Castle Bamboo Waikīkī Hotel

I first visited just a couple of months ago and stayed for a couple of weeks. The staff were kind and courteous, and everything felt pleasant. Being so close to everything made vacationing easy. It was a fun place to stay, and I'd definitely recommend it. Five stars!

We were far from home and felt stuck paying over $200 more, though our booking.com reservation said taxes and additional fees were paid in full. At check-in, they told us there was a $40 per day resort fee that hadn't been mentioned anywhere. If we'd known, we'd have booked somewhere else. Booking.com and the Bamboo were both unhelpful, and neither gave us a straight answer. It felt like they were in cahoots. We booked through booking. com and were very careful when making the reservation. The Bamboo wasn't that nice either, and its customer service left us very disappointed.

Rooms are cheap, but the place isn't good overall, and Hawaiian hotels can come with a lot of random fees. There are only about 12 parking stalls for roughly 144 rooms. The rooms feel outdated and smell bad, and the area rugs weren't vacuumed. Room service only came every seven days. I even found a live roach inside my mini fridge, and the parking garage smelled like a sewer.

The rooms were tiny, old, and poorly maintained, and the photos they post are misleading. We also weren't told about extra fees, not even by the booking companies. On arrival, they charged us an additional $40 per night, supposedly for cleaning and check-out, as though we checked out every day. Yet the room wasn't cleaned at all during our stay. That unexpected cost threw off our trip budget, and I wish I'd known about the hotel's bad practices before booking. I could have stayed somewhere much nicer.