arrowhead-thunderbird resort

I went to this camp early august 2014 and had an ok experience. So we planned another trip the first wknd of Sept 2014. There were 8 adults in our group. We rent a cabin called "The Hut" it says it sleeps 8 people....what a joke. It was tiny and no way we could have fit 8 people in there. The first night there were only myself and my boyfriend, so we stayed in the Hut, the next morning we decided to upgrade to larger cabin. The guy that helped us to upgrade was very helpful and friendly. So we paid the nightly rate for the larger cabin and moved our stuff out of the Hut and into the larger cabin. We were excited and started getting ready for our float. It was about 20 minutes to our float time and here comes the guy that upgraded us and says he is sorry but that cabin was already booked so we had to leave but they would help us find a suitable cabin for our group. We went to the office and the man said he would try to get us into 3 of the park trailers "camper trailers" for the same price as the larger cabin. which would have been fine with us. He went to the owner and the owner said yes you can do that but you have also pay for the Hut! We were appalled at his greedy behavior. We explained we had upgraded to the larger cabin and it was their fault they had double booked the room not ours so they should accommodate us as much as possible. The owner insisted that we had originally rented the hut so we needed to pay for it, although, when we upgraded to the other cabin we didn't pay for the Hut, it was only when there was a problem that they wanted us to pay for the hut as well as the 3 park trailers. I have never been disrespected by a business before like this. The owner would not talk to us, he stayed hidden in the back and sent out his nephew to talk with us (the guy that double booked the room). A woman decided to step in and add her opinion and got very rude with us, so we got a full refund and stayed at a hotel in Talequah instead. We went ahead and floated with this camp but only because we were there with Groupons for this specific camp. If we didnt have those vouchers we would have went to another site to float. We will float again, we really enjoy floating the IL river but will try out another camp in the area. Not a good business move when you have so much competition in the area. This place has awful customer service and does not value their customers. Please don't waste your time and money at this place.

The only good thing about this place was the location. We did the 6 mile float labor day weekend and we were able to float right up to our back door. Walking into the place, we saw right away how filthy it was. Stains all over the sheets. The bathroom floor was coated in a thick brown/slimy flim. I realize it was "lake accommodations" so I didn't expect much, but if you stay here make sure to bring plenty of paper towels to clean what the cleaning crew doesn't, which is everything.

Great time go every year and always have a great time. Sometimes there are a lot of drunk people. It's still a great time though.

We had the absolute worst experience here over Memorial Day weekend 2014. We made our reservations about a week or two before the float and the reservation process was easy for floating and camping. No cell phone access up at the camp. We chose to be in the camping area with no electric hook ups. Check in was easy but it was actually pretty hard to find our camp ground and we had to go to the office 4 times to get directions to it. We finally found it and set up camp. At check in and when making reservations over the phone we were told MANY times that quiet hours started at 11 and they didn't tolerate being loud after that and that security would be going around checking. That turned out to be the biggest joke. The campers next to us set up some sort of rave with lights everywhere in the trees and the loudest sound system I had ever heard. We got to listen to their EXTREMELY loud rap music all night until 430am. This is when security finally came and asked them to be quiet, exactly 5 1/2 hours after quiet time started. We found out the next day that security only acted then because local neighbors could hear the music and called the owner at home at 4am to ask him to put a stop to it. It literally sounded like we were front stage at a rap concert all night. In addition, the people staying at that campsite were absolutely wasted and kept driving around drunk with people on their front windshield and they would fly off onto the ground. They also ran into and knocked over the porter potties with their cars many times for fun. They didn't even check to see if anyone was in there. We were all worried they were going to run us over in our tents that night. The next day my friends and I floated and that was fine. We also talked to the owner's son who was running the place that day. He didn't apologize for anything and literally told us that he would not be making the rude, drunk, and disorderly group leave because they were his best customers and come back every year for 12 years in a row. I told him that he was definitely losing us as customers and he said that is just something he will have to live with because the other people were regulars. He didn't even care that they were running other guests off, driving around his property drunk, and running into and ruining his and his parents property. We even saw his so called security patrol DRINKING with the group and then getting back into their trucks and golf carts and driving off. The only thing he offered was for US to move ourselves to a different area, which we did. He said that I wasn't being fair at being upset because he is good person and a father. I said that had nothing to do with this and that he isn't following his own rules that he set up and that the way he is running is business is horrible. In the end, we were never offered a refund or apology, only excuses. What makes this even worse for me is that my husband and his friends are in the military, work so hard and hardly ever are able to take time off. This was his first weekend off in months and because of this place and the owners it was ruined. I will never stay at this place again and to any one who asks I will tell them to RUN far away. The owners don't give a crap about the guests and made that pretty well known to us.

We stayed at the Ponderosa cabin in May 2014. We were not satisfied for the following reasons. There was no soap for the bathrooms, no wash cloths, towels, dish towels (we had to clean the kitchen counters with toilet paper) there were only 2 forks in a 3 bedroom cabin. There were dirty dishes inside the kitchen cabinets ( the salad bowl had rotting lettuce in it) there were brown recluse spiders throughout the cabin. The walls in the downstairs master bedroom had mould in them. The carpets were stained. I will say that the only positive was that the staff were friendly.