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The Hotels: A Journey

We have stayed in the past 2 weeks onsite and the packaged pastries thank god were gone. Fresh baked unwrapped was back on the counter. But as a whole there was obviously staff issues with keeping the dining area cleaned and stocked nearly everything had either run out (food plates cutlery) or left dirty.

the room was in need of a decent clean with barely the basics completed…. Unfortunately incant upload photos straight to here but as much as I enjoy staying onsite the whole accommodation offering is below par with 10 years ago.
 
I agree the hotels have gone down somewhat which is a shame. We are due to stay two nights at splash next week ( subject to fuel ) . There are 3 of us and It worked out at £32.80 each per night which you can't grumble at.

Have used chained oak before, lovely place yet we didn't go back only because we found it too tight for the then ERT.

We always aim to stay on site unless something else close by is better as we look at it by the time you travel to said destination and use more fuel etc etc, yes I know chained oak and others are on the door step yet the nearest premier inn isn't.
 
I really hope that Wayne Burton picks on this thread...

He is a great guy, who has worked his way up through the ranks at Tussauds / Merlin. He's done the ride host job so knows the "fun" the hosts endure every day. I believe he his now head of guest excellence at Merlin level. That is where the worry sets in - given comments on here & TripAdvisor, it is pretty clear that the accommodation / dinner food & beverage / breakfast offering at Alton Towers is wanting, by a long scale.

The fact that Alton Towers don't even reply to social media posts with a boiler-plate "sorry it wasn't quite right on this occasion, but do spend lots of money with us in future" says it all.

All I can say is I had the worst ever trip to Islands of Adventure back in 2019... worst trip in 19yrs. Emailed the Universal CEO. Got a timed callback for a call 4 days later. 30mins [international] call with one of the Guest Experience minions, end result 2x 14 day 3 park tickets, 2x 1 day Universal Express passes & 2x Hagrids Motorbike front-of-line passes (since extended to include VelociCoaster). Universal know how to treat guest complaints!
 
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Kraken27 said:
I really hope that Wayne Burton picks on this thread...

He is a great guy, who has worked his way up through the ranks at Tussauds / Merlin
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Do people from within Merlin entertainments look at towers street forums? Who knows I guess
 
Kraken27 said:
I really hope that Wayne Burton picks on this thread...

He is a great guy, who has worked his way up through the ranks at Tussauds / Merlin. He's done the ride host job so knows the "fun" the hosts endure every day. I believe he his now head of guest excellence at Merlin level. That is where the worry sets in - given comments on here & TripAdvisor, it is pretty clear that the accommodation / dinner food & beverage / breakfast offering at Alton Towers is wanting, by a long scale.
Click to expand...

I also really hope he does pay attention to this sort of thing.

However this discussion proves that cost savings are now more important than guest experience, most of these issues with the hotels date back at least 2-3 years. Goody bags and similar extras went away a long time ago.
I expect as much as Wayne might want to improve guest experience across the resorts, the bean-counters are saying no.
 
Ethan said:
Do people from within Merlin entertainments look at towers street forums? Who knows I guess
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All I can say is that what I know from Wayne, he is passionate & an extremely strong brand advocate of the Alton Towers Resort brand. If the financial hands are tied & make the desired standards hard to achieve, the blame should not lie at Waynes' door - you need to look way further up the financial / food chain.
 
Totally agree - he can only spend money he has been given by the people higher up. And I don’t think it’s been very forthcoming lately.
 
I'm pretty sure Wayne Burton is fully aware of many of these issues. But like has been said, he does not have the authority to allow Merlin to increase the budgets at Alton Towers which is what is needed to resolve these issues.
 
Rob F said:
We have stayed in the past 2 weeks onsite and the packaged pastries thank god were gone. Fresh baked unwrapped was back on the counter. But as a whole there was obviously staff issues with keeping the dining area cleaned and stocked nearly everything had either run out (food plates cutlery) or left dirty.

the room was in need of a decent clean with barely the basics completed…. Unfortunately incant upload photos straight to here but as much as I enjoy staying onsite the whole accommodation offering is below par with 10 years ago.
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When was this? My photo was from Sunday morning! Which hotel was this?

i hope they aren't just treating Splash like a rabid dog.
 
jon81uk said:
They already were giving a lower quality breakfast at Splash weren’t they pre-pandemic.
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They were - then they (mostly?) reversed it. At one stage, Splash had a 5-item breakfast - this has since been reversed.
 
AstroDan said:
They were - then they (mostly?) reversed it. At one stage, Splash had a 5-item breakfast - this has since been reversed.
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and a five item cooked breakfast wouldn’t be awful, if it means the continental offerings are significantly improved. Although of course it sounds like that really didn’t happen.
 
I remember when the breakfast buffet at splash was better than the offerings in ATH. I used to book a time slot for breakfast there without fail even if staying in ATH
 
Buying those prepackaged pastries can't be any cheaper than buying a bulk load of frozen bake off ones. Their cost price is only a few pence each and they incur less wastage than ambient prepackaged ones as frozen is significantly less perishable. It's probably labour saving as they'll need one less person banging them in the ovens.
 
Matt.GC said:
Buying those prepackaged pastries can't be any cheaper than buying a bulk load of frozen bake off ones. Their cost price is only a few pence each and they incur less wastage than ambient prepackaged ones as frozen is significantly less perishable. It's probably labour saving as they'll need one less person banging them in the ovens.
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The wrapped ones are bought in frozen too
https://www.delifrance.com/uk/butter-pain-au-chocolat-individually-wrapped.html

My guess is still that the switched to wrapped as seen as more covid safe, but there is too much stock left in the freezers.
 
jon81uk said:
The wrapped ones are bought in frozen too
https://www.delifrance.com/uk/butter-pain-au-chocolat-individually-wrapped.html

My guess is still that the switched to wrapped as seen as more covid safe, but there is too much stock left in the freezers.
Click to expand...
Now that you've said that, it does make complete sense actually. I couldn't think of a reason why they'd keep them unless it was a significant cost saving which it appears it isn't. The wrapped pastries came in with Covid so hopefully that freezer will be empty soon. Horrible tasting things
 
Got to be blunt though, 2 adults and 2 kids on a Saturday in a fortnight’s time in Splash is £335. Ex Covid stock or not, that’s not an excuse to be serving it up now. It should be being donated to a food bank or used elsewhere, and a proper breakfast be put on for guests that’s more fitting to the absolute fortune people are paying to stay there at the moment.
 
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