Resort niggles

The food and drink prices are kind of what you expect in the industry Alton Towers falls in. All theme park resorts have high prices, Alton Towers prices are reasonable. Not cheap, but reasonable enough.

With discount, beers are only 10-20p more expensive per pint than pubs in Alton village.

Infact in Sept they were doing a discount on draught, which you could apply AP discount on top of and worked out to be something around £2.60 a pint. Was amazing!

I haven't really had many complaints about the place recently, only when I fell in Cariba Creek on their slippy flooring! - I have noticed that they are reducing the hotel perks, like the nice shower gel you used to get, I am sure the kids used to get a little more as well. In the Legoland hotel they have a cool treasure hunt in the rooms which leads to a little pack of lego, it was amazing to be honest, such a great feature, something the Towers could implement quite easily in the future.

My biggest issue is the prices over the summer months, our children love the place so much we have to stay for 2-3 nights, but that can cost almost £1000, that's half way to Disneyland and I know where I would prefer to go!

Prices are too high, probably because their in season occupancy is very high (hence the new accommodation planned). I hope when the new lodges open the price will drop as they will have more capacity so occupancy percentages will drop.

The issue is at the moment the quality doesn't meet the cost, anyone who thinks the hotels are glorified travel lodges are being over dramatic but the hotels lack certain aspects such as enough toiletry and good entertainment as well as the special treats such as a treasure hunt for kids that would set the hotels apart.

Once the ATH rooms are refurb'd they need to advertise Splash as the more budget hotel (by dropping Splash prices not raising ATH), the Lodges should be seen as a mid quality option (though the lack of bar is worrying as is the size of the restaurant).

Food capacity needs looking at too as when the lodges come there will be even more guests with only a minimal increase in food capacity.

These are mostly niggles though and overall over the last 2 years the hotels have improved a lot. They just need a bit more to match their price band.

I agree very much with the above.

I had a conversation with my parents about this and we agreed that it would be rather worrying if the ATH prices hike up considerably, as this could turn away a chunk of guests rather than attract new ones.

Perhaps for the best of both worlds, put up the ATH room prices slightly (and when I say slightly I mean exactly that, not an extra £100+ Alton Towers...), lower the SLH price slightly too, this evens out both products, ATH as the more 'premium' one and Splash as the 'budget' one.

Then of course the Lodges will come as a mid-way product, myself and my parents both agreed that with the lack of bar, entertainments and how far away the Lodges development will be from everything else it would be silly for this to cost more than the hotels. We agreed as a mid-way product it works out well, you get more than what you have in Splash Landings, it could be aimed more are the market that prefer to go self-catering and it's not as premium of the ATH.

That way they will have three different types of products aimed at different parts of the market, resulting in the resort having various packages that will suit all types of people.

My big worry, and I'm really concerned why Alton Towers did not even look into this - the lack of a bar and entertainments building (just a building with a stage and seating with a bar would suffice) could have a negative impact on the Alton Towers Hotel (SLH not so much, but still impacted in some way).

They really need to review the entertainments in a year or two and I think the resort needs a restructure on that side of things. More bars need to be added too. I hope that the entertainments complex is in planning after the lodges, if not, then I find it really bizarre that they have not looked into it during the lodges development.

I would not consider staying there off season, the prices for what is on offer are ridiculous.

I barely would on season either, OK if a few of you go and stay in the same room and split the cost it isn't too bad, and from miles away can make sense VS petrol costs... especially with a MAP in hand.

They are very particular ways that make this a good value stay though.

Personally I would rather spend my money and stay in a proper 5 star hotel. Heck, even 4 star feel different class! Pictures I have seen, reports I have read, the "it's a resort" etc just feel like making excuses for poor service and quality to me (relative to the price of course).

I have had better service from a cheap B&B in Merlinpool than is being discussed here at supposed premium hotel, find it pretty disgusting myself.

Reviews should be rave, with occasional slip ups as always occur and always will. These "niggles" are frankly you lot giving them way too much credit, and being a bit too polite because it is the resort you love, and the people and enjoyment you get from your weekends are distorting how you actually feel about the service.

(I could probably charge you 100 quid each to stay in sleeping bag in my shed, and so long as you were all together, you'd make me sound like The Dorchester).

