Ascend Camp & Retreat Center — Hotel in Dallas

On August 10-11, 2018 we stayed at the Ascend camp ground for the first time and for the most part everything was good. We had a group of about 40. Even though it rained a little before we got there the kids still had fun playing putt putt and archery. We had a bonfire scheduled for 9:30 Friday night and at 9:25 we walked out of our meeting room expecting there to be a fire going. After much checking around discovered from a guy working in the kitchen that we were supposed start the fire ourselves. Then we had to walk around to try to find exactly where the firewood was set up for us because the worker we spoke to earlier didn’t know. It was very dark without any assistance from any workers guiding us. We checked 3 fire pits and it was the third one! We had to use the light from our cell phones to find things once we were able to get someone on the phone for help. The firewood was damp and took quite a bit of effort to get it going. We wondered why they didn’t have dry wood when the bonfire had been previously scheduled. One of the workers showed up with some dirty cooking oil but that did not help the fire at all. Saturday morning at breakfast quite a few people were not pleased with the breakfast selection. Dry cereal, scrambled eggs, pre-wrapped cheese, bread, jelly, peanut butter and black pitted olives. What’s up with the olives? There was no sausage or bacon provided. So breakfast was very disappointing. Dinner consisted of hamburgers and french fries which the kids liked and lunch was chicken fingers (very good) and mashed potatoes, bread and lettuce for salad. The bread offered was hamburger and hotdog buns and some cut up pita bread:/ I’m guessing those were leftovers and it would have been better to have had rolls instead and some tomatoes for the lettuce. I myself needed to get out of the gate Saturday morning at 7:33. I called the camp number and after I couldn’t get anyone I texted a worker. After no response to the text messages I had to call the camp number two more times before I reached someone at 7:47 so that I could get out. By that time there were people needing to get into the gate. While the snack building was nice to have with a large selection of choices, there was no cream or sugar provided for the coffee. I started an espresso before I realized there was no cream or sweetener. They use an honor system which was nice because you don’t have to depend on someone being there to get what you want. I was glad to have had some chocolate left over from the smore‘s the night before so it helped sweeten the expresso some. The sleeping quarters were nice and clean with the exception of one of our girls finding a bra on a top bunk left over from someone’s previous stay. Yikes!!! Tip...bring ear plugs! Someone in your cabin WILL keep you awake with their moving around and talking, which is normal when you go to camp so don’t complain about it just bring earplugs :) It would be nice if they provided hooks along the wall near the showers so that people can hang their towels/clothing items on the hooks. It would also be nice if they had some type of mat at the entrance to these cabins so that people can wipe their feet when it rains. (You know, the kind you see at store entrances?) The Vanberg lodge had a tray of dirty coffee mugs across the kitchen sink and a smoke detector that kept chirping. The air-conditioner worked great in all of the buildings we used however, the smell of mothballs was a little overwhelming in one of the buildings we used to meet in. I’m guessing the mothballs helps keep bugs/snakes away so we just raised a couple of windows to help ventilate. We were scheduled to use the pool but because of the rain no one wanted to swim so I am unable to comment on that. I feel like these are all minor things that could be improved upon. Overall the facilities and grounds were nice and I would definitely stay there again. I would just come a little better prepared and get details...

We rented this facility for a family reunion in June 2022. When we booked it was 9months in advance and it was right after COVID restrictions started to be changed. The individual we booked and payed deposit too was JIM and he promised us the world. After we payed our full balance his entire attitude changed and he started to get very short with us. Anytime we called with questions or asked about changing the amount of people or really anything, he became very rude and aggressive as if we were "getting on his nerves". 7 months later, when attempting to finalize plans everything changed. We were told that we would not have the pavilion area to ourselves (when previously we were told we would have it to ourselves for the timeframe that we booked), he forgot to add our swimming to the invoice. After we payed additional for the swimming, we agreed on a time. 1 week prior to our event Jim told us that we never told him a time and he had given our time-slot to another group. He ultimately ended up booking our swim time at the same time we were to have the cafeteria for lunch. We found out that there were other much larger groups that booked the facility for the same time we did. We assumed that since they were paying more he no longer cared about the money we paid (small potatoes). During the event he called us (as he was not on site) several times to tell us that someone in our group was going into other peoples cabins stealing. When we asked him for more details about which cabin or what the individuals looked like he got EXTREMELY rude and started yelling at us as if we were children. He called several times and despite our requests would never tell us where these people were located so we could go there and resolve the issue (by the way, ALL of our family was in the same place and were NOT in any cabins). We finally were able to resolve the issue with the staff that were ON-SITE and it really was a huge misunderstanding. JIM was HORRIBLE, and because of him I will never recommend this facility to anyone. I will say, the staff ON-SITE was AMAZING. Faudi helped us and was over our stay. He was so sweet and anything we asked for he gave us or at least did his best to get it for us. He tried to intervene with JIM, however, JIM wouldn't cooperate with him to help him resolve the issue. The facility was nice and beautiful, the main problem was JIM. We later found out that JIM was ONLY the salesman and not an owner/investor as he lead us to believe in the beginning. Faudi even refunded us for the swimming to compensate for the terrible way we were treated. Otherwise it was a great place for a...

Horrible I don't get what's all the hype here for this place, first off I want to start off with the cabins. They are extremely dirty and maybe it was just mines but my cabin was all the way to the back next to a forest and there were spiderwebs on the corners of the beds and I'm not saying under I'm saying the side where you sleep. there was mold under our mattress, and it was horrible we had to get mattresses on the floor, everyone had a attitude especially the people we shared the cabin with talked bad about us behind my back with their little friend group, next, I would want to go to the food, the food was okay but the staff they had very poor bad english you would ask them something and they would be like "yes" or "me little english" and they were rude too like during breakfast a old man was yelling at people in the line in a foriegn language and went up to me and spoke a foriegn language now im not sure but maybe it was arabic or turkish but if your coming to the United states you should know english. Now the events were pretty fun but still bad english. During paintball a lady was asking how much we works and he replies "i dont care" and the lady had to repeat and still but different "No im no hungry" "no me no english" he had to get his translator app. But again before the game he was yapping something in arabic and we all just starting shooting the paintballs. The only thing ill give credit for is horseback riding. It was really fun and the staff are really amazing unlike the others who are rude and mean and dont speak english. Also another thing i would like to add is somebody kept on knocking on our soor during the night im not sure outside or the people sharing the cabin with us but i wanted to clarify that. Thanks for reading, my time here was alright my conclusion is dont hire people who dont know english or speak very little and PLEASE UPGRADE AND CLEAN THE ROOMS thanks because our room was very dirty the horseback riding was the...