Forest Park Hotel

More than forty years my wife and I have been dinning at The Forest Park Hotel and we have seen many changes. The last major refurbishment has much improved the bar area into a cosey eatery but on special occasions I still prefer the main restaurant It has the advantage of overlooking the extensive grounds. Our recent visit on my wife's birthday was brilliant, the meal was faultless, excellent service, and amazingly for October it was a very warm and sunny day, made driving through the forest almost a pleasure.

We booked the room 209, the best they have,a suite with balcony. It was an anniversary so looking very much forward to it. Hotel or pub with rooms??. It was a very hot day and pleased to get booked in an hour earlier, on entering the room with I may add a lovely bathroom the room was so hot it was hard to breathe so went straight to the bi-fold doors leading onto the balcony and opened them which overlooked the garden. Room was clean but from this lovely bathroom was a stench on further investigation it was the shower trap and the time you could spend in the bathroom was very limited because of the stench, so a shower and bath were out the question, such a shame for its the highlight of the room. I say a hotel or pub with rooms because we would have liked to have a lounger in the garden but all taken, so we book a room and another person can come in who is not staying there buy a coffee and have a lovely lounger for the day?? Evening meal, one of us had prawn cocktail which was ok and the other had hummus with lamb, not sure what it was but it was rubbish. Mains we both chose the steak which is served with a tiny sprinkle of watercress served with wafer thin chips. Our steaks were inedible and on reporting this at the start to the server her response was "Sorry I know nothing about steaks" really??? no offer to change, [see pics] just unacceptable in every way. On returning to our room feeling down after such a bad experience I went to shut the bi-fold doors but they were off the runner so had to spend the night with them open and it was cold in the room from that. Breakfast was passable. On reporting our complaints on check out, we were told that the doors should not have been opened for they were waiting to be mended and a notice had been put on them. We said that being that it was a red hot room surely had you put a notice on the doors you would not expect guests to take that room being that they were the only windows, plus the balcony is why we chose the top priced room,so either way it was wrong.Concerning the Steaks she said she will tell the chef and have just changed suppliers. What a shame was looking forward to it so much and now only have bad memories of such a bad night

Having had a great time at the Moorland hotel on Dartmoor (same group of hotels) we were expecting a quality 4* hotel. The food in the restaurant in the evening was delicious but it took 10 minutes to serve us, the first person finishing their meal before the last person had received their dinner. The moorland restaurant was laid up beautifully with white tablecloths and personal waiter service. Where was the lounge we were hoping for to relax in, comfy sofas and tables, waiter service etc but there was no lounge? We went to the bar and moved tables around so we could sit together (the staff looked on disapprovingly with no offer of assistance) and whilst we had a drink with friends the tables around us were being laid up for breakfast and guests were still eating although it was only 9ish. Was it necessary to lay up breakfast tables the , we felt most unwelcome. Our room was fine although we had no service in the room on day 2 as it appears the staff were short on numbers and found it hard to cope. The location, gardens, parking facilities etc were exceptional but we could not recommend it bearing in mind the price we had paid, it certainly didn’t come up to a 4* standard. Sadly we will not return.