Take a bunch of screaming kids with you as a family, no friends around, no entertainment, crap service and spend a small fortune on it and see how you feel. I bet people in those situations are not quite as happy as you guys are.

Say what you like, but these are not acceptable standards, or even close, for a hotel that is supposed to be of high and enjoyable standards.

Resort? My a***

EDIT: To me it shows a complete lack of pride in your establishment.

I stayed on resort last weekend, with breakfast and water park included for £50, very reasonable for the quality!

I've never really experienced really poor service either.

It's never going to happen, but the use of the word "resort" should be dropped from all branding.

It does not conjure up a quality image, unless your idea of quality is a concrete tower block somewhere along the Costa del Sol.

You don't hear Disneyland Paris, Europa Park, PortAventura etc referring to themselves as one even though they clearly are, because they want to distance themselves from the mediocrity that is associated with the term.

It seems to be one of those irritating Merlin things. Even when Tussauds ran Alton Towers we never had this silly branding thrust in our faces all the time.

"The Alton Towers Resort Theme Park"..........please stop with this nonsense Merlin. Alton Towers will always be Alton Towers however many hotels you build. It really does cheapen what is such an iconic brand.

Closed season as Chris said was £50 for bed and breakfast with water park. Uttoxeter Travelodge was recently £39 and that's a dive of a hotel even for TL and has no breakfast. The hotels are over priced in season though.

With a few exceptions (some bar staff, not all) service is great, there just lacking in the small special touches to make it extra special.

Dave said:

Closed season as Chris said was £50 for bed and breakfast with water park. Uttoxeter Travelodge was recently £39 and that's a dive of a hotel even for TL and has no breakfast. The hotels are over priced in season though.

With a few exceptions (some bar staff, not all) service is great, there just lacking in the small special touches to make it extra special.

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I agree by and large with what you say about value there Dave, but that wasn't per room was it? 4 sharing is my guess? Also many of the problems expressed seem frequent and completely out of place in an establishment such as Alton market themselves as.

Be honest, do they even come close to a EuropaPark hotel, remotely? Yes, at EP they have more visitors, but they don't have more financial clout over all, not even close. Alton is also the UKs premier park/resort (whatever), and should be the beacon of standards of excellence. Anything less, is paying complete disrespect to the privilege of owning/managing such an establishment.

Where is the pride?? Who runs the darn place?? If I heard of my staff treating people in less than 4/5 star fashion, retraining would be done! Even when I was only a supervisor in a very posh bar, working with the UK chef of the year, I still took great pride working there - now this was a BASS PUB that had been turned into something special by management and great HR. It was still a bass pub, but earnt the right to stand as a flagship by its own merits and the hard work of staff.

When you went and visited other pubs, even though we got paid the same as all other Six Continents Retail (or, Incompetence Retail as we nicknamed it) staff, you had a real sense of pride wearing the shirt and tie and working in this unique environment.

I met everyone from some of the UKs most notorious people, to premier league football managers, all sorts at this place... and it was just another bass pub, but one that went the extra mile

So no, there are not any excuses for this, anything less than excellence is not appropriate for ATH, nothing less should be accepted as normal. And as I say, the problems multiple people are talking about here, are niggles to you because you love the place and company, and you work out economical ways to share the cost. That's great, it makes it worth that kind of money and feels like decent value - but it is a false representation of the real standard.

Come on guys, is this really the standard you are willing to accept in our premier showcase theme park?

There is no shame in standing up and saying - "actually no, these should not be the standards of this price/location/reputation/representation" - because they shouldn't.

At ATH, excellence should come as standard, and if it does not, the questions should be answered - be they budget related, training related, or management related!

I was trained by an Irish man. To the Irish, the job of a Bar Man is that to be respected, honoured, and valued. I didn't care too much for my boss, but my word did that bloke ever train me well!!

TheMan said:

Dave said:

Closed season as Chris said was £50 for bed and breakfast with water park. Uttoxeter Travelodge was recently £39 and that's a dive of a hotel even for TL and has no breakfast. The hotels are over priced in season though.

With a few exceptions (some bar staff, not all) service is great, there just lacking in the small special touches to make it extra special.

