Wander Camp Yellowstone — Hotel in West Yellowstone

This note is in relation to our stay in Starlight Tent Camp, West Yellowstone, from June 20, 2025 to June 24 2025, confirmation number 4959219406. When we booked our stay, our family liked the clean, well kept tents we saw in the photos, What we got was something soooooooo different.||Within an hour of reaching the camp, an individual who called herself Lindsey, emailed us informing us that our accommodations had been changed and she gave us a new address to set into our google map. The really scary thing is that she demanded that we pay right then, through paypal or credit card, in order to hold our tents. We thought something was very wrong. We had previously been sent a message that we would pay only when we got to the camp. We thought we were being scammed. But when we called other hotels and motels in the area we were told that there were no vacancies anywhere. We were forced to pay right then on the site that Lindsey had just sent us. We had no other viable options. ||When we arrived at the new address given, Wander Camp, the appearance was very different from the photographs of the other place. didn't look nearly as kept up or clean. When we spoke to the staff there at the gate, we asked why we were redirected there and why we could not have our tents at Starlight. The staff told us that they did not know what we were talking about, that their company had nothing to do with Starlight, but they did see our names on the guest list there. Our immediate thought was a confirmation that we had been scammed and probably being double charged. The bathrooms, we were told, ran out of water frequently and the hot water heater didn't keep up with the demand. (In fact, during our stay two of us got stuck in the showers when the water ran out completely and they had to go to bed soapy. OK, not a matter of life and death, but again, not what we had booked and paid for).||Again, because we had no other options, we drove down to our tents and looked around. The tents were both full of mold and dirt, the bathrooms were not "shared" as the website said, but rather a hike of approximately 1/8 of a mile. There was no electrical connection of any kind in the tent area ( the place was completely off grid) although the website for Starlight clearly said that there "would be a socket near bed." ||Later that night, I spoke to Annie, from the administrative office, and she listened. Annie listened to my complaints and offered to return our money for the first night and help find us better accommodations for the rest of our stay. The next day, we spoke with Rachel at the camp gate and she acknowledged that Annie was going to credit us the first night. We told her we would need help finding any other place to stay as everything in West Yellowstone was completely booked. She didn't know anything about that.||Ok, the upshot is we wound up staying in a camp that was not what we had reserved and never would have booked purposely. In addition to this, the road to get there was so full of holes, I am not sure a car without all wheel drive would make it. We never received even a penny of credit for the first night of our stay. We were simply given a pig in a poke, scammed and made to feel like we were the problem when we spoke out. I've since been reading other people's reviews of Wander Camp and Starlight and there are many reviews stating treatment similar to what we suffered. We talked to a group coming in who were told the same thing about the address change, though they went over to the other place first. One of their party lost a pedal on their bike in one of those damned Wander Camp potholes. ||I was going to just let it go. However, when speaking with a friend, who happens to be one of the Travel writers for the Orange County Register, about our treatment, she became incensed. She said that our treatment was appalling and shameful. She demanded that I write to you to complain and to demand a full reimbursement of the amount we paid to stay at Starlight: $1,400.56. Oh, and by the way, when I was speaking with another administrative type from Starlight named Alvin, I told him that I was going to put in a complaint through Booking. He said that was ok. "They are our colleagues." If you want to stay in business, you might want to reexamine whom you take on...

