Guest User
June 9, 2024
Positives: Beautiful setting. Stunning gardens. Entertaining Boat trip from the beach recommended, although no reduction for children on the £30 a head charge was a little galling. Lovely spacious room (Deluxe). Very clean. Extremely comfortable bed and everything in working order. Well-appointed with tasteful decor. I did notice something funny going on with the wallpaper joints, which another reviewer has mentioned, but this did not ruin my stay… Pool & Jacuzzi were fine. Residents are furnished with their own pool towels, probably for the hotel’s convenience, but we liked that. Reception staff very helpful. Room service staff were amazing! One breakfast service staff was excellent, but was sadly moved and replaced with patchy service. On our last morning we waited patiently for 20 mins and ended up having to ask for our tea/coffee/breakfast order to be taken. Actual breakfast was good. Negatives: We were looking forward to the promised culinary delights from the restaurant, so imagine our horror on reading, after checking in, that under-6’s are not permitted at Dinner! We had brought two children 5 and 6 and at no point was this mentioned in booking conversations, or indeed on the hotel website. The pre-booking, time slots and location requirements at this hotel around eating arrangements for adults with younger children severely hampered our holiday eating experience, which was very disappointing for us. If we had known about these restrictions beforehand, we would have chosen to stay elsewhere. Checking in at 4.30pm after a long drive we discovered the Dinner child exclusion in the room information and tried to book the only permitted place to eat with children, but only a late slot was available. Unbelievably, in a 4* hotel we had to ask for information about local fish & chip shops! To their credit, Reception called back a few minutes later to offer us a 7pm slot in the terrace with children, which we gratefully accepted. We sat down at 7pm and were given a 2-course for £35 a head menu and a Kid’s menu. I found it hard to believe that there was nothing in between and after about 15 mins (he’d disappeared), on enquiry, the waiter produced another Bar menu, not previously offered. This in turn offered options from the à la carte Dinner Menu, which we also had to ask for. Having painfully assimilated all the available information, after 30 mins, we ordered. By this time the children were starving so we simply requested that their meals came at the same time as the 2 starters ordered… we waited and waited… People who had sat down after we had ordered got their food before us! At 8.30pm our meals finally arrived, but two kids meals and 2 courses for one person, nothing for the other adult! Luckily, the person who got 2 courses at once had ordered a cold starter, so ate their main course first while it was hot… the missing meal arrived 10 minutes after everyone else’s. The whole experience was an unbelievable farce… even more so for a 4* hotel!