The Diner - Butlins — Restaurant in Arun

came here 23/09/2025 5pm

firstly, whilst we were eating a staff member left a spray bottle of cleaning solution unattended at a table for a long time, whilst children were sat nearby and running around the restaurant. as a previous waitress myself, i know that’s completely against health and safety, all it could have taken was one child to spray that in their own or someone else’s face and it would have been a hospital visit or worse. completely dangerous and irresponsible.

anyway, my partner and i have the all inclusive drinks and dine around package. unfortunately there is no more table service here and you have to order at the bar, as the Bserve app doesn’t recognise dinaround plans.

the staff were untrained on what drinks are included in the plans or not, and not a wide selection is included, which made ordering a hassle. no milkshakes, not even an option to upgrade.

very few staff considering the time, and the manager wasn’t very talkative, felt very unatmospheric and quite ignored.

once our drinks arrived we had to change the pint of strongbow as the glass had a red sticky substance around the rim and bottom of glass.

starters came, we had the loaded fries and nachos and honestly these were great, lots of sauce and bacon, plenty of fries and very filling. we hoped the mains would be just as good, however…

my partner ordered the meltdown burger and i ordered the £19 sirloin steak and fries. it took a while for mains to come out as the bar was full of people trying to order their food (which wouldn’t have been an issue with table service). the menu stated the steak would be cooked in garlic butter , however it clearly had never touched any as it was absolutely dry as a bone and not a taste of garlic nor butter. i ordered the steak medium, and as you can see from the photo below i would call it well done. not a great steak in itself as very thin and not much fat or rind, which is expected of a sirloin. the burger wasn’t awful, neither of us could finish it as it was very large so good value for money, however the patty’s were quite dry but that’s about the only issue with the burger

on both mains fries were near cold as had clearly been sitting on the side for a while before being served. there were also missing ingredients, on mine there was no mini ceaser salad, but was replaced with a corn on the cob for some reason. and obviously the missing garlic butter.

also rather noisy and lots of children crying but i suppose that’s to be expected on a family resort.

i think the problem is a mix of staff not caring, having bad communication and chefs not being able to cook.

very disappointed as this used to be my favourite place to eat but doubt i...

Decided on an early lunch as we had a show to see. Greeted at the entrance by a very enthusiastic waiter, who gave the kids some colouring and gave us lots of info on how to order by either the app or in person. We're pretty au fait with the app, so decided to go ahead and order that way, rather than take the staff away from other jobs.

The restaurant wasn't busy at all, no more than 6-7 families. We had a bit of a wait for food, which we didn't mind as we thought it would mean the food would be freshly cooked and hot.

It was not.

My chicken and ribs meal was luke warm at most. The bacon and cheese dirty fries I ordered were cold, demonstrated by the fact the grated cheese on top was not melted, or began to melt at all. The kids' meals were also barely warm, and my husband's meal was luke warm, too.

It was such a shame, because the flavours would've been quite nice.

The staff must've known that the food was bad as we didn't see hide not hair of them again! We waited a long time for the plates to be collected, which were collected by a seemingly random Butlin's cleaner, rather than a member of Diner staff. Our desserts arrived and the waiter scarpered so as not to get collared about the main course. Somehow, our brownies were hotter than the main meals.

We'd already paid for the meal before it arrived, so we took the L and left without speaking to anyone. We're not ones to not leave a tip, but the service and food was so bad, and the staff gave us no opportunity to feed back, (not even a "how is your meal?" as soon we put a fork in our mouths) we literally got out as soon as we could.

We go to Butlin's frequently and usually have the dining packages. This time we decided to self cater, and our meal at The Diner was our big splash out meal of the holiday. We had never been before, and had high hopes, but unfortunately we were left very disappointed and shan't...

Queued for ages in the rain with children while there were lots of empty tables, restaurant kept tables empty for people who had paid extra for their holiday, as if ours wasn't expensive enough already. When the higher payers turned up they got escorted past us with no wait time to the empty tables with non-ripped seats to receive table service. When we finally got seated were told that we had to use the app to order food as the waiters/waitresses were for the pre-holiday booked diners only. The children's portions of food were only big enough for 3yr olds, any older and you'd need at least 2 meals to meet the size of a happy meal at McDonald's to even have a chance of satisfying the children. Food turned up cold and again the portion sizes were a bit smaller than expected at the price charged. Bottomless coke ordered and when I asked how to refill i was told to either ask a server (whom didn't move around the peasants area) or to go the bar and ask for a refill. By luck I managed to knab a server as he darted through our area and asked for a refill, he looked me up and down, took my glass and was never to be seen again. The drink glasses were hazed over with a film due to either bad cleaning regimes of from the number of uses each glass has sustained during its long life. Not once did anyone attend after serving food to check if everything was OK with the food. Probably a good reason for this. After eating food nobody checked to see if we had finished or to see if we would like anything else so we then got up and left as we had paid the bill through the app. Sir Billy would be turning in his grave - Butlins - a holiday for all families - but a better holiday if you have more money. Nadine Barnes - Bognor Regis...