Doltone House Jones Bay Wharf — Attraction in Sydney

First and foremost, may I preface this review as being an attendee of a high school formal at Doltone House Jones Bay Wharf, so this is where my review will be mainly based. The main point to begin with was the absolute deception that occurred while planning this High School Formal. The main part of that being the "sound reader", which had not been mentioned AT ALL, not once. A quick explanation of the "sound reader" is that it is a little rectangular box on the ceiling split up into 3 different and equal parts, each that is a different coloured light (green, yellow and red). The light changes depending on how loud the sound goes, and once it reaches a "high" volume, the light turns red and once it's red, the power to the DJ's set up is completely cut off. This is an automated system and cannot be turned off. Now many of you may be wondering what is the issue with this? There isn't any issue with this system, the issue here remains that us (the formal planning committee) was never told about this system at all NOR is it mentioned anywhere in the contract (although Doltone House claims otherwise). This reader basically ruined the rest of the night MAINLY because the music had to be played extremely low, and for a school formal, dancing to music that is quite loud is basically a must, and at the time of this review, Covid restrictions for dancing had been lessened and the rules that were there. were being followed. Unfortunately after about 20 minutes of the music playing (which was about 2.5 hours into the night) the formal had started to empty out since people simply weren't willing to dance to music that sounded as if it was being played through a Samsung Galaxy S8 at maximum volume, the sound was EXTREMELY low. The biggest kicker of the night was when the room next door (which was another Year 12 formal) had started playing their music and you could literally hear it over our music, and you could feel the vibrations, and it stayed that way for over an hour until we walked over to their room to record how loud their music was, only then did the general manager quickly run into their room to tell the DJ to turn down the music. Another major deception of the night was the room itself! Our school had booked both the North and Mid Pier room to be ours, come to find on the day as we were entering that they had only given us the mid pier room which ended up being MUCH smaller than both the rooms, and yes, we had visited the rooms beforehand. This would not have been a problem had they told us that they were planning to do this, but alas they simply kept quiet and did it anyways. Another strange and very weird incident happened on the night, during the 20 minutes that the music was being played at a volume that people could dance to. As I was making my way up to the toilets, I noticed one of the guards/servers filming the attendees where they were dancing. Now this is very disturbing since there were in fact many females and males under 18 in this workers video, and at no time during the planning process, had any student given permission DIRECTLY to Doltone House for their workers to film underage children who are dressed up in suits and dresses on their own phones. This was deeply disturbing, and after telling a teacher who went up to him, his excuse was that he apparently "likes to see the youth dancing and being happy". I'm not sure whether this was an excuse to film students dancing during a pandemic, but I assure you that the teachers were maintaining that the official rules were being followed, and if there really was an issue, the Doltone House people could've simply told the DJ to make an announcement or to tell the teachers. Now that is where the main criticisms lie for the night, so in general, the food was just mediocre, it's hard to mess up pasta and either chicken or beef for your mains. The workers were attentive enough and were constantly refilling our drinks, but that is expected so I guess they can get a pity 1 star for doing their job. All in all, if you plan to book here for a school...

Deceptive marketing is beyond a joke. As a school we attended several meetings with sales persons, in particular (kristal) we met and spoke about the event on several occasions and never were we told about “sound readers” in which music cannot be played past a certain volume of 107 decibels. We were charged an extra $400 for simply not hiring out Doltone house’s DJ and photographer who wanted to charge an excess of $1600. As a school formal, budget is already tight and as a means of a pandemic, times really are tougher. We were charged $135 per person which was a decent price considering the prestige of the venue and the food we were served. However the unapologetic, carelessness of the event coordinators by Doltone house was disgusting, the DJ could not play music past 107 decibels ( a volume far too low for a formal) and when he would, all the sound would simply stop. As we all know and would assume, a year 12 formal is the very last time a year group can celebrate their 13 years of schooling and the stress of the HSC. The class of 2020 had their year hard enough considering a HSC during a pandemic. Not once were we apologised to, rather we were approached by arrogant coordinators who couldn’t care less about the satisfaction of their customers. The night was ruined by these rules in which were never outlined in the contract or initial consultations. We were given the “option” of colour theme between black and white, we had decided on a black theme well before the night and were welcomed with white table covers, which completely contradicted our wishes. The colour is insignificant once the other issues are presented. The attendance of almost 15 security guards still denied us access to the outside balcony which was right outside the venue door, the room was stuffy with the air conditioning turned on well below its potential with no windows or ventilation. To say that was our last night as a year group is embarrassing as their sheer unprofessionalism, ignorant and unapologetic approach lead to majority of the year group leaving at 9:30. I would not recommend this venue to a single person unless they intend on paying a ridiculous amount of money to have their...

We used the Loft earlier this year for our annual industry event. Whilst the venue is in a great spot and is certainly unique and beautiful, and the staff on the actual night were great, the sales and booking process was misleading and confusing. We were organising a big event from another state so really put our trust in the sales team to be open and forthcoming, which sadly turned out not to be the case. Read the (vast amount) of small print very carefully!!! We spent a fortune on live music (the website advertised images of live music - there is still a photo of a drum kit on the homepage, and we mentioned our initial sales phonecall that we had already pre-booked a live band) and it wasn't until after the refund deadline for our band passed that the venue informed us of the very strict noise restrictions and live music is not really permitted. We felt that we had been deliberately misled. Our very expensive band had to play unplugged and very quietly couldn't be heard at all - and the noise from the neighbouring venue (also a Doltone venue) was so loud it interrupted the presentations in our event. The venue is also multi level with no lifts between floors, so not accessible for people with disabilities. We did send formal written feedback via email before posting a public review over 2 months ago, and whilst they acknowledged they received it we never received any communication or feedback. Very disappointing all round and we would not recommend booking this venue for party/celebration style events. Smaller conferences...