Island View Lodge, International Falls

My family has been taking yearly fishing trips in the Ontario area since before I can remember. This summer we decided to stay in Minnesota, and fish Rainy lake. We were pretty sold once seeing Island View's website. Unfortunately, once we arrived, we realized that it was all false advertisement. Upon arrival, we were greeted by Ron. He proceeded to tell us that our cabin's bathroom needed some work done. When I asked what exactly that meant, he told me that the sink, toilet and shower were functional, but they wanted to do some cosmetic upgrades. After cabin #2's inspection, it was not clean and a lot smaller than advertised. The pictures online were strategically taken to make rooms seem larger. And the bathroom!! The floor was so water damaged that you questioned if you were going to fall through it! Worst of all, the toilet did not have a good base seal and "waste" water was leaking from under it all over the floor. Once we brought this to Ron's attention, he placed towels around the toilet base and instructed us to let him know what day we would be out of the cabin so they could repair the bathroom. In my past experiences, if there was anything wrong with our room/cabin, we were either compensated or given another cabin/room to stay in until the work was done. He then took us to see the two fishing boats we had reserved. Since my family are avid fishermen, this was probably the most important part of our reservation. The first boat looked nothing like advertised on the website. We also questioned its safety since it leaned to one side and had trouble plaining off when driving it. To fix this problem, they gave us a large (filled) gas tank to put in the front of the boat to weigh it down. The second boat was not the boat we reserved. Ron told us that the boat we wanted was totaled the week before our arrival. So we were given a boat of equal size, but it was a ski boat. This boat was a pain to fish in. We did not get any compensation for this boat switch. If it were up to some of my family members, we would have turned around and gone home. But after driving 12 hours to get to our destination, we decided to make the best of things. Ron had a crew to come in and fix the bathroom mid week, but they did not finish it. We continued to have problems with the boats. We continued to have horrible service the whole week. The staff were not friendly or helpful. Everyone gave us the impression that we were a nuisance. Upon checking out, Ron tried to charge us for a scratch in the paint on a boat prop which we were not responsible for. The whole time we remained calm and tried to be fair considering all the issues we had with our stay. We were told that, "Its not our fault that the bathroom needed work!". Needless to say, the discussion ended with Ron and his wife yelling at us and threatening to call the sheriff to get us off their property sooner than our paid for "check out" time.

The shower is and floors are so filthy you can't go barefoot. Holes in walls and windows are stuffed with kleenex and paper towels. Kitchen is filthy. Can hardly get a clean towel. The owner is rude. Cabin is in disrepair. Mattresses are falling apart. Sauna and spa are closed and unusable. Stay away, stay away, stay away. Pay a few more bucks. This place is a joke....used to be nice....what happened?????