Tents are cute. Views are lovely. Check-in staff was friendly. Bathrooms are a combination of six port-a-potties and three private shower tents. There is no trash dumpster, the three shower tents could use some maintenance/cleaning, and the tent field is about 200m from the highway (all as other reviewers have noted). I'd say 3.5 stars on a normal night based on price, showers, and lack of trash containers. It really is a beautiful place and everyone seemed nice at check-in. The reason for the 1-star review is because there is no overnight camp host/manager on the premises. On the night we were there, a large party arrived during quiet hours (10pm-6am) and proceeded to make a ton of noise, first inside their tent and then around a nearby campfire. We texted the after-hours number for help, and were told the camp manager couldn't be reached at home. They said there was nothing more they could do, and encouraged us to go back and talk to the drunk group again before signing off for the night at 12am. Things then escalated around 2am between the loud group and another group of campers trying to sleep (resulting in the latter group screaming expletives and packing up in the middle of the night while the loud group remained). Said group stayed up shouting and laughing until about 4am. We continued to email the "How was your stay?" email to demonstrate things were still out of hand. We had to be on the road by 7am, following two hours of sleep. The day after the incident, Anna May from Wander Camp requested more information. I sent a detailed account of what happened. They decided to refund 50%, stating they were extending their hand and stepping outside of the parameters of their "you stay you pay" policy. I appreciate them doing so, but the point is we didn't need the money back, we needed help that night restoring a quiet, safe environment for everyone. We still paid $100 to sit in a yurt listening to a bunch of people shouting all night. I don't believe it's a good use of local law enforcement resources to call 911 and have them come out to a field at 3am to deal with that sort of thing. It seems reasonable to have a camp manager actually on call or onsite. Anna May said they plan to have an overnight camp host present in the future, but until that's in writing on their website, I wouldn't stay again. It was unreasonable, despite multiple people asking that group to respect quiet hours. While I realize this probably doesn't happen every night, listening to an expletive-ridden shouting match at 2am is never okay, and I felt particularly bad for families who had children with them that night. There's a state park with a lake close by: it's much further away from the road, has great reviews, costs considerably less, and features an overnight camp host. I'd aim for that next time I'm passing through this part of the country. I've never had this bad of an experience camping, and I've never posted anything less than a stellar review on the internet. This is a great concept, and I'm hopeful they make some of the small, simple changes mentioned by their reviewers to better ensure everyone has a safe, relaxing stay at...

We rented two tents for one night on the last part of our Yellowstone trip. We have been exploring Tetons and Yellowstone for 11 days, having already stayed at an alternative glamping site earlier in the week. We are fairly well-versed in tent, camping and glamping so I was excited to end this trip on a high note.

Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed. Very little communication came over and advance. I got a text message and an email an hour before arrival that had no specific instructions about where to go beyond the numbers on our tent. There are not great directions on the website and the area around the camp is private so we ended up driving in circles because we could not figure out how to get in based off of GPS directions .

The website makes it look like it is an open field with beautiful views. On the left-hand side is a trailer park that was full during our stay and they shot off guns all afternoon. On the right were the beautiful mountaintops so I just turned my chair in that direction during our day. It is also close to main road so we were able to hear trucks passing into the evening . Not exactly the serene experience we were hoping for.

Beyond the entrance was a pop-up tent that they called the kitchen. Please know that they will nickel and dime you for everything that you could possibly want, but you didn’t bring with you. There are no amenities at this site beyond a tent and cold water. $10 for a single towel, $20 for a propane heater, and $30 for a s’mores kit which almost killed me. Given the very small amount of information that was shared in advance, this is very frustrating as you don’t know what to expect before you arrive and then they price gouge you if you’re missing something. I fully get running a business, but this is extortion.

I fully recognize that this is camping and there will be bugs and wilderness outside. However, the amount of spiders and insects outside and inside of the tent was actually scary for my children and myself. I know logically that nothing was going to happen to anybody, but it was very weird the amount of dozens of spiders that were inside and outside of the tent. We have clamped before and this has never been an issue at any other site.

There were two restroom trailers on either side of the road with the tents. Four showers in each one and three toilet only. They were not the cleanest, and the water was always weird. They left the windows open at the top so they were full of bugs as well. The biggest issue being that every time we wanted to use them, they were full because there were not enough stalls for the amount of tents and people staying on site. They left us small lanterns outside of our tent, but none of them were fully charged so we had to use our cell phones which burned our battery since we didn’t have electricity.

Overall, this was a really disappointing experience. I paid $300 for the two tents and I could’ve slept in my car and been more...