Best Western Plus Bandana Square

Was here for a couple days last week. The staff was friendly and helpful. The building very unique and quite large. My room faced the indoor pool below and fortunately, that closed early enough in the evening that noise was not a problem. My main reason for the mediocre review was the room itself. There was nothing major, just a bunch of small things that made it less than satisfying. The lamp on the work desk didn’t have a switch to turn it on. Gone and never replaced. The toilet wouldn’t stop filling without some manual assistance. The bath/​shower selector functioned in bath fill mode or half shower-​half bath fill mode only, so made it tough to actually take a shower. Room maintenance needs to be a bigger priority.

Not family friendly at all. We stayed at this hotel with family a Friday night before a wedding. My 4 kids & 2 of their cousins were in the pool swimming & staff came at 7pm to tell us to keep the noise down. The children were playing football in the pool, not being outrageously loud. The pool was later shut down early
Poolside rooms were nice, bathroom small, but living area big. I wouldn’t go back to this hotel primarily from how we were treated.

They let me check in early but after that everything was awful. I drive for a living. At night. So I sleep during the day. Grateful for the early check in, I fell asleep around 2 pm. I was woken up around 4:30 by people making sweet, sweet love in the room above mine. I was kept awake by children making noise in the hallway and outside my window (which I think is just another hallway). I was also kept awake by grown adults being loud outside my door. Adults. Standing and chatting outside my door with a «do not disturb» thing hanging off of it. Real classy clientele at this establishment. I’d say I got a combined 3 and a half hours of sleep.

It’s a nice place with super friendly staff. I got a great price and was completely satisfied with my 4 night stay. If you need something, just ask, they can probably help you. Breakfast was great and a overall good value.

This hotel is just a step above a roadside motel. As you walk in, the place looks kind of run down. The front entry has chipped paint everywhere. We got to our room, and it was very chilly in there, so we turned the heat up and then went out for dinner. Got back, the room was still freezing, so we called the front desk to get switched to a different room… and come to find out, to have the heat turned up in any of the rooms, they have to call the front desk to have them do it — the control unit in the rooms are dummy panels. They should have told us that when we checked in. Next — we had a King bed, yet the pillows on it were smaller than standard pillows, and only 4 of them. When we called the front desk to get more pillows, we were told they didn’t have any more pillows, but they had extra blankets that we could roll up if we wanted. Then, while we are laying there watching some TV letting our food digest before hitting the sauna and hot tube, we notice what appeared to be feces on the smoke detector on the ceiling. Additionally, the bathroom never got warm and was freezing the entire time we were there, the ceiling tiles outside of the bathroom were sagging, and outside of our room, the ceiling tiles had water damage. Additionally, you could clearly hear the people in the room above us stomping around (non-​stop for several hours into the night) and that echoed through the room. We talked to the front desk about this, but it continued. Even when turning the volume of the TV up to 80, we could still hear it. Additionally, when we walked to the front desk in the middle of the night to talk to the front desk, the walkway was not light and I almost fell over a decorative box they had sitting in the middle of the walkway. The next morning, the Continental Breakfast was nothing to brag about. Styrofoam plates (wasteful and bad for the environment), very flimsy forks and utensils, and nothing was labeled. For example, the maple syrup for the waffles I thought was oil for the waffle maker.

Ok hear me out:
Cons:
John the bartender, the guy was a total tool! and really, $ 10 for a bud light and a shot of JD. Guy could have cared less for conversation or have the slightest hint of courtesy
The place is getting tired and quite frankly isn’t worth the price they charge.
Upon check in the pool was closed (they had to shock for some reason) and was told that it would be open at 5PM. If we wanted to we could use the hot tub. At 5PM the pool was not open, we inquire at the front desk and was met with snappy responses that it is not open and WILL NOT be open till chlorine levels are right and we CANNOT use the hot tub like we were told. That woman really needs to get a job were she don’t deal with the public.
PROS:
The beds are ridiculous comfortable.
The «other» front counter individuals were friggin fantastic.
The HOUSE staff was awesome, polite, helped with a couple things and even joked around with the wife and I. The most unappreciated jobs from some very nice workers.
I would not let 2 REALLY sub-​par individuals ruin our stay. I wish they would update the place to make it worth the $$$ they charge.
All in all would not hesitate to stay again.

This hotel is a little odd. The staff is nice. When I walked into the room, it smelled very weird. There was a screen door that walked right out to the chlorine room and people knocked on that in the middle of the night. It was under construction, so it was a kind of loud and annoying. Some ladies told the front desk that the ceiling was leaking in their room. I would not recommend this hotel.

The lobby is adorable, and the front desk staff was super nice. The front desk gentleman noticed upon check-​in that my credit card bore the logo of a university and asked if I was a student (I was). He informed me of the student discount, and I was able to save 15% on my room!
Protip: ALL Best Westerns offer student discounts. I’ve used it at multiple BW’s and it works each time, though the discount can differ (between 10−15% in my experience).
I was here for a cousin’s wedding, so I didn’t spend a ton of time here. It was pleasant enough. I had a decent view from my window, despite the fact that half of it was a parking lot (the other half was trees and stuff!). Nice hotel, though it’s a tad out of the way if you are going to events downtown. I had to book here since my cousin’s wedding was the same weekend as the Twin Cities Marathon, and all of the downtown hotels were booked, but I took a Lyft taxi, and it was just fine!

