The Star Brisbane — Hotel in Brisbane City

This place even though it’s been open for a couple months, still has teething issues.

I thought I might visit over the holiday season last week for the first time. Last time I visited a Star casino was Gold Coast 2020 when I got a new membership card then. As now Brisbane has changed its naming from The Treasury to The Star Casinos. I had to update my 2020 Star Card to coincide with the new Brisbane Location. This in itself was a nightmare waiting for almost 40 minutes to just refresh my deactivated old card to a new one. My mate was waiting for me in the Sportsbar area as we were grabbing food and I needed to fill my membership details in the checkout QR code web browser to order food.

This place is really quite beautiful and nicely spaced out and well built. I love the Sportsbar with the huge wall screens for viewing multiple sports. I visit Crown Melbourne every so often and can confirm this place is just as nice with the architecture and interior. I’d say the gaming floor is actually a little better than the Crown because they have more lighting in here, just seems brighter and not doom and gloomy and not knowing what time of day it is or where you are.

As I mentioned there is still teething issues which I am guessing they’re still sorting out, as some of the parking lot is still closed off with final touches added. I’ve included the dot points which need fixing.

• The Sky Deck only has 3 lifts dedicated to taking people up and down all day and night and can be at least a 20-30 minute que up and wait either up or down. I really thought who ever the architects were, didn’t think of future proofing this by adding 6 lifts parallel to each other. So 3 on one side and 3 on the other going up and down. So it could accommodate the amount of tourists and visitors who want to get to the sky deck (observation deck). Ridiculous. I went during non peak hours but would hate to be in peak hours lining up.

•The Star membership sign up area needs more assistants to help people sign up or just help with a question. Or needs 2 areas to do things. Especially for the first 12 months, ridiculous waiting 30-40 minutes in line.

•The multi level underground Parking needs more above signage for finding the exit. Also the lift on B3 straight to the Casino floor was hard to access and was ridiculous before a guy shouted out to me to push the green button to access the area in front of the lifts. Why aren’t these doors automatic?? I shouldn’t be needing to press a green button to access the glass door area.

•Even though there is plenty of toilets throughout the casino and other levels, there needs to be more signage of how to get to the closest one with directional arrows. I had to ask security for the closest one. There needs to be above ceiling signage with arrows.

•One big one and this is ridiculous that there hasn’t been any implementation of them. But throughout the casino floor and entry and exit points. There needs to be floor standing automatic hand sanitizer dispensers like my local RSL club has for the pokie machines. I was looking everywhere for one upon leaving the Casino floor and wanting to clean my hands to eat food or just to exit home and wanting to clean my hands exiting. This within itself is gong to be a complete super spreader during the winter months with international visitors and interstate visitors spreading germs and viruses all over the casino floor (chips and machines and money) and other places throughout. No one will be washing their hands and will be spreading filth everywhere. It’s actually a health and safety issue.

•The parking needs to have free 2 hours for people that want to come into the city and gamble for an hour or 2. You can apply the ridiculous pricing structure still after the 2 hours are up, but also still give members the ability for free parking all day with Star Card tier points too. I feel sorry for people visiting a restaurant and having to pay $40 for 2 hours of parking. You’ve limited the amount of guests who just want to food visit

•ATMs need seclusion to get back...

Absolutely appalling. Went there to celebrate the opening and then again on Sat night...all dressed up like we usually are. Was so looking forward to a wonderful time at a wonderful new venue. Friends and I frequented the Treasury casino regularly and built a million wonderful memories there. The staff at the Treasury were fantastic in the restaurants, reception and security were A1. Always helpful, friendly, and we always felt safe and protected. Never any dramas. You could get a delicious healthy well priced meal at 3am served with a smile, decent smoking areas that were protected from the elements, lots of nooks to sit quietly, in a building with real character.

Moving forward I was informed the new star would be glamorous opulent elegant and sophisticated.... On the outside.... Yeah maybe you could have convinced me. Go inside and it's just like one floor of an office block that's been filled with a couple of bars and gaming machines. There are no beautiful features, No character no style. East leagues club at Cooparoo is far more opulent and stunning in decor, Not to mention the staff are so much more friendlier and helpful.

