I came here on a Stag do from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. I shall try to list all the positives first:
The hotel welcomes these stag, hens, away footy fans etc parties where many hotels don't. Other rules such as no food or drink in the rooms were not in force, so walking back at 4am and eating your kebab in the room was deemed acceptable. Great at the time but then it does show what the landlord thinks of his rooms...
Although the hotel is quite some way from the pleasure beach and other activities down on the front, it was only about a 5/10 minute walk to the night club Syndicate.
There is a bar downstairs to have a drink before you start the night off.
When you first arrive at the hotel, you are greeted by Mick the braces. He piles you into the bar, which is about as large as my porch, and explains the rules. He also explains why he is called Mick 'the braces' - this is due to him wearing very strange braces, and yes he does show you by lifting his shirt up and exposing his gut. You can tell he always does this as an intro to new crowds and expects a rowdy raw from the lads/girls ... but our party just looked at each other thinking 'what a tit'. I knew from that moment that I did not like this man.
Mick then put down the keys for each room on the pool table. He made this task more complicated than biological science. He spent about 5 minutes telling us that the locks are new and that these keys are amazing, they open the front door AND your own room - amazing, a key that opens a door, what's next, the wheel? Then he never said which keys were for which room number. How much does it cost to buy a key ring for each key with the number on it? In fact I won a couple of key rings on the 2p slots, I guess I should have donated them. So 14 blokes walking up and down stairs trying keys in every door was a fun start.
The rooms are very small, now it is a one star and you're not paying £2K a night - so what do you expect. Well I expect cleanliness; and each morning my nose was full of dust. The paint work on the skirting and doors are orange - need I say anymore, the bathroom door has no lock on it. Annoying little things like a white toilet and a green seat, grey basin stands with a pink basin ... you just get the feeling that Mick went to the nearest skip to kit these rooms out - cheers. The shower was terrible but at least it was warm. I stayed in the 4 room, which was made up with 2 bunk beds. Grown men sleeping in bunk beds, I thought that only happened in HMPS nowadays. There were only 3 large towels and one hand towel ... for 4 men. The mattress was not comfy and the duvet was old and didn't smell clean, the pillows were soft though.
Around the hotel some small maintenance had been done, a bit of re-plastering here and there, the skimming hadn't even been painted white to match the existing wall colour.
Some rooms are not en-suite, so be careful when booking.
Now this hotel is specially designed for stag and hen nights, the website states that clearly. Most of these parties will be drinking all night and won't arise until late morning; so serving breakfast in a 45 minute slot starting at 9am doesn't quite seem right. And on the leaving day, most hotels I have stayed in request you leave the room by midday, Mick wanted us out by 10:30am, again, not very stag/hen thoughtful I feel.
On leaving day Mick would not shut up about the keys, who’s given the keys in, where are the keys, who still has a key … I then heard him say ‘well if they lost any keys they’ll have to pay for new ones’. The way it was said, pure arrogance. 1) We hadn’t lost any keys, 2) If we had, we would have offered money to replace, and 3) You just had nearly a grand out of us all for staying with you, stop moaning. I don’t think £3 cutting a new key will hurt.
I myself did not have a breakfast but my friend did, he said afterwards 'even someone from the Auschwitz camp would have said no to that' I think sums it up quite well.
Last of all, Mick the braces would latch onto any girl in his bar and keep her there talking and boring the life out of her trying to impress her. It was embarrassing and showed Mick’s true colours of being a seedy old man.
Overall, this hotel isn't the best, it is a place to crash out after a heavy night, but Mick spoils anything that is good about it.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
