CBeebies Land Hotel — Hotel in Staffordshire Moorlands

You must book for the restaurant in the cbeebis hotel, even for breakfast, which wasnt glaring obvious until the point me arrived. They also dont serve lunch, so you have to go to the main hotel. In main hotel, the secret garden serves lunch, a whopping 4 choices for kids, all with chips, no sandwiches, toasties or any very basic options that would be helpful for young children. The food in here was disappointing, but edible, the chips were nice, burgers (chicken) well below the quality of Wetherspoon - which is not a high standard. A fair standard to judge by. At £20 a head for main and one soft drink at lunch the food should be ALOT better. The Windmill restaurant in CBeebies Hotel on the other hand, ive never been served such slop before. Fish chips and mushy peas, mushy peas were a colour that was just not right, didnt taste of peas. Chips were looked to be brown, maybe warmed up from yesterday - just bad. Fish was edible in my opinion but not my wifes - £50 for two adult mains and one childrens, two soft drinks - again enough to expect at least Wetherspoons standard as an absolute minimum. Check other reviews, even 4 star reviews slate the food - BRING YOUR OWN FOOD Finding your way around. CBeebies is furtherest from monorail, there is no map of the layout of the buildings anywhere. Signposts are poor. Paths regularly drop you in the end of a car park - aimed at toddlers? From the end of the path leaving CBeebies, you then have to come down the car park for the original hotel, which handily has some damage to the speedbump by the entrance which tripped our lad up, poor start to day. There needs to be a path, with a toddler it wasnt awful for us - but there were parents with pushchairs, unreasonable for them to be walking down the car park with cars moving about.

We were told to follow 'the purple dots' which are no longer purple and arent easy to spot, especially when youve got children in tow. On several trips out, almost everyone we passed asked us for directions. Why not use a solid coloured line like a hospital ? Would be much easier and for the toddlers a good game to keep them interested while walking

Our room cost £324, for one night (room is a double with 3 childrens beds), I honestly dont think our experience has been worth that at all. The in room busy boards are ok, but bits of it are poor, heat reactive mats turn from dark blue to blue, i struggled to see, even after leaving my hand in place for 30 seconds, so naturally my 3 year old son gave it no time at all. Chalkboard would be better. My son found a 3inch woodscrew somewhere near the bed/bedside table, luckily hes old enough to bring it to us, very poor. Finger guards on doors, great, but several broken. Shower head broken in room. Extract vent full of dust/lint. Light over bed full of dead flies. Poor maintenance. Room layout odd, kids next to corridor, lots of noise to disturb them. Room is well proportioned, bath isnt (curved at bottom makes showering unnerving)

The rooms are well equipped (nappy bin, baby bath, childrens stool, double toilet seat, bottle warmer etc etc. Milk is on hand for free at the bar. Toilets great. This is all great, but youll need to prepare for the park.

The childrens entertainers were brilliant and the meet and greet characters were great with kids, especially those who were shy or scared. But they arent around for a long time considering the number of guests, each child may get 1-2 minutes realistically, this happens 3-4 times in an afternoon, so hard to attribute alot of value to this.

Most of the staff were friendly and great with kids.

Considering the money on hand at the Merlin group and operating, in their own words, a hotel aimed at toddlers, theres no play equipment - what !?

A.T upper management need to secret shopper the experience in order to get a feel for the restaurant themselves, the menus really need sorting, at this price we shouldnt be seeing a menu that is more limited than Little Chef used to serve ! Or hire someone to do an honest inspection - just totally unacceptable in its...

The welcome was great, the hotel was well geared towards children as one would hope, we weren't disappointed, the hotel reception well thought out to keep little ones entertained while the adults do the boring bits while checking in, loved the stairs to the reception desk for little ones to talk to reception.

The disco was terrrrrible!!!!! Haha!!! Our little one was excited at the disco prospect and enthusiastically ran towards it, got half way then turned round and ran back out saying 'I don't want to'.....can't blame him, the music was dire!!! But then our little one loves drum and bass and dance music not the usual kids garbage, he has dj parents so we congratulated him on his choice as we would run a mile too!! and when he was presented with the choice of disco or walk he chose to go for a walk in the valley instead, which was really lovely, a stunning old forest.

The restaurant food was bad, I opted for fish and chips, at £17.00 I expected something at least half decent, the batter wasn't cooked properly, the mushy peas tasted sweet and weird. The waitress did ask how our meals were and I told her but got no response, we guessed it was a rhetorical question. The knives and forks at the table were dirty after they had been washed so the washing facilities in the kitchen aren't up to scratch, even the replacement wasn't clean.

