Best Western Plus Ramkota Hotel — Hotel in Sioux Falls Township

I'll divide this review into 2 parts as for some reason there is no place in Google reviews to review "Frankies Bar and Griil" the restaurant inside the Best Western.

1. Frankies: We arrived at the Sioux Falls Best Western and were really tired and did not want to go out again to find dinner. The in-hotel-tv-channel said they'd give us a menu for Frankies, but it was just the drinks menu. It's a sports bar and has about what you'd expect (I'll include pictures of their current food menu for you). It was a really chilly temperature inside; that's not just me saying that, I overheard several tables commenting on the same thing. We sat down at 5:49pm, it took a while for our waitress to come, and even longer to get us a drink order in (as we asked for a certain beer on their menu...she came back and said "they were out of it". Repeated this dance times 4, then just asked "what DO you have?" and were told, basically, Bud and Coors and Michelob. By then it was 6:04 pm and happy hour was only until 6 pm, so they would not honor the slight happy hour pricing discount. The food was fine, but was delivered to us cold. My hot ham and cheese hoagie was already solidified and chewy upon arrival. Cheeseburger was fine and thick curly like fries were good...just cooled down very quickly. Our server was...less than hospitable.

2. Hotel: Quick check in. Our front desk fellow was very overworked but friendly. Room was nice, beds were comfy and even though the pillows were quite small, the sleep was good. -The room was noisy for 2 reasons: there are two airports nearby (one a national guard) and the sound of fighter jets was disconcerting, like thunder claps, from 6am until 8 pm. -The other was a the lack of "insulation" between rooms and between the door and the hallway. It sounded like our room door was open by how much the sound traveled. I could hear every word of every person walking past our room, clear as if they were in the room with us. -There was no bathtub, which sucks for me, because I didn't want a shower and I didn't want a waterpark. -We were very grumpy by morning, having read in the hotel guide that breakfast was not included. We were grabbing a last minute lobby coffee when I saw a sign that said "complimentary breakfast buffet for hotel guests" Well that turned our experience around, as I was going to give this hotel a 3/5 originally. The breakfast was incredible. Nice room, hot food (scrambled eggs with cheese, sausages, potatoes, donuts, oatmeal, cereal, waffles, bagels, toast, yogurt, etc) and that improved our mood greatly. We felt the hotel was overpriced if you're not there for the waterslides and hot-tubs, but breakfast was the only redeeming factor. The ONLY staff member who was nice and genuinely friendly, was a room attendant who was nice to us as we walked around and smiled ands asked how our...

Check in was easy and fast.

Our kids loved the pool and slides, however the kiddie pool water wasn't as warm as the water where the larger water slide was. For our kids being the ages they were, this was a problem. After about 30 minutes of being in the pool, they are shivering and there lips are turning slightly blue. The pool attendant made a call to maintenance, but in our entire stay there, the pool never really seemed to get warmer.

The room was OK. The door to the bathroom was slightly off the hinges and you had to lift the door handle to get it to close easily and the shower head leaked. In a weeks stay, house keeping came by ONCE. After a couple days in the room, my wife and I woke up around 3am. She said she felt like something was crawling on her. We both looked through the bed, but didn't find anything. The next day I felt something on my leg. I looked down and had a flea on me. In the room were only my kids, my wife, and myself. We didn't bring any dogs, but there was a flea on me. I went back to where the flea jumped on me and started running my feet across the floor, next thing I know, I have 3 fleas on me. I pick each one off and put them in a container. I was literally able to run my feet across the floor and have fleas jump on me. I took the container to the front desk and spoke with a manager. I was greeted with nothing but apologies. We moved to a different room that night and were promised to have our night compensated.

Flash forward to checkout where we go from having most of the staff being friendly and helpful, to the only unfriendly and unhelpful person at checkout on night shift. She asked my room number and proceeded to check out the wrong person and handed me a receipt for someone else. She dropped it on the desk and walked away without saying anything. I informed her of the mistake, with attitude she asks my name, after checking me out, again, she drops the print out on the desk and walks away. As I'm looking over the receipt I ask her to come back and go over the charges with me. NOTHING. I loudly repeat myself, telling her it's obvious she is in a bad mood, but I would like to discuss the charges. She tells me she can't help me and that I need to call the next day and speak to the manager that had originally stated we would be compensated. After finally getting the night shift person to reluctantly remove one nights stay, we check out. With receipt in hand, showing how much we were charged, we were on our way. Flash forward a couple days again and our bank account shows we were charged the full amount. After calling and speaking to the front desk and being transferred to a voice mail, we were finally transferred to the accounting department at the hotel, we were told we were being credited back the one night.

This is a hotel we would...

I say this with the hopes that the GM reads this because this hotel has potential. I also want to say the Manager Brittany, along with Cindy were very kind and helpful in addressing our concerns. That said, we stayed with a group for a baseball tournament Get ready for our list of issues. Broken air conditioners, unaddressed clogged drain, an unwanted wake up call at 1 a.m. from the front desk asking our friends why they were in their room (they had been given this room after their air conditioner broke,,,) and the list goes on. The house keeping staff, while friendly, were horrible. Dusty shelves in the rooms, lingering smell of cat pee in the East Lobby, one bed being made while the other was left undone, no toilet paper in one room, no wash cloths in another, no towels in another. However, here was the icing on the cake for us personally. We spent the day at the hot ball fields and were looking forward to the air conditioning, showers, and lying down. We came into our room at 7:30 p.m. to find our beds unmade, no clean towels, and the garbage hadn't been removed. My husband called down letting them know we didn't receive service in our room and was met with a rude response of "What do you want us to do?" After asking if we could get our garbage emptied and get fresh towels, and MAYBE get our beds made, he was told they only do that for guests who stay for more than 3 nights or request service. WHAT????? Both my husband and I travel for work and have stayed at many hotels in our lives. NEVER have we ever heard such a crazy response to a simple request that SHOULD be included with our stay. Brittany the Manager, seemed a little horrified when we came down to talk to her in person about what we had been told. The front desk girl who had informed my husband of their strange service policy actually had the balls to talk back to her manager letting her know that "that is how they always do it". Brittany remained calm and offered us a small credit for the inconvenience. It is too bad. With the water park and nice restaurant, this hotel would have made a great place for our Gymnastics club in January when we come to Sioux Falls for a meet. There are about 80 families we will be traveling with. In the words of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, BIG MISTAKE. BIG. HUGE!!! Thank you to Brittany and Cindy for being so kind. To the blond curly haired front desk girl, please remember that kindness attracts kindness and if you are not happy with your job, there are open doors in...