BEST WESTERN PLUS Ramkota Hotel

Poor Ramkota has seen better days but a good value nonetheless. Here are the highs and lows:
Pros:
Very dog friendly! We got a free doggy treat bag at check-​in!
Excellent water pressure.
Huge tv in the room.
Cons:
Smelled like disinfectant.
Front desk understaffed so had to wait for help.
Wifi EXTREMELY slow.
Rooms dark and a little dingy.
Bad signage — drive past it twice before finding the hotel.

Hotel is clean. Staff is friendly and helpful. One of the biggest and popular attraction is the pool area. It has water slides and fountains that are great for kids. It gets really busy over the weekends apparently especially during the winter when the weather is not good for anything else. There’s some restaurants and a mall across the street if you want to get out of the hotel. Gym is bare minimum, a couple treadmills and an all purpose workout machine. Semi small but still there!

Really old and tired. Dark, dingy, depressing. Closet doors off rails. At check-​in I was required to join Best Western club to get room before 3pm. Do they think this attracts return stays? I won’t be back.

I have stayed at this hotel for years, really since I was 5 years old. In the 35 years of staying here I have gradually seen the motel go down hill, but just recently something has changed and it made me want to Unilocal about it and give the hotel a little boost because it really needs it.
First thing I noticed when checking in is the new lobby which looks really nice compared to the old lobby. The staff people were really nice and helpful compared to the staff people that checked me in the few times before. The halls and room that we were in were newly remodeled and it was really nice to see the lighting changed in the hallways. It was even better to find they have finally gotten rid of the crappy water saver shower heads in the bathroom. Maybe I should clarify, I am rating the room we had this time to the past rooms I had, so I’m not sure if they have updated all rooms or I happen to get a newer one. The bedding was new, the tile in the bathroom was new, the towels even seem new and most of all the HVAC unit actually worked in the room!
Then we went to the pool area and I don’t know what has changed but the air flow is WAY better then the last few times we stayed here. Something has been fixed or maybe working properly because it was not hot at all and very comfortable. I also enjoyed the new furniture around the pool. It was comfortable to sit in chairs around a table that you did not have to worry about them collapsing or falling apart. The pool area alone seemed much cleaner and the staff people were doing an awesome job of policing and keeping the towels in check.
As I stated before I have stayed hundreds of times at this hotel and it’s been a long time since I was happy with the stay. This is a great location for almost anything you want to do in Bismarck/​Mandan so to have it be a place people can enjoy adds huge value to the the area.

Location is the only good thing about this hotel, it is located right across the street from the mall. Pool was outdated and not kept up and dirty. Beds were alright but bathroom was dirty and outdated as well

Still in room as i write this. No ac! Called maintenance twice No AC! No other rooms available was told. Its 130 am! Updated too 2 stars management thought it was worth ½ half off

Given the bad reviews given in the past, I was skeptical when my hubby announced that he made reservations here. We were pleasantly surprised with a clean, comfortable room, working air conditioning, and new décor. Yes, the rooms were a little too cozy for 5, but we tetrised the furniture around and got the roll-​away in. We were looking for lost socks and toys at the end of our stay and found that they need to vacuum under the beds better, but that was our only complaint. The pool was fantastic for the kids! I would have given it 5 stars if they had a continental breakfast.

Review temporarily taken down (by the reviewer) since corporate has taken steps to rectify the situation. I’m going to hold off on either reposting or deleting this entirely until I see how this plays out.

You can easily get lost in these halls trying to find your room!

Eh. Stayed here recently for a wedding, it was ok, not great. The décor was better than some, beds and pillow were comfy. The room was big and quiet even though there were multiple wedding parties present.
The bad? There was a disturbingly blood-​like stain in the bathroom (nail polish hopefully?) which really should have been dealt with before letting people stay there. The layout is a bit weird, really confusing and no directions were given. Also, no continental breakfast, I hate that! I think it was overpriced ($ 99 I believe, I didn’t pay) for what you get. I mean, its Bismark people…

Pros: Excellent restaurant. I got an excellent steak dinner after our late arrival with no problem (ordered about 9.45PM). *Very* nice, clean indoor waterpark with long water slide. Much better than Holodomes we’ve seen. 15Mbps download speeds, outstanding responsiveness for the internet connection.
Cons: Huge, halls need better marking/​maps/​whatever so one doesn’t get lost. Nice plasma TV doesn’t have HDMI input, so no Netflix for us.

Recently updated. The cosmetics have added value, but there is still more to do.

A nice hotel, but they were out of extra blankets, and the internet was spotty. And they gave us a weird handicapped bathroom. Small but important things.

Compare our similar review of Best Western Ramkota Hotel Sioux Falls. Ramkotas, we learned, are large complexes designed for large group meetings, with auditoriums and restaurants and a maze of hallways in which it is easy to lose one’s way. In addition, they seem to be managed by the same company (Best Western is a franchise operation with various owner/​operators) which does not maintain them as they should be maintained. This one had a slow-​draining sink and two of three lights over the bathroom mirror were not working, one because it was not fully screwed into its socket, the other because it was broken (not burned out but broken). The pull-​out-​and-​twist sink faucet was sticky: it required a hard yank to pull out and it was hard to adjust, and a missing access cover over the screw that secured the faucet handle suggested repeated maintenance without correction of the problem or replacement of the faucet. The shower was dark and the shower/​bath faucet was also hard to regulate. The wall-​mounted HVAC unit was quieter than most but apparently had not been cleaned in years because its exhaust grill was covered with a thick layer of cobwebs and dust. The bathroom exhaust vent was similarly dusty and the grout around the tiles in the bathtub area was dark with mold.
The HVAC unit could not be shut off. To prevent it from blowing dust-​laden air across the bed all night, I stacked furniture in front of it. (The room was warm so I had set the machine to cool; don’t try placing furniture close to a heating vent.) The room was crowded with furniture: two queen beds, a desk and chair, and an easy chair, ottoman and floorlamp in addition to chest with TV. Yet, there was only one nightstand and bedlamp for the two queen beds, which was quite inadequate. I banged my head on a wall lamp that had been installed in the space provided for storing and accessing suitcases.
Ramkotas do not provide a continental breakfast as other Best Western motels do. Breakfast in the motel restaurant was satisfactory but added $ 25 to our cost.
On the plus side, the room was quiet.