bantr Grand Hotel Wausau - Rothschild — Hotel in Rothschild

Enjoy no frills when you lodge with bantr. Formerly a mid-sized waterpark full of family fun is now just a run down, deteriating property. The room was clean and thats why this is 2 stars and not one. We stayed with 3 other families who had rooms scattered throughout the hotel. ||Arrival-||We stayed in room 28 which was a 'suite' with 2 FULL beds and 1 full pullout. We had 4 of us in the room for a ski trip to Granite Peak which was great. We checked in and payed a rate of $300/night (Fri and Sat night) which was way more than what this place is worth. The front desk didn't give us any help to tell us where our room was, so when we tried looking for our room we were looking for 128 at first which was same floor as lobby. Apparently room 28 is below the lobby at floor '0', which makes no sense. Once we got to our room it was fine for a ski resort. We aren't usually picky on our ski resorts we stay at so this was fine. The weight room was fantastic. Almost better than the actual private gym I am a part of. The dumbells had a huge assortment which is unheard of at any other hotel I have been to. ||During Stay- ||We got in on a Friday night, ate at nearby restauraunt, and then went to pool area. The pool area and lobby are by far the most memorable parts of this hotel. You can tell that at one point, this place was awesome, but now is not as cool. The pool is normal for hotel, but hot tub is crazy. The craziest part about the pool and hot tub is that they used to be a part of the waterpark which is closed, so you enter into the old waterpark, which is boarded off with drywall, and are just allowed to use the pool and hot tub. The waterpark would have been awesome, but is not in operation. bantr- why keep all of these huge slides and equipment in there to deteriate when you could sell it and not have it go to waste? The lobby is also crazy, since it is huge but empty. Don't even bother with the breakfast, it is just packaged bread. We went to the Denny's next door instead. ||AT night- ||Beds were horrible. I slept with my daughter who is 4 years old and both of us could barely fit on the bed. Thats how small it is. They have the space for two queens, why not use the space? Shower was fine, but bathroom was very small. It was nice that they had two sinks in the room. ||What bantr needs- ||It is clear that the owner(s) of the hotel have a strong vision for this property. It appears that they are in the renovation phase of the hotel. However, guests shouldn't be staying in this hotel at it's current state, and we shouldn't have had to pay $700 for a normal room. The pictures looked awesome and that is why we chose this instead of a Holiday Inn or similar. bantr clearly wants this place to be a nice place, shown by the high end weight room that they put in. However, as someone who has owned and developed dozens of hotels, the first impression is everything, and the bare drywall in the lobby and lack of staff throughout the hotel is a big red flag. ||We will not return to this hotel unless they make significant improvements to the way that it is run. I operate my hotels to please the guests, and make them come back- that is how every business should run. However, when I went to the front desk to grab some more towels, there wasn't even a person at it at 7:00 pm. I understand staffing is an issue but seriously what the hell. 7 pm on the busiest check in night of the week and no one is there? I ended up snagging 5 towels from housekeeping laundry area. That'll show them. ||Hot tub also gave me weird rash on my skin, not sure if that was from the water or the twenty other people in the hot tub who had probably pissed in it. ||- Second night we were there people were bouncing on bed all night above us until 2 am. Very loud place and room doors are cheap which allows for lots of...

They are not very clear about the water park being open only on the weekend. I did book through a third party vendor because I have reward points through a credit card which allows my family to do a lot more travel than we might normally do. I double checked the hotel website to ensure that there wasnt any closures or construction going on before booking. Nothing is stated on their website about the water park being closed, no dates of closures, no mention of only being open on weekends. The only reason to choose this hotel is for the waterpark especially given its somewhat remote location in relation to Wausau. The managements response to me is rather ridiculous. Third party vendors are bringing them business and they blame them for the lack of communication. Yet their own website has no information about closures! Why would I go to their social media sites (they don't say which one) to see if the pool is open? Why would they communicate with their guests about the pool being closed AFTER they already booked? Why create this situation where they get a 1 star and a very disappointed family? Post the information on you own website! Easy solution!!

At check in is when we were first notified of the closure. We first had to find someone to help us as the hotel appeared to be closed. No one was at the front desk to check us in. Before checking us in she said the park was closed and said if we wanted a pool that we would have to cancel our reservation and rebook their sister hotel across the street. She clearly didn't care that all our fun plans were ruined and that we now had to make other arrangements. Why not have a system to do use the resrevation we already booked and just transfer it to your other hotel? By canceling we had to pay for one of the three nights we were booked for. Instead of further dealing with a poorly run local chain we chose to go somewhere else. Luckily we found something as a lot of the hotels with pools we're fully booked.

While we were standing in their empty parking lot trying to figure out where to stay we noticed a family in full swim gear walking into the lobby. Clearly using only social media to advertise water park hours is not working for this hotel. While I was canceling the reservation my husband again looked at the website. No mention of special waterpark hours are listed anywhere on the site. If this were my business it would be on a banner scrolling across the top of every page of my website! Again, why would anyone chose to stay here when the water park is closed?

While staying at our new lovely hotel where we had amazing customer service and they apologized to us about the situation that your hotel created we talked to other families in the hotel pool. Lots of them were local and booked a room there for the pool. They all complained about the water park not being open during unusual times and said since the property was sold a couple years ago it's gone downhill. Judging by the responses from management that my husband and I got they probably will not make any improvements but continue to blame their guests and third party vendors for the dispointment they created. It's really...

My family and I came here on the 20th of January and had our code and room emailed to us. When we got here, the code didn’t work for the door to get inside the building. Then when we got to our room, the code still didn’t work. We went to the front desk and we were told we were no longer in that room and we were moved to a different one. When we got to the new room, the heat didn’t work and the room was ice cold. We were told to flip a couple switches on the thermostat from the front desk and wait. After waiting an hour, it still didn’t work, so we had to switch rooms again….Now my family and I came here on February 3rd, and had just about the same experience. Our code and room were emailed to us, the code worked for the door to get inside the building, but didn’t work for the room. After going to the front desk, we were given a new code. When we opened the door to the room, the room was a mess. So again, we went up to the front desk and mentioned that the room hadn’t been cleaned. The lady at the front desk said to us, “oh yeah. That’s not your room.” First off, why on earth would you give us a new code for a room that’s not ours when now you’re acting like you knew it wasn’t our room in the first place? That’s definitely not safe at all. So now I’m scared that anyone can just walk into our room. When I tried explaining to her that this is the second time this had happened after our experience a couple weekends ago when we stayed here, trying to explain my concern, she cut me in off in conversation, just repeating to me that it’s just the wrong room. Then of course when we got to our new room, the tv didn’t work, but another nice staff member was nice enough to come assist us with that situation. This was the most complicated and the worst hotel experience I’ve had by far. I never write reviews, but this was frustrating enough that I had to. Also, we had never ever received an email from Bantr stating our rooms were changed or anything like we should have if we were in the...