice atmosphere and excellent service. If you are staying Wednesday through Saturday, you'll find all the restaurants open. It's like a real resort. CONS The complaints about the restaurants being closed are unfortunately legitimate. What's worse, the hotel doesn't let you know this ahead of time, so on our last visit my wife and I -- checking in on a Sunday -- wound up grabbing sandwiches at the deli at the last minute. Decided to get takeout -- there was no room service! -- from the casino bar the next night, and were lucky to be the first in line at the hostess stand. Within a few minutes there was a long line of people trying to do the same, with only one overworked woman acting as hostess, order taker, and waitress. We were pretty pissed off, to say the least. As mentioned, front desk personnel are helpful, sometimes -- but some just don't seem to care. The casino is fine, but I like to play craps and, while they had a table, it was never open. Which brings me to the real problem here -- staffing. After chatting with servers, dealers, and other staff -- both here and at other places in the area -- we realized that these places just can't get help. You can't open a restaurant if you can't get cooks and servers. You can't open a craps table if you can't get dealers. You can't offer room service if you can't get food runners. My guess is that the downtown hotels and restaurants -- being more expensive -- can afford to pay a higher wage, so they get the staff. Out in the boondocks, not so much. BOTTOM LINE All that said, my wife and I are planning another opera trip for August 2025, and we play to stay at the Buffalo Thunder. We'll be OK knowing ahead of time what their shortcomings are and planning around them. If we wanted/needed a first-class hotel experience, we'd stay downtown and pay a lot more. But compared to other Hilton resort hotels, this admittedly isn't on par.

The excitement of checking in to what we thought was an amazing property with a lot to offer... died upon our first encounter with a thoroughly bored and disinterested receptionist in an empty hotel lobby. It was downhill from there. The best part was the comfortable beds (had nice pillow topped mattresses and down pillows). The fireplace was a welcome part of our room and the view from the balcony awesome. On the downside: The sense of abandonment in the whole property was depressing, and exacerbated by the lack lustre casino and the zombi-like slot machine players. The wifi was almost non-existent. We had to change rooms from one wing to another to chase better reception as none of us were on data, having international SIM cards. This hotel feels like it is not used to having international guests, just domestic tourists it seems. The steam and sauna is not even part of the hotel, and to use it the spa charges USD45! Insane. The room was for a family of 4, but only 2 paper cups supplied with a most basic cheap coffee maker with 2 coffee pods which was too weak to make even 1 mug. No sign of an electric kettle (they only cost USD10 in Costco, folks!) and the temperature outside is 20deg F! We could not make hot chocolate or teas. Hilton has lost all its sense of prestige and luxury, but continues to charge like it was still 5 stars?