Starling Travel

I don’t like to do bad reviews, but I would be remiss if I didn’t warn you about Buffalo Bill’s Hotel and Casino in Primm, Nevada.

It is about a 45 minute drive from Las Vegas, so I thought it would be a good place for us to stay. We have sorely missed Nevada Landing since it closed earlier this year and we were trying to find a replacement for our favorite hotel.

Buffalo Bill’s is NOT it.

We decided to take Buffalo Bill’s Hotel for a test run on 11-22-07 and 11-23-07. It was a nightmare.

The staff at the checkout counter was understaffed, but friendly. We had to wait 30 minutes in line to get our room. The staff was very helpful when we finally got to see them, but there just weren’t enough of them to handle the line of people checking in.

Unfortunately, the room we were given was unpleasant. The toilet was clogged before we were able to use it. I called down to the desk to have someone bring me a plunger. The maintenance man who showed up, wouldn’t let me keep the plunger (is there only ONE for the entire hotel?!). He insisted that he wait while I get the toilet unplugged. Unfortunately, he had brought a sink plunger, which would turn inside out every time I applied pressure. I was disgusted as the thing flipped sewer water on me every time I turned it right side out. Despite all I did, I was unable to get it unclogged. The maintenance guy said he would get someone with a snake to unplug it. I told him that we were going to get a different room.

I waited in the room while Mike went down to get another one. He waited another 30 minutes in that long line. They gave him keys for a different room on the same floor.

We took all our suitcases, left the previous room and headed to our new one. The key cards didn’t work. Now, we were stuck in the hallway with all of our suitcases and no room. I waited in the hallway with all of our belongings while he went down AGAIN to have them fix the problem.

He barged to the front of the 30 minute line and they gave him cards for a third room. It was one floor above ours. When we arrived in the room, the smoke detector was beeping, the window was stuck open (cold wind blowing the curtains) and there was only one chair instead of two. Frustrated with the line at the checkout desk, we called housekeeping and maintenance.

A woman arrived at the door about thirty minutes later. She didn’t have a chair, so we assumed she must be maintenance. Sadly, she didn’t speak enough English to communicate to us that she had been sent to our room from housekeeping and no one had told her that she should bring a chair. We told her the smoke alarm was beeping (you would think it was obvious) and that we couldn’t get the window closed. She suggested that we put bath towels along the crack to block the air.

That was the point where I lost it.

Maintenance showed up and replaced the battery. Mike and I finally forced the window shut (most of my rage was used up on the window). It was almost 2 am by that time, so it was too late to get a room somewhere else.

Once we finally had a non-beeping, non-freezing room, we had even MORE issues. The next morning, we were greeted by the noisy ruckus that was housekeeping gathering right outside our door. Apparently, they gave us the room right by the housekeeping area. After all the trouble we had, they gave us that room. I understand that it’s just a job and it’s fun to talk and laugh with your coworkers, but we had been up for HOURS last night just trying to get settled into a room. We arrived a little late the previous night, but that was aggravated by changing rooms so many times. We just wanted to sleep.

Even worse, the wireless Internet was slow. Okay that’s a lie. It was almost non-workingly slow. Mike took the readings and it was slower on upload than a telephone modem. I had to upload two pictures about seven times just to get it to work. You shouldn’t brag about having wireless Internet if it’s unusable.

After all the trouble, we just wanted out of Buffalo Bill’s as soon as possible. I made a reservation for the Las Vegas Hilton as soon as they had rooms available (11-24-07) and we checked out of Buffalo Bill’s three days too early.

We were so angry, we didn’t gamble at all. We saved our gambling money for the Hilton.

The staff were all very nice, but the hotel has some SERIOUS deferred maintenance. We were going to book a week’s stay there during CES and go the extra drive every day to Vegas, but now we are looking at hotels in the city. Terrible Herbst might be a great car wash, but they are running a miserable hotel.

Read this entry to hear about Primm Valley Casino Resorts’ “apology”:

• Starling Travel » Buffalo Bill’s Hotel and Casino “Apologizes”