Best Western Ramkota Hotel

The restaurant served one of the best meals I had on my whole trip, really first-rate. I was here during a three-week drive from the Midwest to Oregon and back, and the hotel was very good. I hadn't stayed at a Best Western in a while and was impressed. It compared very well with the Holiday Inn, Hilton, and Fairfield/Marriott's properties I stayed at along the way.

Our room was lovely, well kept, and mostly clean, and my wife and our 15-month-old son had a good time with the water park. Most of the staff I met were kind. The pool, though, was freezing. We managed about half an hour together before our son was shivering with blue lips. The next day it felt even colder, and we had to sneak out an extra towel to cover him. After swimming, a supervisor reprimanded us for taking a towel for his bath. Then the key cards kept failing. The desk told us they expired every 24 hours, which made no sense to me. After our swim the second day, my wife went to get another card while our son and I shivered outside our room. She waited in line, and the desk worker pointed to someone behind her, so she had to wait longer. By the time she came back, we'd nearly air-dried, and the card still didn't work. I went back down with my son and finally got one that did. Any one of those things might've been manageable, but together they really bothered me. Breakfast was also very average for $12.50 each, basically just continental breakfast. The room looked great and the water park was cool, but they need to heat the pool and fix the cards.

The restaurant was overpriced, and the wait staff weren't as good as the rest of the team. Front desk and housekeeping were amazing, caring, and very accommodating to what we needed. There's a lot to this hotel, including two pools, and it seems well suited to conferences and get-togethers. Just know that if you book a second-floor room, there's no elevator for elderly or disabled guests.

The hot tub was green, with scum around the rim, and the jets made it foam. Gross. The water park was a letdown too, since the slides weren't running. My mother had booked two suites so the family could celebrate the end of the year and a late Christmas, open presents, and swim, so that was disappointing. There weren't any towels at either side of the pool when we were finishing up. I called the desk, then went up there soaking wet after they said they couldn't bring any down. I waited more than five minutes because a sign said the desk attendant was away. He told me they had neither pool towels nor regular towels to give out. When I asked about towels in the laundry rooms, he said there were probably some, but guests weren't allowed in there. He had time to put out the sign but not to spend five minutes fetching towels. His explanation was they hadn't expected anyone to use the pool, so they hadn't prepared towels. I wouldn't bring a family here to swim.