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I agree by and large with what you say about value there Dave, but that wasn't per room was it? 4 sharing is my guess? Also many of the problems expressed seem frequent and completely out of place in an establishment such as Alton market themselves as.

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No that was the room price, with no MAP discount the price for tomorrow night for one person is £59 as a point of comparison tomorrow at TL Uttoxeter is £45 with no breakfast or waterpark.

TheMan said:

Where is the pride?? Who runs the darn place?? If I heard of my staff treating people in less than 4/5 star fashion, retraining would be done!

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Thing is, what do you class '4/5 star fashion' as?

It's very vague what such fashion is in hotels - and there's a massive difference between Alton Towers' hotels and those you find abroad. As other countries star ratings work very differently. I've stayed in a 4* hotel in Spain, and the standards of that I found you could scrap as a 3* here. My dad stayed in a 5* hotel in Dubai, and he says the standards of that exceeds 5* hotels in UK, and even the 6*+ hotel ratings awarded in European countries. So it's not fair to compare Alton Towers to Europa, as each country has a different way of offering services.

The structure of bar staff at Alton Towers is set out well. They offer table service if you wish so, they are trained very well, my first bar job training was literally "there's the bar, there's the drinks, you serve what they ask", if what I've heard about Alton's staff training is right, they are taught well how to work behind the bar.

It's just the general staff execution that is lacking somewhat. I wouldn't say it's terrible. An issue of mine is how slow they can be with serving drinks - at first you just guess that it's a staff member that is new and is just learning the ropes, which is fair enough, I'm fine with that - however several staff members are like this and it's been like this for a good few years.

A part from the bar staff that can be hit or miss, the rest of the staff in both hotels (except security that look at us younger members like we're going to set the place alight) are superb and much like the theme park staff, they offer some of the best customer service you can get in this country.

Don't think many people will agree with you on this one TheMan - Off season pricing is extremely reasonable. I've stayed once for £40 B&B, that was the price for 4 people!

Recently, I had a room just over £50 for 4, including waterpark entry. It was brilliant.

During season, you've got a point.

Dave said:

No that was the room price, with no MAP discount the price for tomorrow night for one person is £59 as a point of comparison tomorrow at TL Uttoxeter is £45 with no breakfast or waterpark.

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Fair enough then Dave, that is decent value! I have opinions, but if proven wrong like that I have no issues changing mine. I stand by other points when it is very expensive, but I cannot and wont argue with that lol!!

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I deleted the parts of your post I agreed with James, fair points made well made, we could disagree forever on some, but this I completely disagree with though:

Thing is, what do you class '4/5 star fashion' as?
So it's not fair to compare Alton Towers to Europa, as each country has a different way of offering services.

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Great service is great service, it is attentive, polite, efficient, and makes you feel treated like an individual that matters, not simply another number on a balance sheet. That is a universal language of great customer care.

This is apples and apples for me. Two pinnacle parks, in two wealthy European Countries... except of course, Alton are backed with more financial clout than is Europa Park... now, I am not saying AT have access to that clout, so I am not saying that Alton having inferior standards is entirely the managements fault. There are however, too many examples in this thread of very standard service procedures, some you alluded too yourself of course.

It is good though, and I appreciate when you all mention the good things that go on - and indeed this proves a point too:

thefatone said:

Don't think many people will agree with you on this one TheMan - Off season pricing is extremely reasonable. I've stayed once for £40 B&B, that was the price for 4 people!

Recently, I had a room just over £50 for 4, including waterpark entry. It was brilliant.

During season, you've got a point.

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I'll happily admit I had an incorrect overall impression of off season prices, thinking they were more closely aligned to on-season. If you lot were paying that kind of price for your weekend excursion, I may actually have been tempted to come along! I had the impression you were paying more than 50 odd quid including breakfast per room with waterpark. That is exceptional value.

However, anything over 90/100 quid per room off season for the service you described, is the opposite - which is the impression I had - clearly wrongly.

I stand by what I say during main season though. I want what is best for the "resort" (terrible name as mentioned earlier, talk about 80s timeshare language!), and they have a real gem here if they run it properly.

That requires the support from above though too, and as I have been proven to have misjudged where problems were in the other cases, I will resist doing that again this time.

Ultimately with Merlin behind them, this hotel could be and arguably should be, one of the best in the country, offering choice (from F&B to entertainment) and quality that match their title as the UKs premier theme park...resort.

