The Langstone

We expected more. The facility was decent, the lunch we ate in the dining room was spectacular and the shower is truly unique in a mostly good way. BUT -- the person who checked us in was positively rude, the staff often seemed unwilling to deign to assist and the room had definitely seen better days. Our safe didn't work and someone had to fix it. Our tea kettle didn't work, and someone had to fix it. Our outlets didn't work and someone had to fix them. Three complaints requiring three different people to come to our room to get it in basic working order. Probably all three complaints relate to the same problem because the fuses had been tripped in at least two of the three instances. The shower apparatus is really great, but it's contained in a space divided from the rest of the bathroom by a small frosted glass divider that doesn't even reach the floor. As a result, when you take a shower the entire bathroom floods. It dries quickly, but it isn't optimal. And breakfast was bleak. I had to ask three different wait staff before I was able to get a pot of tea (by which time we'd finished eating), the breakfast food was ordinary at best and the butter was doled out in small bits. I kept wondering if this was an effort at saving money or misplaced elegance -- perhaps begging for butter and tea makes people feel taken care of when it finally comes? More likely they were just seriously understaffed. It also was a little odd to have to walk through a wedding celebration in the bar area to get to our room, but if the bride didn't mind strangers barging through her big day, who am I to quibble? The most critical problem for me was at check-in when we were told that the hotel had changed our room from what we'd booked to one that was smaller because they didn't think we'd mind. We did mind, quite a lot actually, and fortunately there'd been a cancellation so we wound up with something similar to what we'd booked. But the thought that they'd do something like that without asking made me really furious. The location was perfect for us, parking was sufficient, room size was lovely, beds were reasonably comfortable.