Old Eucalyptus Schoolhouse

People have gotten sick from eating here! Don’t eat the chicken, I went to two events here so far and the sound system is great, dance floor is a little small for the venue but over all the food has been the most disappointing

Very nice venue with space for at least a million people. Great food. But what an epic failure of a bar. CASH ONLY?! This is 2015. Get a square and an ipad. Or just give 1% to the card reader. Either way, get with the times. And add one more bar tender while you’re at it. BAR SUCKS (Bring a flask).

This could have been a 5 star experience, but the air conditioning did not keep half the hall very cool at all.
We hired this place for a wedding reception for 250 guests in July. In El Centro.
Food? Great!
Music? Also great!
Air conditioning? Not so cool.
The northern portion of the hall which has all the windows was BLAZING! I mean, we have nobody to blame but ourselves for having a wedding in the Imperial Valley in July, but the place was too warm. One of the guests brought a large fan from home to help. We had some people who wanted to dance show up for this gig and we could have made a mint advertising it as a Zumba workout class!
I have a feeling they had some issues with one or more of their AC units, but didn’t want to admit it. We asked that they turn the thermostat down quite a few times, but no joy. Now, being a Valleyite, I know how your AC can crap out on you without notice, but when you pay that much for a hall rental, you gotta have some contingency plans in the summers around here.
Hint?

Hi Unilocalers,
I found the Old Eucalyptus Schoolhouse looking for a venue for a regional holiday luncheon and I honestly couldn’t of been happier. This is excellent venue in the Imperial Valley.
The large venue had lots of natural light, pretty views, and tons of parking. Tony was more than accommodating of our party of 50 associates and his prices for setup, appetizers, lunch and dessert could not be beat. The Staff, headed by Rosie, were professional and very sweet.
I have every intention to utilize the Old Eucalytus Schoolhouse annually for our regional holiday luncheons from here on out.

I attended my cousins’ wedding at this location. Compared to other places in El Centro, it’s not that bad! The grounds were manicured. It held alot of people. The only down fall I noticed was the cash bar service was not as fast as it should have been for the event. There were a lot of young people and it seemed the bar was struggling to keep up. The Margaritas weren’t bad either! The décor was nice and there were 3 buffet lines!

I’m writing this review by my experience with a friend’s wedding that had taken place here.
The location here isn’t bad, I mean we’re already in the middle of nowhere so an old schoolhouse in a middle of a cornfield shouldn’t be bad right? Nothing fancy about this place fyi. Their parking lot is just basically dirt.
So they have a specific staff here that they only use and you can’t bring any other vendors in here because they’re scared that they mess up the space. I see their reasoning by really? The hired staff really sucks. So here’s the run-​down on why their staff sucks:
–Bartender: didn’t know how to make an Adiós. Really now? Probably the biggest party drink and you don’t know how to make that?
–DJ: didn’t know how to mix music, screwed up the playlist for the ceremony which is embarrassing, he’s also the announcer which is a shame because he was so boring and unenthusiastic about his job.
–Caters/​waiters: pretty freaking grumpy ass workers, were unpleasant throughout the whole night. They were stingy with the chicken and tri tip. They butchered the cake! That had to be their worst offense of the night. The chopped it up like fruit ninjas and made a big ass mess.
I’m guessing this is probably the only decent venue in this area but really now? A backyard wedding sounds more appealing.

ok, My Sister specifically chose this venue because it was a nice big location in El centro where most of our family could make it… we live in San Diego, CA and my Sister (the one who was getting this set up) was going to have a reception here for our family who could not make the trip to her wedding in HAWAII so she decided it would be nice to have a pretty location where our family could get together and have a good time… the decorator my Aunt hired for this place did an excellent job, as did our baker of choice, gorgeous! and typical of most places that rent out venues they want you to pay for THEIR specific catering services and liquor and DJ (we could have done without a DJ or the Catering services but what evs it was a 100 person minimum) My Sister kinda knew she wouldn’t have 100 people but didn’t care, she just wanted an enjoyable experience…
We came here from San Diego to celebrate with our family, on August 20, 2011 at 8pm we had the celebration here… everything decoration-​wise was nice and set up and all. the bartender was there ready… my Sister had even forked out a grand to have an Open bar for our family.
At 8:00pm we were the first there, of course like typical Mexican families we didn’t expect anyone to show up until a couple hours later, so we decided to get an early start by ordering up a couple of mixed drinks. The Bartender seemed a little out of it. I asked him in Spanish (because we are in the Valley and I ASSume everyone down there speaks and PREFERS to speak spanish, I personally prefer to speak english but I decided it would make everyone more comfortable to speak their native language) for a couple of Pina coladas for my Mother and my Sister he looked at me strangely as if he didn’t know what I was saying so I asked again in Spanish, to which he answered me in English asking if I was asking for the Pina Coladas… so stupid me ASSuming he would be comfortable with that. Whatever. my Sister paid for his services and he made me the drinks, I left him his Tip and gave the drinks to my family… but he seemed really upset. I thought it was only because it was the start of the day… until my Bro in law showed up (an avid drinker) and he came up to us telling us what a crab the bartender was… and he had left him plenty of tip… I guess it is not customary for people in the valley to tip people for services??? sooo weird, crabby bartender (–1star), we could have hired a peppier bartender who would have done a better job.
The buffet started & we knew we would have more than enough food for our party since it was for 100 people & we only had about 60 – 70 some of our family wanted 1 ea of the protein portions (chicken and beef) and were denied, & then the rest of the family ended up getting the 2 meat portions but it left our first group of family members feeling a little rejected. It should have been clear to the caterers that we wouldn’t have the 100 people there so this would have been an ok practice to let our family eat whatever they wanted. (–1star) There was a TON of food leftover anyway!
My Sister had asked for permission to use a Karaōke machine we would ourselves supply and she got approval from the manager but when we got there it seemed nobody had communicated with everyone else (–1star), soo we got stuck with the DJ who was playing crappy music for the most part… eventually we decided to just deal with it and have a good time (which we did) but it took then until the last 2 hours of the day to get the music right… at which point we were NEVER informed that the party was scheduled to END at 1:00am
instead they turned on the lights and turned off the music… just like that
it would have been nice for the DJ to make an announcement saying «Thank you all for coming to the Eucalyptus for this celebration! We would like to inform you that we will be stopping the music in preparation for closing this venue at 1:00am» or ANYTHING to warn people of the closing time. Instead just turning on the lights to rush us off, btw that only works on Cockroaches not on people & bluntly stopping the music, THEN 15 minutes later the Security Guard with a giant «STAFF» sign on his back started shouting rudely that everyone has to leave now & that the party is over, our family was trying to clear out the celebration cake that was still left over and chit chatting while doing so because we hadn’t seen any of our family in AGES and then this rude arse mofo comes up to us and again shouts out «IF YOU AREN’T GETTING CAKE OR GRABBING YOUR STUFF YOU HAVE TO LEAVE NOW!» I was sooo upset by this because we drove nearly two hours to get here, hadn’t seen our family in ages and this guy just rudely makes everyone start to leave as IF they aren’t welcome here?! There are more tactful ways of making people leave. TERRIBLE. (–1star)
FYI our family had a great time but we would’ve done better on our own without these terrible services we were forced to get.