Bird's Nest Lodge — Hotel in St. James

If i could itd be zero stars. I went through greens canoe rental to rent our rafts. We ended up with (2) 8 men and (1) 6 man rafts. Turns out greens is afiliates with birds nest. So when we paid,signed and got to our drop off. We were given (2) 8 men and a 4 man. I advised the guy that was incorrect we paid for 8 men and a 6 man. He said "well that's not what the paper says" and I advised "well looks like you need to get a hold of someone to get that corrected. Or I need to get back my 500 and we can go some place else to float." So the guy called (which mind you apperently a couple other groups had the same issue). So we got it cleared we would get the 2 8 men and 1 6 man. But we had to wait 10 minutes for them to blow it up. Finally we got it. And we are trying to figure out which coolers and people are in what. All in this time we were to be advised to check our rafts to make sure they are ok. As we were doing this we got told by another guy we need to hurry up get in our rafts and go. They had another bus on the way. Oh and if we WANTED or FELT THE NEED TO HAVE a life vest to ask. Just to remind everyone IT'S STATE LAW ALL RAFTS AND BOATS HAVE TO HAVE LIFE PRESERVERS FOR EACH PERSON. REGARDLESS OF AGE. 3-7 HAVE to wear them at all times 7-14 it is up to the parents. ( thank god we know the laws and the 5 yr old had on her vest that we provided). So as we were being rushed to get on the river. We noticed our raft only had one bench. 1 bench for 5 adults 1 child (age 5) with a very large very heavy cooler. But we were advised the benches don't have to be in the rafts that's just a luxury???? Are you kidding me?? So we said what ever. Got on the river. As we started to hear something hissing. Turned out no valve covers on any valve!! Which meant no hanging your legs over the raft. Because you would release air every time you hit it! About 1/3 way down the river we noticed we had a pretty large hole by the front on the bottom of the raft. Large enough I could stick my thumb through. So we were having to dump water out every time we stopped for swim time with the kids. As we kept going down the river we started to notice more and more holes about the size of my pointer finger could fit in. Total of 6 holes. Which meant more stops more dumping. About 1/2 way through we found out the other 8 man and a nice hole in it as well. They were shin deep we flipped them over to see if there were patches that fell off. Nope it was from the looks black duct tape that they had used to "patch" the bottom of them. Again are you kidding me??? So they started dumping as well. Also one of their Benches deflated in the middle of the float as well. When we got back 8 hours later. We advised the guys taking out the rafts that we were unpleased and about the holes. The guy said "yes we know. We don't have time to check them every day. And we do patches once a week. And major repairs once a month. Question is did you have fun?" I replied we yes till we had to keep dumping and trying to keep a 5 year old away from the larger holes. Do you know how hard it is to keep a bored 5 yr old to sit still in one spot so we don't have to keep dumping?" He responded with "well at least you had some fun" as he saw my unpleased facial expression he then stated to tell me. "I'm sorry hun. I'm probably not the one who should be talking to you right now. I'm off duty and I've been drinking for a while now". All I could say was wow... wow that you would let your staff get drunk or announce they have been drinking off duty or not. You were still helping the other guys unload. They did not once look at the rafts when we told them about the holes, valves,benches. It was all blown off. Needless to say I won't use either one again. Even the next day when we called up there to talk to higher management of course no one was available. And a Jason owns both companies. "He will give us a call back when he is available". That has yet to happen.let's not for get the shirt covered men's bathroom floors.that the guys refused to walk in to go pee...

We made reservations around a month in advance. When we called we were told that there was plenty of available spots so we rented a lodge room called the Robin Room and a camp site by the river. I specifically asked for a spot close to the water. When we arrived we were told that our camp site had been changed to one away from the water. They ended up giving us the original site back after we complained. Aside from that, the camp sites are decent. But the Robin Room is incredibly terrible. I read the bad reviews before we stayed and just thought people were being too harsh and tried to go into optimistically. Boy was I wrong. The entire building that's its attached to is old and falling apart. To be clear, the Robin Room is actually just a couple of tiny rooms attached to the backside of somebody's house. The smell when walking into the robin room is gross. It smells of mold. It says on the website that the robin room sleeps 6. Unless you squeeze three people into the two nasty hard as a rock queen sized beds, there is no way. Paint is peeling from the walls. There is mold under the sink. The floors feels soft and like they could fall through at any time. The shower/ tub floor slopes forward so its almost impossible to stand in while washing off. The paint and walls are gross. The ceiling is falling in. The fridge is disgusting to the point that we used coolers instead. The stove is nasty. Parking is very limited and we almost always had nowhere to park by our cabin. The entire lodge is old and dilapidated. Everything is unsafe. While walking back to the cabin after having to park our car back at the camp site due the the lack of parking at our room, my kid almost fell into an open cistern. It was at least 10 feet deep and 3 feet around at the opening. It was pitch black in the entire parking lot and we couldn't see it. I am honestly shocked nobody has driven or walked into it yet. My kid is 5 and it could've seriously injured or killed him, had he fallen in. On top of all this, there was some kind of college frat party or something going on all night so it was loud until at least 2 or 3 in the morning both nights we stayed. The noise didn't bother me, but don't expect a quiet family camp group. I will not be spending my money there again. There are tons of great choices in the area for camping and floating on the rivers. Birds Nest camping is ok and will work in a pinch if you don't have any other options. Otherwise spend your...

We spent this past weekend staying in a cabin for two nights and floating on Saturday. The float trip was wonderful...this did not make up for the awful experience we had at the cabin. We were promised two cabins with kitchenettes, air conditioning, and access to a hot tub. When we arrived they had trouble finding our reservation. When they did, we were directed to a large cabin about 10 minutes away. We got there and some others staying at the cabin asked us what we were doing there because they were told they had the whole cabin to themselves. (They ended up being very friendly.) We arrived in the evening and there was no lighting or paved paths as we figured out which rooms we were supposed to stay in. The first room had it's door broken in. It did not close all the way or lock, had no air conditioning, and no faucets on the sink. We deemed it not inhabitable. The next room had one air conditioner unit which never dropped below 80 for the entire weekend. It leaked all over the floor. There was no kitchenette or even a BBQ pit as promised. There was no mirror in the bathroom and the very cheap shower curtain had spit from chew tobacco on it. There were nasty stains all over the floor and walls. There were two sets of queen mattresses on the floor with stains all over them. The mattresses did not have matched box spring so they were unsteady. In the middle of the night we were woken up by a mouse getting into a bag of cookies we brought with us. The hot tub was not working but due to the overall lack of cleanliness we would not have used it anyway. When we complained about room, at least the staff we talked to was apologetic. She said they had some vandalism over the winter and offered us free passes to come back. We explained that we would never consider staying there again so she ended up giving us 1/2 our $ back. They should not have been renting these cabins out in the first place, making false advertisements, and not really knowing the state these cabins were in. I cannot believe they were charging $55/night per person for such...