Ramada Spirit Lake/okoboji

The room was decent, but I’m not sure I’d stay again. We were in town for a family wedding, and they wouldn’t let us drop off bags before 3:00 p.m. when we called between the ceremony and reception. Check-in was at 4:00, and earlier we’d been told there’d be a charge to check in early, even though the wedding was at 1:00. It wasn’t busy season, and there were at most five cars in the lot, three of them belonging to our family. The next day we tried the free breakfast, but it was bad and very dirty. I had to ask a worker to replace some items because the bottoms of the containers were absolutely filthy.

The staff were friendly, and I hesitated before leaving a review, but I’d never stay here on my own. The pictures don’t look anything like the rooms. The property feels dark, dirty, tired, and run down. There were patched spots all over the drywall, including repairs across much of the lobby ceiling that hadn’t been painted over. Our shower had a dirty, used wash rag draped over the head. I worried about bed bugs because they seem to be an issue here. We didn’t find any, but we looked carefully. The beds sit on metal box frames, and although the mattresses had covers, they weren’t fully wrapped like in many nicer hotels. The bed seemed comfortable at first, but my back hurt after a few hours, and I suspect the setup didn’t help. The parking lot was empty when we arrived, which said a lot. The hot tub is boarded up and completely unusable, and I wouldn’t have wanted to use it anyway. Spend $50 more and get a decent hotel.

The pool was the one amenity they had, but the hot tub was boarded off, and that was what I’d been looking forward to. The rest of the few amenities felt like a joke. There are no vending machines for snacks or pop, just pop for sale from a fridge in the lobby. Free breakfast was awful, with tasteless eggs and square biscuits for biscuits and gravy. My husband got a little blood on the sheet after cutting his arm, and they charged us an extra $50. They said hydrogen peroxide made the sheet yellow. I think soaking it in cold water and using bleach wouldn’t have turned it yellow. I think a foreign family owns the hotel because family members sit in the lobby at different times of day. They come up with extra charges to get more money. There are other area hotels with the same prices and better accommodations. This is the worst hotel I’ve stayed in. If you want to enjoy your vacation, don’t stay here.

The owners turn off the AC while you’re out, so you come back to a hot room. The lobby smelled like pee every morning for all 10 mornings I was there. The rooms are dirty and overpriced, with mold all over, stained and dirty bed covers, and almost no water pressure. Drywall is cracking into the shower, and the curtains don’t keep water from getting onto the floor and walls, making the mold worse. The shower rod is nearly falling off in every room, and there’s black mold on the shower curtains.