All About Staying at the Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone

The Old Faithful Inn is beautiful.  The lobby is very impressive all made out of logs.  The hotel is very rustic.  People book their reservations sometimes a year ahead.  I as lucky enough that I kept checking every day for a cancellation and was able to get a room about a month and a half ahead of time.  

They have a sit down restaurant, which a reservation ahead of time is highly recommended.  They also have a counter service deli.  

Booking the wrong room could be a big problem at the Old Faithful Inn. When you are booking a room make sure you look at whether it has a bathroom or not!  Yep, some of the older part of the hotel still has rooms without bathrooms, which means you would need to go down the hall to use the restroom, shower, etc. We stayed in one of the West Wing Premium Rooms with 2 Queen Beds. (please pardon our stuff everywhere in the pictures) 

The little bear soaps in all the Yellowstone Hotels are very cute.  If you are not staying at a hotel you can also purchase them at the gift shop.

When you walk out of the hotel you are literally just a few hundred yards away from Old Faithful and everything the upper geyser basin has to offer.  There is the visitor center, two general stores, gas stations, and also the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, which is a newer hotel. FYI: There is little to no cell service in most of Yellowstone and Wifi is only available for purchase in a couple areas in the whole park, one of those areas though is the lobby of the Old Faithful Snow Lodge.

I booked a different hotel for each night we were in Yellowstone, so it enabled us to work our way around the park without having to drive all the way back around to the same hotel each night.  Yellowstone is huge and the roads are basically 2 big loops. Just the Grand Loop Road alone is 142 miles.  In my opinion and experience, you don’t want to have to visit the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone on the other side of the park and then have to back track all the way to Old Faithful Inn afterwards.  You can read my post about Canyon Lodge here.

I had made a reservation about a month ahead of time for the sit down restaurant. It was nice to have a sit down meal in the Old Faithful Inn dining room, but the food was a little lack luster.  Make sure to determine if the price is worth it to you.  The general stores also have food.  Some of the general stores around yellowstone are just a snackbar walkup counter service and some are like a little sit down diner.  We also packed a snack box that included a loaf of bread and peanut butter, jelly and fruit, so we didn’t have to depend on food in the park the whole time.

It was really fun to spend the night at Old Faithful Inn.  It is an old hotel, so keep that in mind, but it is definitely worth visiting.  If you can’t get a room there I recommend at least visiting the lobby to check it out. (There was also a bison just hanging out by himself in the area while we were there.)

Have you been to the Old Faithful Inn?