The Castilian

I’ve lived at The Castilian for a little under 4 years and got to see it change a lot over that time.
Pros:
They’ve done a ton of renovations to the building. The elevators are speedy (but be prepared to wait 5 minutes during peak rush hours when people want to go to class). The maintenance staff is great and usually respond to a request within 3 days. The rooms have been renovated a bit, in that the bed frames are now wooden instead of metal, and the carpet has been removed and replaced with wooden flooring. There’s a new game common room on the 11^th floor with things like a pool table, arcade games and such. There’s also free printing, which is a major plus for printing those essays. Staff is friendly. I’ve never lost a package with them. There’s a security guard who wanders around the building at night, but the doors to the residential floors (12^th and up) are all locked with a key-​fob, so I think it’s a bit redundant. Food at the cafeteria has improved every single year I’ve lived there. I think it’s roughly on-​par with what you can find at Littlefield Café, but with more variety. They also laid down new carpet in the hallways of the residential areas about a year ago. The gym is more or less brand new. Lots of new equipment, with some old equipment still in there. Internet is relatively cheap and has gone down over the years; about $ 25 per semester for 50mbps. On-​campus internet is a lotttt cheaper though. The maid service is really nice to have. They take out your trash, put in new trash bins, mop/​vacuum the floors, scrub/​clean the bathroom with detergent. The only downside is that since there’s little ventilation (since most of the windows are jammed shut), the detergent smell lingers for a few hours. The maid service also cleans up the hallways, which is really awesome compared to some of the other West Campus housing options where you see empty pizza boxes and trash lying around in the hallways and elevators for weeks. There’s also little dorm-​wide events, such as bingo night and casino night where you can win prizes. They’re pretty fun. There’s a piano you can play on, but it’s usually out of tune. There’s parking available if you have a vehicle and I hear the permits are relatively cheap, but I really don’t know myself since I don’t own a car.
Cons:
There’s only a few lights in the room you can turn on, so you might want to bring a lamp if you feel like it’s too dimly lit. The bathrooms didn’t get a renovation as far as I can tell. The plumbing is still old and the walls look a bit off colored. The Castilian is also on a HVAC system where either only the AC or the heating is on at one point in time for the whole building. It takes about 7 days for the building to make the switch from AC to heating or vice versa, so there can be times when it’s pretty uncomfortable. Management tries their best to time it based on weather patterns, but Texas weather is always unpredictable as ever. You can only pick up packages during the daytime at the front desk, but that’s to be expected. Cafeteria closes at 7pm on weekdays and 6:30pm on weekends, but that’s roughly the same time as on-​campus cafeterias. The windows in the room don’t open, or open just a few inches if you’re lucky. The water can take sometimes up to 20 minutes to heat up for the shower if a lot of people are using the hot water. It can be noisy at times in the evening, even though you’re 12+ stories up, since there’s sometimes live music playing at the nearby restaurants or open areas and the windows offer little resistance to the sound. Personally I had no trouble sleeping with it though, since they tend to close up when I head to bed.

I wouldn’t even give it one star. The other review here is 5 years old and basically gets everything right. Except the people do not make this place THAT much better
I’ll start with the worst parts:
1. Food– the food is horrible. The café has the worst food in any dorm I’ve been in. It makes Jester look like a 5 star restaurant. It’s so bad the pizza doesn’t even taste good. The rice is not cooked right. They try to make different recipes like curry chicken but it never comes out good. The one positive is the lunch lady’s, who are nice.
2. Elevators– take forever. You could wait for ten minutes some days.
3. Rooms– completely shitty. The carpets turns your feet black. Lights don’t always turn on. AC vent is broken and has mold on it.
One positive
1. People– you’re going to meet some great people if you live here. It’s the same thing for any dorm you’ll meet a lot of people. So do yourself a favor and don’t spend your money on this shit hole.

My brother lived here for three years and never complained, but then once I got here I realized it’s just because he’s a nice person. The windows leak, the management and staff are horribly unfriendly and the bath tubs and sinks are all cracked. The gym is pathetic and no one ever swims in the pool and it takes 10 minutes on the elevator just to get to the street. If I could go back in time, I would have told myself to live in Jester before living at the Castilian again.

Honestly this place based on the building alone should garner a 2 star rating. but the people living there make up for it totally. I’ll start off with the problems with this place:
1) Deathtrap Elevators — They have a mind of their own and sometimes will take you for a joyride going randomly up and down until it mercifully lets you out after everyone has dialed 911 on their mobile phones and scratched in letters to their loved ones with their fingernails on the elevator walls.
2) SLOWASS elevators — Sometimes you have to wait 5 – 10 minutes to get an elevator. and knowing college students we are usually already 5 minutes late to class. I’ve had to run down 16 flights of stairs many times because I got tired of waiting for the elevators.
3) Electricity/​Water — Mysterious blackouts and no hot water. for days! We did not have electricity or hot water for 3 days this past semester! In the dead of winter too! I’m surprised no one froze to death. Their offer of appeasement — pizza, subway, and junk food for 3 days. WTF.
4) Inconsistent Food — Sometimes the food at the cafeteria was good and other times it tasted like it came out of a Pedigree can. Sunday nights were consistently the worst because I guess they just ran outta everything and were «winging» it.
5) Internet — They have a contract with Apogee to provide internet access. Let me say that this is the worst ISP I’ve ever had to deal with. I paid for the premium plan and many times it was the same speed as the basic plan. Everytime I called it in they just would fix it a couple days later just to have it revert back to slow speeds sooner or later. Customer service is horrible because they know they have a monopoly on this place.
Ok. now onto the good things.
1) People — You meet the coolest people in the hallways, cafeteria, laundry room, etc. They come from all walks of life and all were very friendly. I was able to meet a bunch of international students from France, Morocco, Brazil, Czech Republic, Belgium, Australia, and Mexico. I’ve never had such a fun time with a group of people ever!
2) Location — You are right in the middle of the Drag providing optimum striking distance of campus, west campus, the drag, and the bus stop to go to Sixth St. =)
So as you can see the people you meet so heavily outweigh all the negatives! I would definitely live here again to meet more people!