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Food & Beverage: The Aramark Era begins

This is already the case. Bottles of water are different prices depending on which outlet you buy from
 
The food in Woodcutters does remain fine, and is easily the best on park. Having said that, I still think a small salad garnish with some of the meals would make a difference and stop the larger plates on some meals from looking a bite bare.

However the speed of service in Woodcutters has hit a real low. It has always varied over the years, I'm not going to pretend that food has always arrived swiftly after ordering. But over the last couple of years it's been relatively speedy; you could expect your food to arrive within about 15-20 minutes tops which is acceptable. This season it appears to be taking anything between 30 and 60 minutes depending on how you do on the serving lottery. They certainly are not preparing meals in the order that they get the tickets in the kitchen.

On our table of 4 we all ordered at roughly the same time. The 2 steaks came out first, followed 5 or so minutes later by my steak sandwich. It took another 5 or so minutes for the burger to arrive, which you'd think would be the easiest to get ready.

As Craig has already said, anyone visiting Woodcutters needs to be prepared to lose a good hour or more of their day. This was fine for us as we were not there to bang in the rides, but a real blow to those who do want to make the most of their day but also eat some food that is not a burger, pizza or hot dog.

On a separate note - Aramark, please sort out your allergens matrix at the new stand by Alton Manor. I enquired about the allergens in the soft ice and cones, only to see that the allergens matrix claimed that the soft ice contain peanuts. I queried this, as it seemed a strange ingredient to find in soft ice. The staff check the ingredients on the product itself and yep, no peanuts. An incorrect allergen matrix is unacceptable and gives me no confidence going forward that I should trust what it tells me. Heaven forbid they have errors the other way round whereby the say an allergen is not present when it is. Sort it out.
 
Rob said:
I enquired about the allergens in the soft ice and cones, only to see that the allergens matrix claimed that the soft ice contain peanuts. I queried this, as it seemed a strange ingredient to find in soft ice. The staff check the ingredients on the product itself and yep, no peanuts. An incorrect allergen matrix is unacceptable and gives me no confidence going forward that I should trust what it tells me.
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I’d have thought that perhaps correctly labelled allergens is a legal requirement? It might be worth considering an email to the park to raise this, to make sure it stands a chance at hitting the right team?
 
Rob said:
On a separate note - Aramark, please sort out your allergens matrix at the new stand by Alton Manor. I enquired about the allergens in the soft ice and cones, only to see that the allergens matrix claimed that the soft ice contain peanuts. I queried this, as it seemed a strange ingredient to find in soft ice. The staff check the ingredients on the product itself and yep, no peanuts. An incorrect allergen matrix is unacceptable and gives me no confidence going forward that I should trust what it tells me. Heaven forbid they have errors the other way round whereby the say an allergen is not present when it is. Sort it out.
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Poor quality food, long serving times and high prices while bad are not life-threatening - but this is; if I were you I'd tweet this, tagging Merlin, Towers and Aramark's official accounts.

I've noticed many people are complaining - quite rightly - on Twitter about Aramark, Towers and Merlin about various things, but many are not tagging their accounts. Surely, if you want action to be taken (or at least acknowledged) it's worthwhile tagging their official accounts?
 
I have made the local authority aware so that it can be picked up when they are inspected (only the hotels have been inspected so far, not the park outlets). They'll likely take more notice of an EHO as opposed to a guest.

Just like the fire door incident in Woodcutters. We noticed that a door with a fire exit sign above it was locked, a clear breach of H&S regulations. A manager on the premises was informed and they just said it's not a fire door any more, so it is locked. Well, if there is a fire exit sign present then it is a fire door! They're just clueless.
 
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^^ That looks grimmers.

On the price consistency thing, I am not sure I think that's a big deal ? I agree that it would be weird if each Burger Kitchen charged a different price for the same product at each location, but equally it doesn't feel 'wrong' to be charged one price for Mozzarella sticks in a sit down restaurant and another a fast painfully slow food outlet ?
 
Rick said:
^^ That looks grimmers.

On the price consistency thing, I am not sure I think that's a big deal ? I agree that it would be weird if each Burger Kitchen charged a different price for the same product at each location, but equally it doesn't feel 'wrong' to be charged one price for Mozzarella sticks in a sit down restaurant and another a fast painfully slow food outlet ?
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I agree on pricing being different in sit down restaurants. But, I would expect them to be less in a quick service location, not more (£3.60 for 3 at burger kitchen vs £3.30 for 5 mozzarella sticks in Woodcutters). Also there shouldn't be a difference between different quick service locations, but that appears to be the case at the moment.

That cronut burger is absolutely disgraceful. They were putting those stupid raspberry crunch things on top of the chicken and waffles at Chessington too, despite it not being advertised on the menu. Painfully sweet when they're already using a sweet belgian waffle too!
 
Craig said:
That cronut burger is absolutely disgraceful. They were putting those stupid raspberry crunch things on top of the chicken and waffles at Chessington too, despite it not being advertised on the menu. Painfully sweet when they're already using a sweet belgian waffle too!
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I thought those were supposed to be "bacon bits"? They were on the meal I had at Chessington, and looked the same.

Maybe... heaven forbid... they ran out of bacon bits and thought "meh, these raspberry things look similar"?
 
Well whatever was on the chicken waffle at Chessington looked and tasted nothing like bacon!
 
Matt N said:
The fact that we can’t even decide whether they were bacon or raspberry doesn’t bode too well… the two things should taste quite different to each other!
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I actually love sweet and savoury stuff, chicken and waffles is great if done right. At Thorpe/Towers...not so much!

Rob said:
Well whatever was on the chicken waffle at Chessington looked and tasted nothing like bacon!
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Yeah they weren't what I'd call bacon bits!
 
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