My son (7) and I decided to head to GALA for his birthday weekend and I wanted him to have a Japanese ryokan experience. Simply put, he LOVED the place. In fact, he wanted to move to Japan after staying here. Overall, it was an excellent place to stay and the staff were absolutely wonderful. One night, with no taxi and tempreatures near freezing, one of the mangers offered to drop us off to a near by ramen place even though they had suspended rides for the day. Now that's service!
The room has a small bath/shower but my son and I never used it. We took advantage of the free 'onsen' every night before bed. We even got in a bit of pingpong and ice cream (for him), beer (for me) as a night cap.