A good weekend away (Holiday Inn Ellemsere Port/Cheshire Oaks)

Name: Pharmtastic

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Product:	Holiday Inn Ellemsere Port/Cheshire Oaks
Date:	26/11/08 (243 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Convenient, Clean

Disadvantages: Walking outside to get to pool!

Holiday Inn Ellesmere Port/Cheshire Oaks is situated in the Wirral in the North East of England. It is relatively modern, and was renovated in 2002.

The hotel is on three floors which are accessible via a lift. [This may sound obvious, but I once stayed in a hotel on only two floors and they'd not bothered with a lift: with two children in a buggy, it was not easy to get upstairs!]

There are 83 rooms. The one in which we stayed was perfectly clean and well furnished. We stayed as a family and so the sofa was opened out into an addition bed for the children. This cut down on the space available within the room, but there was plenty to move around in.

The room had a kettle and tea and coffee facilities; there was no minibar. There is a TV, which doubles as an interactive hotel information service. The room had internet access which was charged at a rate of £5.00 for 24 hours [I didn't take a laptop, so can't comment on how easy or efficient this service was.]

The bathroom was a generous size, and included a shower in the bath.

The facilities include a [smallish] pool and sauna, and a gym. What the website doesn't mention, though, is that the leisure facilities [hotel speak for a pool!!] are actually in a separate building to the main hotel. It is obviously much less convenient to have to walk through the rain to go for a swim. I've not seen this in any other hotel I've stayed in.

We ate in the hotel on one evening. There was a large wedding party that night and not many of the guests weren't at the wedding. This meant that the usual restaurant was nice a quiet; unfortunately it also meant that we only new staff with one waitress who seemed to know what was going on. This wasn't a massive problem, but it did mean that service was a little slow.

This Holiday Inn has a "kids eat free" offer, which helps to reduce the cost of eating in as this can be expensive otherwise. Two adults and two children had two courses each [plus drinks] for £32.

Breakfast took the usual buffet form where you can choose from fruits, cereals and the traditional eggs, bacon, sausages etc. it was possible to order extras such as poached eggs and porridge, though no pancakes [my sons' favourites]. The breakfast was perfectly acceptable, though I usually feel the similar offer in a Hilton Hotel is a bit better.

The hotel is just off the M53, one junction along from the exit for the Blue Planet, Cheshire Oaks and Chester Zoo. Chester itself is 7 miles away, so the hotel is very convenient for visiting those attractions.

We payed £75 for a room per night, including breakfast.

Summary: Good as a tourist base