TGI Fridays - Wembley — Restaurant in London

I haven't been to TGI's for a while, but i used to be a regular visitor.

I went this time for a birthday party meal for a 5 year old. 15 kids and around 13 adults. The table and balloon entertainment party package was booked for 5pm and prepaid for. When we arrived the staff knew nothing about it. They then scurried around to tidy tables for us. My friend wasn't happy with this as she requested the party area tables, which at this point was still being occupied by the party before. When asked how long we would need to wait, we were told 45mins snd they would not be rushing the party out that were before us.

The manager arranged for the kids to sit in an area and start the activities whilst we waited. When asked where's balloon modelling, we were told they do not do this here. Again, we were not happy as this was paid for as part of the package. The manager and colleague then got the balloons and started making things and handing them to the children. There was no interaction with the children. We didn't even know what half of the balloons that were blown up were meant to be.

Finally we were moved to the party area tables. Part of the kids' package is that all the kids' food orders are done online prior to arrival. All the parents had done this. Something had gone wrong, which meant ALL orders needed to be taken again. This was truly frustrating and meant there was a further delay in making the food and taking the adults' orders. The kids' food came, it was ok. The adults' food was taking a long time to come out, so we asked that we do the birthday cake as the kids were getting restless.

The staff cake to do the birthday cake and song, and being that, I've been to many birthdays in TGI's. This was the quiest birthday song i ever heard. There were 6 or 7 staff members, and i can tell you that no one in the rest of the restaurant heard that they had a birthday in there, which is a downer.

The adults' food was slowly coming out, and so slow that some parents had to leave because it was now nearly 8 pm. Some meals got cancelled. The mac and cheese is the worse, it tastes like pasta with no cheese. This was kindly removed from the bill. The food has definitely gone downhill from years ago. The wings are really big, not like before, it used to be my favourite.

The waitress started to bring out the kids' desserts.... most of the kids had now left. With only 5 children remaining, we were now inundated with sundaes .

On a whole, this was such a bad experience. I would not be recommending children's dinner parties...

Where to start... 1 star at best! Fridays is usually one of my favourites but recently the standards have dropped. My experience on Saturday 18th Feb was awful.

We had a booking at 4.15pm but we still had to wait in the queue outside for 1 hr before we got the table (everyone in the queue had booked) some people pushed to the front and where seated before the people queuing. The staff had no control, it was chaos. Usually TGIs in London have bouncers on the door. Not sure why this one didn't. There was an event taking place that evening at Wembley arena, maybe they are cost cutting??

So, we are finally seated after the horrendous 1hr queue unfortunately the issues continued throughout the night. It takes about 20mins for a member of staff to take our order. The starter arrived after 10 mins and is good, maybe things are turning around?... Nope.

We are waiting another 1 hr for our mains to come out. It seems the whole restaurant is in the same situation. We are now talking to other customers about the poor experience, several customers are hungry, confused and restless by this point. It is not a nice atmosphere. Some customers are complaining to staff.

Food was sat in the service area under the kitchen heater lamps for a very long time, there must have been about 30 ready to go plates there with staff talking whilst looking at a screen in confusion. One table next to us had received half of their mains, the other half didn't arrive until 30 mins later.

Finally the food arrived and it was tasty (thankfully). By this point the event we where going to was close to starting, so we had asked for the bill partway through eating our mains. This was acknowledged but it didn't arrive. Another staff member walked by so then we asked them, waited another 10 mins nothing. We got up to the cash register and asked for the bill, finally we could pay. By this point the full experience had been 3 hrs... we had to laugh about it because it was so bad and we didn't want it to ruin the event we were going to. I've never been so happy to get out of a restaurant before. This is my first ever 1 star review, I normally love TGIs but all I see now is cost cutting and dropped standars. I don't know if they have changed ownership but its not anything like it used to be... see photo of my view from the dining table, unfortunately no staff seemed to care that there was a mess in direct view...

We've been TGI Friday customers for over 30 years now. The place has always prided itself on customer service; being welcomed with a smile, the server introducing themself, saying 'if there's anything you need please just ask'.

It was always somewhere you could guarantee exceptional customer service and really lovely staff.

Honestly, if it hadn't been for the sign on the door we would not have known it was the same chain.

The majority of the staff didn't smile and barely spoke. They all seemed really fed up to be there. Fortunately we had loads of time as it took 20 minutes for our order to be taken (it wasn't busy when we were there - maybe 10-15% full).

My son's drink was brought out with the metal bottle cap still on. Not too much of a problem - mistakes happen - but it took a while to catch someone's attention to have it removed. The person who came to sort it did apologise (it wasn't the same person who'd brought it to us) but when we ordered another the same member of staff who'd left the cap on the first time did the same again! When we asked if it could be removed she snatched the bottle off the table and stormed off without a single word. Really, really odd behaviour and not great customer service. (Plus - if you're bringing a glass bottle - either bring a bottle opener or open it before you bring it over...?)

The wait for food was loooooong. As I said, it wasn't especially busy. We'd ordered a starter and a main but all of it arrived together. One of the reasons we'd ordered a starter was that we were very hungry and thought that would be a good plan, so we'd have something to start with before the mains arrived. Unfortunately that didn't happen.

The food itself was tasty. The menu was very limited (it said 'Event Menu' on the menu so I imagine it was reduced as there was something on at one of the venues?).

There were a number of things we liked on there, so that wasn't a problem, but it definitely wasn't the usual TGI Friday menu (so just to be aware of that).

But yes, primarily let down by the very un-TGI Friday staff. Politeness and friendliness costs absolutely nothing! We won't be going back to this...