At the edge of the world... (Holiday Inn Chessington)

Member Name: paulgood529

Product:	Holiday Inn Chessington
Date:	12/01/09 (63 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Friendly place, lovely rooms and facilites

Disadvantages: None really

OK - so following on from my other review about the theme park - I thought I'd write seperately a little about the hotel.

As we were having 2 days in the park itself, it seemed like a sensible idea to stay in the hotel that is right on the addmission gate (pretty much).

We arrived at Chessington WOA for the morning, and although we couldn't check in to the hotel until about 1pm, they were happy for us to be able to park in the hotel car park - which made things a lot easier as the car park to the theme park is manic!

When we checked in, it was easy enough. Gave our name only and they found the booking very quickly with no problem - you have to let them scan either a debit or credit card for any bills you might runup, and then you get your key.

So, off to our room. We booked a family room as there were 4 of us in total - 2 adults a 7 year old and a baby.

The room was very spacious and lovely. The main part of the room had a double bed for the adults, and about 2 minutes after getting into the room, a porter arrived with the cot we had reserved.

There was enough room for the cot next to the bed, and enough space to still walk all the way around it.

The room was equipped with a lovely wide screen flat TV, which you could also gain access to the internet on. It had some standard Sky channels, and also movies on demand.

The movies on demand though, are the same price as it costs to buy the film in the shop so it may be worth taking a portable DVD player if you have one - there is room on the screen to put it in.

The bathroom was also very spacious, bath and a shower.

Now, this is the bit I really liked. From the main part of the room, you head down the hallway, past the bathroom and then to the left, the rooms goes off a little bit. Now, in this little section is two single beds and another flat screen TV on the wall. This is the kids bit, and the TV has a seperate link up the TV signal, so hey don't have to watch what you are and visa versa.

This is lovely as our eldest was so taken back by a TV in his own room we hardly saw him!!

We enjoyed our days in the park, and the evening retired to the hotel for dinner.

Now, this is the only bad thing I have to say about the hotel. The evening buffet was not nice. It cost around £17.99 per adult and £11.99 per child. At first, I was overjoyed by this as I am a buffet king. For some reason, it takes aruond 6 plates of buffet food to fill me up - so I was happy to pay the money.

However, the food was not nice. What wasn't overcooked was undercooked and as for the taste, I can only assume that they had mistaken the dog food for the human food and put the wrong lot out. The other problem was when we complained, we were met with a very arrogant manager who clearly was too big for his own boots, and we complained in the morning to the hotel manager, he was a lot nicer and very apologetic. We weren't there to make a scene, we just wanted to make it clear that it wasn't nice.

So, in the end I ended up having mainly burgers and chips from the buffet.

Hopefully it was just bad luck, beacuse everything else in the hotel was excellent.

After our dinner, we made our way to the bars balcony section, from which you are at the back of the zoo and can see it over the way - which is quite relaxing.

The hotel is also equipped with a swimming pool, which is easily accesable and a good swimming pool with good changing facilities.

The hotel is defnately a very nice place to stay and good value for money. It (mostly) has very friendly staff, who never make you feel like any request, how small or silly, is unwelcome.

My star rating would have been more if it were not for the night manager, but hopefully he has now had the operation to remove the stick from somewhere special...

Summary: A definate place to stay