Best Western Royal Plaza Hotel – STAY AWAY!

Well, we did have a lovely weekend in Sturbridge…as I talked about in my last post, we were in town for the holiday festivities at Old Sturbridge Village.

On the way back yesterday, Mike wanted to stop at the Royal Plaza Hotel & Trade Center, in Marlborough, for the New England Model Train EXPO.  I don’t like being dragged to these things, as they are about as exciting for me as watching grass grow, also, they tend to be full of screaming kids.  But I normally don’t mind being dragged along to this one, as the hotel has a sports bar/restaurant, the All-Star Bar & Grill, where I can chill out, have a few beers, while I wait for Mike to come back from the show.

Well, not this time!  We arrived at the place right before noon, Mike left me there in the main hotel building, while he went to the train show, which was in another building which was a bit of a hike away.  I saw that the bar was not open yet; upon asking someone at the front desk, I learned that it was set to open at noon.  Okay, I could wait a few minutes, so I sat down in a chair in the hotel lobby, near the restaurant, and waited.

There were six million screaming kids running around in the lobby area.  Apparently, there was some kiddie party event going on in one of the banquet rooms, with professional picture taking in front of the big Christmas tree in the lobby.  Wonderful.  Well, I thought, at least the restaurant would open soon, I could get a beer and relax.

Noon came…not open.  12:30 came…nothing.  1PM…still nothing.  I tried to just read my book, but more and more screaming kids came in, I really thought I was going to go insane.  I was stuck, here was no place else to go, nothing that I could easily walk to.  I had no choice but to wait for either the bar to open up, or for Mike to return and save me from hell.

It would have been nice if the lobby had free WiFi, but they didn’t.  Would it have killed them to have a wireless router someplace, for the convenience of the many people who visit to attend shows, conventions, and such at this dump? Oh, well, at least I could rant about it via Twitter from my phone.

I finally overheard some hotel employees saying that the reason that the restaurant wasn’t open yet was because the bartender did not show up.  Hmm, maybe s/he KNEW about the screaming kid-fest.  If I were that person, I’d not show up either, not if they wouldn’t let me drink.  And by then, I sorely needed that beer!

So they had to call in other bartender, and by the time she showed up and got the place set up to open, it was 2PM.  So, after two hours of waiting, I finally got the beer I was needing more and more by the minute.

Mike showed up at about 2:15, while I was still on that first beer.  It was REALLY a good thing that they opened up at all, because Mike was feeling shaky with hunger.  He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast at around 9AM, he’s diabetic, and needed to get food ASAP.  They did have food over in the train show building, but he passed on it, describing it as “bad, overpriced junk food”.  He knew that the food at the All-Star sports bar was much, much better.

Screaming kids and all aside, though…how unprofessional is it to have a restaurant in a big hotel that has to open two hours late, because one bartender didn’t show up?  Was there not ONE single food & beverage manager on duty who could not have opened and worked the bar until a substitute bartender could get there?  This makes me wonder how well this place is actually run…obviously, not very well.

Just for the hell of it, I looked up this hotel on TripAdvisor, to see what people thought of it.  I was not surprised when I saw the reviews, and that 69% of reviewers did NOT recommend the place.  It’s just a good thing we weren’t staying there.  Imagine if we were staying there, counting on being able to go downstairs to the bar for lunch, only to find it not open?

I will never set foot in this place again.  They always seem to have some screaming kiddie-fest on the same weekend as the train show, there is no escaping that.  But the fact that they couldn’t even be arsed to open their restaurant on time, means that Mike will be going to future train shows at this place by himself.  I refuse to go through the two hours of screaming kid, beer-less HELL that I went through yesterday!