EDIT: Just to clarify what above means in reality though, is basically

"It is alright value for a cheap place in winter"...

I'd always assumed that the stupidly slow bar staff were a deliberate ploy to try to stop people getting too drunk. It's hard to have a good booze up when it takes fifteen minutes to get served, then another five minutes for them to pour your drinks (and I'm not even talking cocktails here). Then add all the faff with having to sign for AP discount... I don't think I've ever got more than "merry" on resort without bringing my own booze along with me.

The hotels are generally great value in the closed season of the theme park, but horrible in the main season.

You can often get a room last minute when the park is closed for £50, with B&B and often water park entry. Sometimes you can even get the themed weekends with great discounts as well.

However there is clearly too much demand for rooms in the summer, therefore they can push up the price as much as they like, as people are clearly paying it. If people didnt pay the such high prices, Alton would never charge so much.

Hopefully we will see some big changes in the prices and the way the hotels are in 2014 with the new lodges.

djtruefitt said:

The hotels are generally great value in the closed season of the theme park, but horrible in the main season.

You can often get a room last minute when the park is closed for £50, with B&B and often water park entry. Sometimes you can even get the themed weekends with great discounts as well.

However there is clearly too much demand for rooms in the summer, therefore they can push up the price as much as they like, as people are clearly paying it. If people didnt pay the such high prices, Alton would never charge so much.

Hopefully we will see some big changes in the prices and the way the hotels are in 2014 with the new lodges.

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Don't get me wrong I am not against pricing high, but when it is simply because they can, but they don't offer the service and standards that should accompany that pricing - that is where it falls down... really, getting away with the bear minimum, for a hotel of this stature is pretty unforgivable in service terms.

Go to a Ramsay restaurant, or Heston, where they charge the equivalent prices for meals, that Alton put themselves in with hotel room costs. They are not even remotely similar! They charge 4/5 star prices - they clearly deliver absolutely nothing like it. Why not?

Why have they not got a Michelin standard restaurant, a family eatery, and a bar snacks place? Staying in a family resort, yet still having access to top level facilities, will always make money - especially in an lovely country environment with places around to visit.

The top standard makes money in recessions, big money never moves anywhere - and budget does too. They would be better having one real top quality, and one nicely done budget place, than two mid range attractions that are over-priced and under managed.

How many chippies, or 5 star hotels, or Michelin restaurants have you discovered that have closed due to this climate? On the contrary, these are still booming industries. There is a very logical reason for it. Money still goes places in recessions, make sure you are in the right place to get your hands on it.

The hotels are "acceptable". They certainly are not cheap for most of the time, but they are unique and are a part of the UK's number one themepark. Nothing else in the UK can say that and that is why you have to pay more. Im not saying that they should charge more than they already are. If anything the opposite is true and they should provide budget accommodation where possible, but in general, the prices are pretty spot on for what you get most of the time.

As for food on resort, I agree it is on the poor side. Everything is done to be cheap and quick to serve. The only exception to this is the Emperors suit and that is normally closed and offers a limited choice at a very high price.

CoasterCrazyChris said:

It's never going to happen, but the use of the word "resort" should be dropped from all branding.

It does not conjure up a quality image, unless your idea of quality is a concrete tower block somewhere along the Costa del Sol.

You don't hear Disneyland Paris, Europa Park, PortAventura etc referring to themselves as one even though they clearly are, because they want to distance themselves from the mediocrity that is associated with the term.

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Disney refer to all of their parks as resorts! Disneyland Resort, Disneyland Resort Paris, Walt Disney World Resort etc. and they're not the only ones, eg. Universal Orlando Resort.

I think Merlin adopted it after Disney in order to give the illusion they are playing in the same ball park, however you're right, 'Resort' in the midlands doesn't exactly conjure up the same images as it might in Orlando or Paris and they're definitely not living up to the name.

Anyway, I've stayed in both hotels quite a few times now and pretty much every time I've had issues with service.
The worst for me would have to be being refused food on the day we checked out because we weren't staying there that night, despite having been there a couple of days. Made for a long and hungry drive home!
BUT good service has always far outweighed the bad. I always give feedback but never had anything in response other than the standard fob off email.