Breakfast had a really good choice, the sausages and bacon could have been cooked longer, very pale and unappetising, the 'heat' lamps to keep the food hot failed miserably, everything varied between luke warm and vaguely hot, I'd be surprised if there weren't food poisoning cases. I had vaguely warm fried eggs, beans, mushrooms, the best well cooked sausage I could find which happened to be mangled, toast, hash browns, all of my breakfast was luke warm or cold. The fruit was a great option, loved the pancakes option and pain au chocolat, I went to put raspberries on my little one's plate but they were mouldy so put them to one side in the hopes no one else would go for them. Loved the idea of a cappuccino option but it wasn't a very good one, so improvements could be made there too.

The beds were the most shocking, like a slab of concrete, the pillows were terrible, I brought my own pillow as I find pillows at places I stay very questionable, I'm so glad I did! Despite this I still only managed about an hour's sleep on that rock hard bed, tossing and turning knowing I'd got a full day at the theme park in the morning, then the rubbish breakfast and it was tipping it down outside which lasted until gone 1pm. I spoke with other guests in the lift on the way down to breakfast, we all agreed we'd had a rubbish night due to the uncomfortable beds and horrible pillows. One said he'd woken up with a cricked neck and a woman from a different family said the same about the beds and that after reading the reviews she brought their own pillows for her family......it's pretty dire when your guests bring their own pillows for goodness sake!!!! especially when it costs an arm and a leg to stay here......my son's teacher asked how our break was, she's wanted to take her little girl for a long time but can't afford the extortionate prices out of term time, I told her if you value your sleep don't go and it's definitely not worth the extortionate prices when she would be able to go.

All in all it was really not worth the money we paid for one night or the terrible meals at extortionate prices, we feel really ripped off, not great to entice return custom!

It pittled it down for three hours the following morning and no mention of the rainy day guarantee, I had to ask if it was going down as a rainy day and was told different things like, it will be decided this afternoon, to download the app, it'll come up on there, we await the news if Alton towers are loyal to...

Just back from our over night stay. When we arrived it was early morning, we was greeted by George the man on the door. George is so friendly and amazing he made a huge difference in our stay. Our little girl loved him and he was very patient and kind with her, especially as it was her birthday, the big 2. The lobby was the most magical entrance for little ones and very engaging. We arrived early morning and struggled to find things to do in the hotel (park closed due to the time of year), I have to be honest and say we was shocked to see a lack of activities for the kids other than waiting for meet and greets or entertainment on a nighttime. There could be a toy area or a sensory room ect, just felt like there’s so many opportunities to make this hotel much better for kiddies. The meet and greets start at 2:30 and there are different characters that come out in 30 min intervals until 4:30 when the shows really start to take place (again timing was abit off due to tea time so we missed quite a lot of the shows sadly) feel like mid morning entertainment 9-11 and evening entertainment 6-9 would be better suited for many of the family’s and kids. Our room was amazing, we stayed in the Bing room and our little one loved it. It was clean and magical. Due to the time of year we was limited for places to eat- for lunch we ate at the secret garden restaurant (in the bar area) of Alton Towers hotel, as that was the only one open. A soft drink was £3:45 and a kids meal was £7-£8 not to bad for the size but as our little one is only 2 she didn’t eat it all. Again maybe offer snack boxes ect for smaller kids. We had a walk around and susses out “splash landings” as we knew we would be going to the water park the following day. We got back to CBeebies hotel for 2ish and George told us our room was ready and our luggage was waiting up there for us! Music to our ears! When we entered the lift to get to our room it was again magical and our little one was saying “wawww”. After setting in our room we went down to the lobby to meet some characters and see what we would be getting up to for the rest of the evening…. At this point sadly it was very boring and little to do in between meeting characters. We ended up going for another walk around the sights due to being that bored. Once back 4:00-4:30 thankfully the shows had started so it was abit better for the little ones. At 5 we went for food in the windmill restaurant, we was very shocked with the menu, after all we was in a kiddie hotel yet the food was more of a higher end restaurant a fish haddock risotto would set you back £19 and a chicken and chips £20, again the kids food was £8-£9, learning from lunch we just fed our little one from our plates. A pint and half was £10. The food was nice when it came out but I wouldn’t have paid them prices unless I had to. Again really need to think about the menu options and prices here. We love abit of fine dining … in a fine finning environment not a kiddie one. The entertainment for the rest of the evening was amazing, and honestly all the staff throughout our stay was truly great, very passionate, attentive, service was impeccable. Breakfast was faultless, great service again and food was amazing!- windmill restaurant. Would we return… sadly not in a rush, and certainly not at this time of year, again it just simply wasn’t worth the money, in my opinion half of the things were closed so it should be half the price, but as we know it doesn’t work like that. Such a shame as the staff really go above and beyond, but with a cost of £500 for one night stay (before calculating drinks and food) you really do expect more.

The water park- It was ok… again half of the slides and restaurants...