Lake Ouachita State Park Marina — Attraction in Arkansas

Good afternoon,

I recently rented a pontoon from the park marina for my family & I to enjoy for a day, which I learned would be limited to six hours as that is the max rental you offer at this time. We reserved the boat from 9am to 3pm for Sunday 8/8/20. We arrived 20 minutes early to get situated, do paperwork and get instruction. The boat looked great, and we were out on the lake by 9. Immediately after leaving the marina the boat showed a loss in power and increased rpms when throttled past half throttle. I thought it was odd, but I thought it could be normal so as to keep people at a low speed. So, we drove on and just stayed below half throttle which was disappointing to us, especially the kids tubing. After playing from 9 until approximately 12:30 the boat showed further distress by bogging down and then it quit altogether. We got it started and began heading towards the marina. My phone did not have service at the time or we would have called. The boat repeatedly died, but would restart and go a bit further until we were in sight of the marina and were able to call. We managed to get it to the marina at 2:30. The employees let me know the boat had recently had some issues, and should have been able to go past half throttle. My issue is that we paid for six hours on the boat and were only able to enjoy it for about 3 hours, and that time was spent on a boat that was malfunctioning. I let three of the four employees know of the issues we had. Although they were very pleasant and helpful I was never offered any sort of reimbursement for our loss of time and/or substandard boat performance. We were really excited to come to the lake and would love to use your marina again in the future. As I said the employees were great, the boat was super nice. I understand this is not a problem that could have been prevented, but I do wish our loss of fun, time and money would have been recognized and atoned for.

Thank...

The group of people I go with make this location THE place to be during labor day weekend. We drive up and set up our campers, and then we (the kids between 10 and 21) find our friends and set up "Hammock City", which is basically just us in our five year age groups finding a spot in the trees of the campsites, stringing up our hammocks to sleep in at night. And we do, without lights or guards or worries besides how cold the night might get. There is never a fear of someone coming in unwanted or of a surprise animal. I personally sleep low to the ground and have never had a fear of something getting to me.

The view of this place is beautiful. The lake and mountains are just astonishing, and all of it is trekable/swimmable, no place will be untouched if you can find it. Last year my two closest friends and I swam across the lake to the other shore and back just for fun (and couldn't walk up stairs without our legs shaking but that was just from exhaustion), and this year we did water skiing and tubing. There's also tons of paths to walk, and while I haven't personally done these, there are horse paths to take your horses. We don't see them often, but we can smell them.

There is also bathrooms and showers located at the sites, so you never have to worry about staying clean. Of course bring your own toiletries (shampoo, body wash, toothbrush, etc), but otherwise the water is provided, the water pressure is great, and, the water is hot!

This is in the outdoors, so do bring bug spray and sun tan lotion to protect against the mosquitoes and sun burns, but otherwise, this isn't much bad to say about this place. I look forward to going...

I called and booked a boat a month in advance. I paid over $90 for a boaters education program and was told that I would be contacted a day or two in advance to pay a deposit. I was never contacted and called the marina the day before to pay the deposit and was told not to worry about it and pay when I got there but was given a new start time. I drove nearly two hours and was told that my reservation was canceled and an employee must have read my reservation wrong. I saw the boat I had reserved docked at the marina and asked why I couldn't still rent it and was told that it was too late in the day. I was told all the boats were rented and that I should have been there 20 minutes earlier (which is when I arrived and was told that there were no boats left). One employee was willing to let me take the boat but the manager refused and when I showed him my call log he said "I believe you but I am still not sending out a...