Wildlife Prairie Park — Attraction in Peoria

We had a terrible time with our accommodations....

We were excited to learn about this park and booked 6 months or more in advance. We are nature lovers and our son loves trains so we booked a caboose. When we arrived, it smelled so overwhelmingly of urine, it was horrible. We are not travel wimps, but this was too much for us. We called the office who said they would send someone out to meet us and see. No one ever came. After over a half hour in the summer heat, we went back to the office. There were no other available units caboose or otherwise, so we were out of luck on a busy weekend.

We looked at online reviews while we were waiting which spoke of the urine smell. This begs the question why they didn't tell us before our arrival if it had been a problem? If it had not been for the lovely people on the prepaid tour of the park, there would have been no stars. It is also why I waited so long to write a review here.

I sent a follow up note telling of our experience and the tour guides said they would say something, but to date received no follow up. There are many folks dedicated to making this park a better place, and I have a soft spot for animals so would recommend visiting the park but not staying in a caboose.

Update: After posting this review, I did hear from the new business mgr who was very nice and apologized. She invited us to come back and try them again. Will update again if we decide to go.

Update 2018 I would love to tell you that our story had a happy ending, but it did not. After talking about our previous experience there, and talking it over as a family, we did decide to try them again by their invitation. I called them back and left a voicemail for the gal who invited us to learn that she no longer worked there. A very nice guy named Alan called us back and I felt like we had a very good conversation. He asked me where we would like to stay, and I said they should pick, so he made the reservation and sent us a confirmation. Great! Then we drove the 3 1/2 hours to get there, checked in about 15 minutes past check in time which is 3 PM, and arrived at our room to find it still unclean from the last guests. Garbage overflowing with empty beer bottles and food containers, used beds, and a bathroom untouched with a floor covered with dirt chunks. You can imagine our disappointment. We called them, and they said they would send out housekeeping right away. Deciding to not sit around and wait, we went to the nature trails to enjoy them while the unit was being attended to. When we returned over an hour and a half later, the beds were made and the garbage was emptied, but they had not vacuumed the carpet or wiped the bathroom floor. The edge of the tub had lots of hairs still stuck to it. My husband wondered if they really changed the sheets...We gave up. The hardest part was that our 7 year old was sobbing that we were not staying. The gal at the check in apologized and offered us free passes to come back another time, but we declined. We think the park is great for enjoying the scenery, the animals, even the wedding going on when we were there looked lovely, but we don't recommend staying. Maybe we are just the unluckiest people ever. We do not think it is unreasonable to think a shower and floors should be clean when you stay somewhere. We went down the road to a chain, much less interesting, but clean and friendly. It has been a couple of days since we were there, and we did not receive any kind of follow up tho we were asked to leave a note about our experience which included a cell number. This is the only negative post I have ever put online, and I do feel badly about it as I know there are so many people who love this place and work hard for the animals, etc, but do think it is fair to warn potential customers about...

DO NOT GET MARRIED HERE! I hate to be this person (and I am usually not this person at all), but please brides, save yourself and DO NOT GET MARRIED HERE. Although our day was absolutely perfect and amazing (thanks to our friends and family), this facility is the most unorganized, mean, rude, and truly awful experience. Our nightmare started early, after we put our deposit down and started planning, it was nearly impossible to get ahold of anyone out there. We would go weeks without hearing anything from any of the “coordinators” there… imagine how difficult it would be to plan a wedding where you can’t get ahold of anyone from the venue. Unfortunately this never got better, so the entire planning process was extremely difficult and SO stressful. I cried A LOT. When they would finally return my calls or emails, they would not have answers for me and were usually, rude. SO unorganized. We had one great lady there working with us, well then she left, no one informed us and we were just stuck. This happened to us multiple times. Multiple people left/quit during our planning process and we were just left with no one, with no warning. I could keep going about this but let me just skip to the even worse things…

