Magnolia Hotel Omaha — Hotel in Omaha

There was so much wrong with our stay at the Magnolia that it was almost funny. Almost. The hotel staff failed from start to finish. I wouldn't recommend the Magnolia at a quarter of the price they charge.

My wife reserved a room to celebrate our anniversary. She booked a King Suite with late checkout, valet parking, and the "Love is in the Air" package (a bottle of champagne with chocolate covered strawberries). The confirmation email she received confirmed none of that, so she had to call to confirm the details--all of which were confirmed. She called again, the day of our reservation to confirm the champagne and strawberries would be there when we checked in at 4:30 because we had early dinner reservations and tickets to the symphony.

The valet did park our car, and he explained how the shuttle worked, saying that we should make a reservation if we needed transportation in the evening. We made the reservation for 7:15 which should have given us more than enough time to drive the 1/2 mile to the symphony for a 7:30 show.

We checked in, explained that we had already paid for the valet when we were asked if we wanted to purchase it, and then had to weave our way through a wedding party to get to the room (it was a beautiful wedding, I just felt bad walking through the middle of it). When we got to the room, the champagne and strawberries weren't there. The front desk inexplicably planned to deliver them at 7:00, but they said they would send them right over. 45 minutes later they arrived. Consequently, we were a few minutes late to dinner. Still, we had a wonderful dinner at the Flat Iron (a block away), and then returned to the hotel to get the shuttle. We walked up to the valet stand at exactly 7:13, to see the valet rush past us to load another couple into the shuttle and rush off. Apparently, reservations don't actually reserve anything. The front desk insisted the driver would be right back, he was just driving a couple to a steak house. By the time it was too late to call a cab, uber, or walk, the shuttle was still not back. He made it back at 7:24. We did make it to the symphony, but only after sprinting up the stairs and literally sliding through the door as the ushers were shutting them. There was no time to grab a drink or catch our breaths, but we did make it.

We opted to walk back from the symphony because neither of us wanted to suffer through the valet again. We finished off the not quite flat champagne and settled into bed only to spend most of the night being awakened by both guests and the valet in the hall. The noise carried so well that it was as if they were all there in the bedroom. I couldn't quite smell the drunken wedding guest throwing up down the hall, but I heard every second of it, and the consequent conversations about it with other guests. I also heard every word the surprisingly-loud-after-midnight valet said as he led another guest to his room.

Still exhausted in the morning and desperate for coffee, we tried breakfast at the hotel. The prices were good, but the food was mediocre, the restaurant understaffed, and the coffee was undrinkable. At that point, we decided to pack up and leave early--despite paying for late checkout--in order to salvage our anniversary and find coffee.

In our rush to leave, we left a $40 phone charging cord. When we realized it that evening, we called to ask them about it. No one else was staying in the room, but the front desk said we couldn't go into the room to check for the chord and housekeeping was gone for the night. I honestly can't comprehend that, but she assured us that housekeeping would have picked up the chord and locked it in their lost-and-found. My wife showed up in the morning. There was neither a chord nor an apology. I get that it's our fault for leaving the chord, but either the staff lost it or stole it, which wouldn't be acceptable at a cheap motel and certainly wasn't for the...

Below is a long, but necessary review about my stay at this hotel. Long story short, I would stay at a different hotel not downtown Omaha and Uber/Lyft to the downtown area to save yourself the headache of having to deal with the lack of decent basic necessities that other hotels in the area offer.

My mother and my aunt visited Omaha for a quick girls trip and to attend the Netflix taping for the comedian Bert Kreischer at the Orpheum Theatre. Due to the convenient location of the hotel to the theater, we stayed at the Magnolia Hotel. Upon nearly arriving to the hotel, we met terrible traffic due to the events at the theater and little to no information received from Magnolia about the parking situation, beyond personal research that there is valet parking available. We eventually made it closer to the hotel to see no valet sign indicating where to park to check-in to the hotel, so we had to drive around the hotel to find the parking lot locked by a motorized gate. Therefore, we parked in front of the gate and my mother had to walk around to the front door to check-in and tell the hotel staff to open the gate, so we could park appropriately. After checking-in and getting to our room on the second floor, we tap the key card and open the door to find that our already small room only has ONE bed to sleep three people. After going back to the front desk, the hotel staff informed us that our room reservation that was made FOUR MONTHS prior was changed from having two queen sized beds to only the one king sized bed. As there were three of us, obviously just one king size bed was not going to work. Then, the hotel staff informed us that the hotel was fully booked and that they did not have another room with two queen sized beds available for us, so they would have to bring up a foldaway bed for one of us to sleep in. After dropping our luggage off at our room, we headed out on the town to eat dinner prior to the comedian later that night. After returning from our dinner, we return to our room to see that the hotel staff have not yet brought the foldaway bed to our room after almost an hour after checking-in. Therefore, we had to call guest services ourselves in order for someone to bring us a foldaway bed. Guest services promptly brought us the foldaway bed and by a miracle from God the very nice hotel staff member fit that bed in the very tight room after moving several other pieces of furniture around.

After a decent night's sleep, each of us took the worst shower for our entire lives… not an exaggeration at all. Besides the lack of water pressure, the lack of hot water period put the icing on the cake for each of us. After a very quick check-out of our room the next morning, we were stuck waiting in the lobby for the valet to pull the car around to the front of the hotel.

I know I kind of went on a rant here, but I wanted to make sure someone else will not have to deal with this same situation in the future. So, overall, I do not recommend staying here, you will find better hotel accommodations elsewhere in...

If you want a beautiful reception and quality service on your wedding day, steer clear of Magnolia! What you pay, is definitely not what you get. There were multiple errors throughout the evening and many issues with our guests rooms. Our concerns were expressed to the coordinator, manager, and hotel staff. We were told they would check with their staff and get back to us were the miscommunication was. We've left messages with the manager. To this day, no follow up or ownership has been taken or compensation given.

To list some errors, a rehearsal for another wedding was scheduled the day of our wedding. Some of our flowers were touched and broken from the other wedding party.

We requested a cocktail hour and the doors to be shut into the ballrooms for a first look of the reception space. The doors were left open and when my maid of honor asked to have the doors closed, she was told no. We weren't given a first look and this effected our pictures. It also effected our whole time line for the evening.

The food we tasted at our tasting, was not the food served at the wedding. We would have picked a different package if we had known the quality was going to be different on wedding day. We asked for our cake table to be filled all evening and it was not. My parents had to go into the kitchen themselves to request more cake be served. At the end of the night, they "lost" or cakes and mints, then tried to say they served it all. Our coordinator was no where to be found during the reception.

Our guests were given rooms with water leaks, flooding the whole bathroom. When it brought to the attention of the front desk, they asked if the guests could manage and wait for it to be fixed the next day. Not being acceptable, they requested a room change. The next day, the same room was given to another family member with the flooding not fixed. Other rooms, including the presidential suite, were not clean. Food crumbs all over the floor and we had to clean them up prior to getting ready in the morning.

I was excited leading up to the wedding, but magnolia really dropped the ball. If I would have read more reviews prior on here and on the knot, I would have picked a different venue. It seems many other brides have experienced the same issues and no ownership was taken. If you want quality and service, please DO NOT...