
4 out of 5
We decided on a last minute night away and the price for the Grand Hotel was very appealing. After booking it, I checked out reviews and was a bit worried about what we were getting ourselves in for! I was pleasantly suprised when we arrived into the hotel, and the standard of service was very good.
The outside of the hotel leaves alot to be desired, and until we got inside we were worried we might be sleeping with god knows what. Arrived into the hotel before checkin time, and while our room wasn't ready yet, by the time we sat into the bar for something to eat, the receptionist brought the key into us. Very friendly, very helpful and easy to approach.
The food was exceptional, both from the bar and the restaurant, and the prices were very affordable. They were more than happy to accomadate my 4 year old. The only bad point of the bar was the time waiting for service. There was only one staff member on; granted it was a Sunday, but it was a bank holiday and the Man U/Arsenal game was on so they could have had somebody else there. We ended up going through the bars trying to track down the bartender.
The negative sides - do NOT use the phone in the room! We called splashworld to check opening times, and for the 30 second call it cost us €1.20 - i know it's not alot of money, but I would have been better off using my mobile. The shower in the room didn't work very well, I'm blessed to be married to a plumber and he took one look at it and said the entire system should be replaced. It takes ages to get hot water, then it goes from hot to cold, also the shower wouldn't turn off so I had to just run the shower to fill the bath for my daughter. Also, parking! There are only a handful of spots, if you get a spot, keep it! The restaurant seems to do alot of business in the evening, and we had to sit in our car for a half hour waiting to get a spot because there was nothing relatively close to the hotel.
Overall, we were very happy with our stay. I often rate my opinion on hotels by how they treat my daughter, and every member of staff was very good with her, right down to the cleaning ladies that we met on the elevator. We would definately stay again, even though there were the few negative points, it's a break away, unless a rat crawled into bed next to me, we were happy enough.