The Highlander Hotel

The highlander was great - our kids loved it! Not to mention the service and the food were perfection.

We got ****** in because the pictures looked so good. This place is completely opposite of the pictures and stated “amenities”. First, it’s a very old hotel that has been lightly redone. It still looks very old and worn. We came in on a Thursday night for a med school graduation. One person working all the areas and he was not really interested in working at all. We stayed until Saturday. The lobby bar was never open. The Shake Shack/snack shack did NOT serve shakes (they were not willing to make them). They also did not serve alcohol drinks, even though there is a full bar and a bar menu. The really cool garage doors around the pool are never open and it was a beautiful weekend! No fires in any fire pit. If you spend the extra money to have rooms around the pool, be aware that you are essentially locked in from the pool side until a worker unlocks all doors at exactly 9:00 am. You can not open your door before that time. We would have liked to sit out there and enjoy a quiet coffee but were unable to. The tables that are outside of your door can not be used unless you get food from the hotel. That would be acceptable except the food is terrible at best and only offered on a very limited time schedule. We paid almost 1,000$ to stay here and are terribly disappointed that we did not stay at The Graduate downtown. We fell for the impressive pictures and the listed amenities. This place is dismal and disappointing. We come through this area often and we will never make this mistake again.

Nice pool, some arcade machines. Breakfast passable. The shake blender broke. Many arcade machines not working. Understaffed but those that were working, were working hard

Everything was great the staff was great. I was surprised that there was no phone in the room in case we needed the front desk. I was also surprised that electric car charging stations are in prominent places over handicapped parking. otherwise we enjoyed our stay and would recommend the Highlander as an enjoyable place to stay.

This hotel was built in 1967, apparently to try to bring a resort experience to central Iowa. The pool is the big attraction. Even room keys are designed to be worn around your wrist. The building has a heavy industrial feel - vinyl floors, limited space, huge windows, no desk chair (I stood up to work at the computer), poor lighting, shortage of electrical outlets, no elevators. The real frosting on our cake, though, was the "battery low" alarm going off in our smoke detector at 3:50 a.m. Of course, there's no one to fix this in the middle of the night; so no more sleep. Breakfast was very limited. We would have eaten our own cereal, but there wasn't any milk.

Fun place to stay and hang with family or friends. My one complaint was the gap in the bathroom door when closed. It was a barn door style and still left a solid inch for people to peek in. Will ask for a different room next time.

The owner seems to have no idea what’s going on. The restaurant portion seemed like a mediocre cash grab. I was very disappointed as this was a lot of people’s graduation weekend. They need to evaluate how they run their restaurant. The supper club is not back.

Very eco friendly. Actually had paper coffee cups that were not individually wrapped in plastic. No plastic bottles of shampoo or conditioner. No plastic bag in wastebaskets. Great courtyard and pool areas. Restaurant with limited menu and bar on premises. Morning breakfast was ok at best. Loved the hippie a**osphere with peace signs and all. Clean and well maintained facilities with tons of public space.

The hotel has improved significantly since rebranding. It's cleaner, and feels more safe.