Lizzie Borden House

Overpriced and tour groups take precedence over house guests. Staff was rude. We miss the old management/owners. We were not allowed in until after tours were done. I needed help working the projector for our room and had no assistance to go up to my room and help me.

My mom and I attended the 2:30 pm tour on Saturday, October 19th, which included the extended basement tour. First, I want to say that our tour guide, Elaina, was absolutely fantastic! She was very entertaining and did an amazing job. We loved her so much! However, while we had an awesome guide, there were some other aspects of the experience that were disappointing. Let me start with the other staff at the house. During the tour, Elaina was interrupted three separate times by other staff members asking when she’d be finished or needing to borrow her, which seemed very unprofessional. It felt like the staff had faced some earlier issues that day and unfairly put the burden on Elaina to fix everything. Despite the interruptions, Elaina remained professional and even agreed to take the next tour group to help out. Kudos to her for staying polite and professional, even as some of the staff continued to pressure her about when she’d be available for the next group (I would’ve been ready to throw hands at that point). On top of that, we couldn’t move from the first room to the next because a different group was holding things up. So it wasn’t even Elaina’s fault that our tour was apparently running a little longer than expected. No one from the staff offered to assist or take over the next group for her (which, as far as I could tell, wasn’t even part of her original schedule). Instead, they kept pestering her in front of all of us, which felt so rude and awkward. Like did the other staff expect our tour to be cut short even though we paid for it? Even though they kept rushing her, Elaina politely reminded them that she is still currently guiding our group, and still took the time to guide us through the house and the basement (which some of us had paid extra as an add on to the tour). She was so awesome! For the record, our tour only ran over by nine minutes, including the interruptions. There seemed to be a miscommunication between staff about how long the tour should be, with one place in our booking saying it was 90 minutes and another saying an hour. The staff told Elaina that it was 90 minutes, and she followed that timeline. Honestly, it was disappointing to see the staff treat her so rudely in front of a large group of guests. Another issue I had with the staff (specifically, two older, grouchy women) was that one of them was literally cooking soup in the middle of our tour in the kitchen. The kitchen was already small and cramped, and now we had to squeeze in around her and her food prep area as well. She acted annoyed that we were there, even though we legit paid for this tour. It felt really unprofessional. Cooking on a gas stove while guests are standing so close seems unsafe. My mom and I both have long hair, and we were standing right by the stove. What if the soup had spilled, or our hair got too close to the stove? Or what if there was a child in the group? I’m not usually overly concerned about safety, but this situation made me

So...we did not do the official tour, nor did we do the breakfast.. but wow, we did enjoy our stay here! We booked a suite that had its own bathroom. The beds were comfy, the rooms were super clean. We did visit the public rooms and the decor is a mix of campy and historic...there's a "dead Andrew Borden" in the living room which is campy and creepy, but then there's historical documents and artifacts from the time of Lizzie Borden. Very informative and just plain fun to visit. I'm glad we did it!