My boyfriend and I stayed here one night before going on the MacBackpackers 3 Day Highland Romp. They booked it for us, and we were lucky and got in the 10 person room they have there. The hostel is quite large, I think it used to be the residence for the church it’s attached to, so the rooms have really high ceilings and there’s lots of space. Each bed has a locker with a safe inside, and I felt quite safe. The location is really quite wonderful. If you’re walking from the train station, be prepared to walk up a lot of hills, but the castle truly is just above the hostel! There is a huge kitchen there, as well as a common area that was always full of lots of people. There was one computer available, but we waited for hours and never got a chance to check our email on it. But if you have a laptop with you they have wireless internet for your use. The breakfast wasn’t very good. We walked down to the little convenience store instead. They do allow families to stay there (it isn’t a youth hostel or an under 30 or anything like that) and we had a family of 4 in our room. So there were young kids in our room which I found a bit uncomfortable. But for a hostel it wasn’t a bad place! The MacBackers tour was also AMAZING and I highly recommend it! The highlands truly are amazing!

We booked online and paid a percentage of the cost by credit card.
On arrival, they had'nt kept our beds, had a really hard time finding us in their totally disorganised booking book, eventually tried to give us all beds in seperate dorms (no thanks, in a strange city, away for the weekend together, why do you think I booked three of us into one small size dorm?...)
Eventually they found us beds in a big dorm where people were obviously living, one bed was being used as a wardrobe and for the two nights and days we were there, there were people asleep in the beds throughout the day- probably working nights in Edinburgh. Not a good situation if youre on holiday and tip-toeing around trying not to wake people.
Final straw was they wouldnt let us in through the security gate unless we paid in full for beds and wouldnt take out the amount Id already paid online ( 9.78 EURO).
When I got home I carefully checked my reciepts and the booking site and e-mails and found Id been overcharged the 9.78 euro.
I e-mailed them and they never got back to me.

I lived here for 6 months. It's a great place with nice people and atmosphere. Unlike any other Edinburgh Hostel, you'll find a lot of people who actually live there.

Castle Rock is without a doubt the worst place I've ever (almost) stayed. It was so bad that we walked in to our room, turned around, found another hostel, and asked for our money back.

The place is filthy, the only rooms available are for 14 people, there's no real place to keep your stuff safe, and I'd be afraid to know what I would smell like after a night there. I couldn't believe the place was still in business.

The location was nice, but not at all worth dealing with the rest of it. We walked about half a mile down the street and found Budget Backpackers, which was the nicest hostel we stayed in on our trip, and for the same price.

Please, do yourself a favor and skip Castle Rock.