The Cherry bar in the Star Casino Gold Coast is far more beautiful in comparison to the Star in Brisbane lacking that same stunning decor. The Cherry bar in Brisbane casino is a joke. Just a round bar with a few seats AND every time I go there the Cherry bar lounge area is closed!!! The only good thing about the New livewire bar is the view from the window and that they still have some good bands BUT That's it. Comfy couches yeah whatever. They stop the bands around midnight and no music after 1-2am. We were literally all cleared out of the LiveWire bar in the first couple of months. We went to get something to eat at the food court on the same level and they rudely told us that most of the things on the menu are no longer available because the kitchen is closed. Well some of the restaurants in the treasury were open till the early hours of the morning!! I got a $17 bowl which they classify as large but was more like medium, of risoni salad. I've made that dish a million times & it had a million times more flavor. Their risoni wasn't even cooked through!! And it took 20 minutes to come out considering it was a pre-made salad in the display🙄, and there was only three other couples in the whole food court area. The service staff had a short attention span and patience to match, are you very rude to my friend and then she was cornered by several security guards while she was calmly trying to explain that she wanted to get something else to eat and they were all hovering around like she was some drunk maniac. When I went to see what all the fuss was about and to support my friend, one of the security guards put his arm out to me and said back away. This has nothing to do with you . And I said I beg your pardon. It has everything to do with me. This is my friend and I paid for our meals so it is my business that we're not getting what we ordered. I reported this incident to the reception staff who laughed saying that they were having severe teething problems !!! Seriously, the Treasury's been functioning for decades. Don't tell me you don't know how to run a casino. We'd had three drinks all night from 10pm till 4am!!! They wanted to kick us out but they couldn't because we were not intoxicated and not aggressive. I went to sit outside on this balcony area but we were not allowed to smoke or vape and I was told I was not allowed to sip my drink out there and they stood there and watched me and my friend talk, explaining that they have to monitor people and watch for jumpers!!! WTF is going on???

December update: Not much has changed. They just focus on all the people gambling. The security are still rude. One older guy was raising his voice at my friend who had a half bottle of water she took out with her to the smoking area. It was noisy out in the smokers area and everybody stopped to turn around to see who was shouting & why. Extremely...

The Star is a controversial hotel to stay at. The accomodation itself was absolutely incredible - but the service and efficiency was a total let down.. and for the price you pay to stay there it is certainly a let down.

Throughout our stay we enjoyed a number of the restaurants and explored as much as we could around our plans. The rooftop views are spectacular but there isn't enough seating, at peak times the bars are unbelievably busy and staff are run off their feet. Pricing is as expected from a Casino Hotel. Aloria was beautiful but expensive and the menu ranges are small. We had a significant problem upon leaving when trying to charge to our room tab, due to a scanning issue upon check in the complete wrong name had come up and we got stuck there for nearly half an hour trying to leave because they were concerned we were connecting the room charge to the wrong person when they eventually figured out it was an internal system error.

The room was absolutely stunning, we stayed in a suite and loved the bathroom, the amenities, the styling and curtain blockout features were excellent. We had issues trying to utilise the TV, the phones didn't connect us to reception and ordering room service was not seamless at all. The Bar fridge is barely cool, and doesn’t stay cold at all even with the stock items in there. You'll be living off the small Ice bucket if you need to keep something cool.

We ordered room service prior to 11pm, at 12am we hadn’t received anything. And then when we tried to call reception via the phone we were unable to make any of the calls. This resulted in us having to go down to reception to find out what was going on. There had been an order error. Ten minutes later after they went to find out what happened they rushed it through and the food arrived at our door. This was completely inconvenient and defeated the whole purpose of Room Service. The staff member had her shoes off behind the counter and seemed disinterested in assisting to resolve the issue.

We had the included breakfast at Sokyo. The breakfast options were lovely for a small menu, however they are only available from 7-10am which wouldn't normally be an issue… but we arrived at 9:30am and weren’t able to secure a table for more than 40 minutes. The line up was significant with close to a hundred people waiting for breakfast seating. I don't think I've ever stayed at a high end hotel that didn't have enough seating to cater for their hotel guests for breakfast. The food was nice, but underwhelming. Waiters were going around in circles, there was no structure to their service and it was not efficient. When querying the breakfast menu, the staff didn’t know if there were options to add on or change the breakfast items at all eg. add bacon or salmon, remove items.

Upon Checkout - there were charges to room that weren’t correct and we had to have this fixed up, luckily we had gotten receipts at the restaurants. Fat Noodle was awesome, another line up for food and really inefficient staff waitering but the food was great.

There are issues with being able to use the elevator after a certain time to access the casino floor from the hotel guest elevators, and on numerous occasions people were having card scanning issues when trying to get to their floor levels.

The Star is beautiful but their price point definitely doesn't match their service or...