I cannot recommend this hotel. When our family travels sometimes we arrive an hour or two before the established check-​in time. In four years we have never been told the 3pm check-​in means 3pm not a minute sooner. Second, it’s a 2-​story hotel with no elevator, ramps, anything. A helper at the desk (a very smallish young lady) grabbed our bags and began apologizing for the lack of an elevator. The two large gentlemen behind the counter just watched her. Third; the hotel layout was a confusing maze. We talked to another family who had arrived a few days earlier and they said they finally figured out how to navigate from their hotel room to the pool without having to keep circling back. Fourth; the room was hot and we seriously considered buying a box fan.
Lastly; checking-​out was annoying. We were located on the 2^nd floor. The hallways are narrow and since there are no elevators we had to make several trips through the maze of corridors, bumping into other hotel guests who were also carrying their luggage to the main floor.
Overall the female staff-​members were helpful and nice, the guys were just there. I also need to add, when I called the hotel to make the reservation, I asked a gentlemen how far away were two landmarks and he said 2 miles for both. When we arrived we found it was actually 8 miles to one and 11 miles to the other. He flat out lied.

Should a non-​smoking room smell like cigarettes?
Should it smell a little bit more like cigarettes every time you return to the same?
Our room was huge, which was nice, but should the television (old-​timey tube TV) and cabinet be a full fifteen feet from the bed?
Should the only windows in the room look out into the indoor courtyard of the hotel?
Where people eat their breakfast?
Ugh.

For a place to rest after a long day in the Twin Cities, this is an OK spot. There’s ample free parking. The WiFi is available but spotty. The staff is pretty friendly and helpful. The room was clean and the bed was firm. To print your airline boarding pass, you have to ask the front desk staff to print it for you. They have a complimentary computer to use by the front desk. However, the printer attached to the computer doesn’t work. This building is on the State of MN historic register. As such, it’s pretty tough to get heavy luggage up to the second floor as they forgot to install elevators. Water pressure in the bathroom was adequate; they provide single ply toilet paper and it’s not as soft as two ply Charmin; the towels are low thread count. To get to the hotel from MSP, I found it easier to take Fort Road to Lexington instead of Snelling. There’s an incredible amount of road repair construction activities occurring on Snelling.

I’m probably particularly attached to this Best Western because it’s the Hotel That Saved Me From the 2011 Heat Wave For Two Nights but, with that being said, it would probably be nice in temperatures less than 100 degrees as well.
Minneapolis was a sauna-​like death trap for a week straight, driving Forest and me to discover the joys of bidding on air-​conditioned hotels via Priceline. The Best Western isn’t anything special, but it’s clean, cozy and AIR CONDITIONED! (Did I mention that already?)
Plus, the St. Paul Pizza Luce is extremely close and more than willing to deliver an Athena to your room door so you don’t have to miss even a minute of the Daily Show.

Honestly, we loved this place! It was spotlessly clean (and had white bedspreads, which I’m a huge fan of because you can tell if it’s clean). The rooms were spacious. We had a king sized bed and then there was a little living room area with a chair and ottoman, desk, coffee table, and an armoire with a TV. We liked that it wasn’t shaped like a typical hotel room and the living room seemed more separate. Oh, and the complementary wifi worked great! We had really fast internet.
The lobby was cute, and it was pretty neat that the train tracks from when it used to be a working depot were still there. We swam in the pool, which was decent sized. It had a hot tub (which we didn’t use, but it looked fine). Complementary breakfast was also offered, but we didn’t wake up in time for it. The only thing that I would like to see upgraded (and this is often the case in hotels) is that the equipment in the workout room was a little flimsy and not in really great condition. Otherwise, though, we had a great time here and we will be back.

Most Best Westerns that you see anyplace besides Bumfuck, Nowhere are themed. Haven’t you noticed? They usually remodel a (an?) historic building of some sort so they can pretend to blend in with their surrounds. I’m not saying they do an incredible job but they do alright.
I booked a ton of rooms here for my out of town friends and family to stay during my wedding. My dad is a retired train engineer so automatically he loved that the hotel is built around an old depot. He even found a picture in the lobby of the engine line he used to drive in Barstow, California. I thought that was a nice touch. Frankly, I think the place looks pretty cool compared to your other nearby options: a variety of cookie-​cutters plunked in the middle of a vacant lot.
Anyway, I had people stay here since it was literally a 5 minute walk from the wedding site at Como Zoo & Conservatory. It was super convenient since not everybody rented a car. The front desk even let me put gift baskets in peoples name so they would get it at check-​in.
We also had rehearsal dinner in their banquet room and it went off without a hitch. They let us set up early.
Minus one star for having a completely enclosed courtyard. Although it looks interesting, there is a faint smell of chlorine wafting over from the pool that invades most of the common area.

This hotel is odd. It is themed.
We were limited in hotels because we were bringing the dog with us, and Saint Paul is not overflowing with hotels that accept dogs, so we decided on this one. It is about as «Meh» as it gets.
We were missing a blanket on the bed, there was just a sheet and a bed spread. This is Minnesota at the end of October, it is freakin cold in here, and the heat isn’t on for the building yet (?!?). Where is the blanket? Speaking of temperature controls, there is no way to turn off the fan and the cold air. There is a baseboard heater, so we have heat from the floor and cold from the ceiling. Fun times.
Along with the missing blanket, the do not disturb sign was missing as well. Bed is pretty uncomfortable too. Finally, there were a shit ton of ants in the bathroom! Eeek! WTF are ants doing in the bathroom of a hotel, and how come nothing is done about them?