The DAY BEFORE our wedding day when we were setting up, we notice a bunch of chairs (for another wedding) being set up about 20 feet from our wedding … no exaggeration, 20 feet from our wedding. We are all looking at each other like surely that wedding isn’t the same day as ours? Like how TACKY and unorganized and ridiculous would that be? Well we go up and ask …. Yep our worst fear came true, that wedding was the same day as ours … 30 MINUTES BEFOFE OURS STARTED. 20 FEET AWAY. What bride or woman would be okay with this???? This spot that these other people were getting married was not even listed as an available option for a ceremony so we were so shocked and so confused. Of course me being the bride, planning this wedding for over a year, started bawling … the day before my wedding. We go up and ask them what is happening with this and why is this happening and what the heck is going on… they say that they aren’t sure what happened, kept putting it on other people and said basically “sorry nothing can be done”….. the UNORGANIZATION is CRAZY. They never ever once told us that there would be another wedding right by us. How tacky and horrible is that?! As a woman, no one would be okay with this. We felt horrible for the other bride too, it wasn’t her fault and she had no idea either. They try to take on way too much, just to make more $$$$$!!!!

Then at our reception, we paid something like $350 for an extra bartender, which we didn’t have. And the bartender we did have was SO mean. We heard this from multiple people. We also paid over $1000 for three kegs (which is absolutely ridiculous anyways), and they didn’t tap them correctly so she had to hand pump the beer… which took FOREVER, we had a huge bar line almost all night. She told us we had almost used all the kegs within an hour. There’s absolutely no way, they just wanted to find a way to make even more $ off of us.

There was even more than this, but I think you will get the situation just reading this. DO NOT GET MARRIED HERE! again, I hate being this person, we hate to complain but I truly just want to save other brides and couples from this horrible mess that we had to deal with. Our day was absolutely perfect and amazing (thanks to family and friends) and the venue is beautiful (Hespell Deck) but the unorgization and people are...

Sad they won’t address the issues they had with me and pay people for 5 star reviews.

First and foremost, thank you to my family who helped this entire thing go off in a hitch. It was beautiful just for the scenery and all the people who came.

Needless to say, Lelonie and her lack of communication, attitude when we finally got ahold of her, and her inability to not try and blame everyone but herself for the poor communication, almost made me over stress for the day.

We originally were working with Emma. Who was amazing. She left, it took 3-4 weeks to get ahold of anyone about our wedding. It took us putting a brand new request for a wedding in order for anyone to contact us back.

Due to health issues, we originally was trying to contact to see about a smaller venue. She invited us to come out and look at a smaller hall that what we have paid already would have covered it. She said she would get back in about a week or so with the layout that would hold our 74 people and the adjustment in the contract. After 2 weeks I tried to reach Lelonie again and no response. Email, calls, nothing. Finally, she emailed me back saying it would only hold about 50 people and she don’t know if what we paid would cover the total. I almost lost it. I called my mom and she ended up going out there to make sure the original hall was not rerented, but to pay the remaining balance. Attitude and denial of anything (I had documented proof of) was all Lelonie brought to the table.

48 hrs before the wedding, rain was in the forecast. My mother called 2x and left a message and by 2-3pm I emailed saying my mom called about the ceremony chairs being moved inside so we were not charged for a last minute move fee. After lelonie said “your mother never called me” I tried to call my mom to advise her of what was said, and she was on the phone with NONE THE LESS, Lelonie whom called her back based on my moms voicemail. She told my mom they “don’t have staff to move the ceremony chairs” that I paid for and it says they would move if contacted in enough time. We were told we had to move the chairs around the table and then move them back on our own.

To make a long story short, communication is non existent, attitude and lies are definitely going to happen if you sign a contract for a wedding and Lelonie has something to do with it.

Non-Alcoholic Bartender was taken out of our contract per Lelonie cause they “didn’t have enough staff”

Ceremony Chairs not moved that we paid for per contract- per Lelonie because they “didn’t have enough staff”

Attitude when my mom asked if the tables and table cloths would be ready since there is a wedding right before on the day before- “well I guess I’ll have to be there til 3am cleaning”

I hope they provide a better human than Lelonie especially when it comes to a Brides special day. She isn’t...