No room service. No offer of help with luggage. Unprofessional behavior between staff in front of customers (arguing)No welcome letter or information folder in room.
Not understanding complicated situations (child with autism/non verbal/recovering from tonsillectomy ) this was reflected in the “compensation “ offered (one free meal delivered to our room upon our next visit) after I was flatly refused any sort of partial refund (£170.10 paid for one night)

The fact that I went without a meal the night of our stay was met with “thanks for your feedback, we take it all very seriously “, really?? You clearly only care about keeping hold of my £179.10 in spite of my experience being a deeply disappointing and unsatisfactory visit. No customer service whatsoever, lacking in understanding and compassion. Don’t value customers and only care about racking in the cash!

We booked to stay in the Gruffalo themed room that comes with a dedicated parking space with your name on, and a few extra perks such as the Gruffalo door sound as you open the door, as it was my son’s birthday we also added the Zoofari package and had balloons put in his room, all of this came to a premium price but having stayed at a Merlin attraction before I was sure that it would be worth it. We were very disappointed, On arrival our son was excited to look for our name on the dedicated Gruffalo parking space but despite it being 4pm there was no dedicated Gruffalo space available and none of the spaces had any names written on them, that was the first disappointment, our 4 year old thought the Gruffalo had forgotten he was coming (thanks Chessington, just what we needed after a long drive!). The person on the desk and he said he would put our name on a space when one became available (however if there is a dedicated parking space for the room why wasn’t one available an hour after check-in?) This never happen the entire duration of our stay.

We knew our son would be surprised with the Gruffalo room and the balloons we purchased as an extra package. That was the second disappointment for him as when we opened the door the “door sound” that should activate was switched off so he didn’t hear the Gruffalo speak as he went in, then we saw 3 very deflated helium balloons that looked as if they had been left from a previous stay and left in the room. He was upset as his Balloons looked poorly and the Gruffalo wasn’t speaking (again Chessington, thanks you made his 4th birthday memorable!).

We went down for dinner and the food was very good (we loved the children's menu with the photos of the food, very useful with toddlers) and on returning to our room I went for a shower only to find that the Knob was missing so I couldn't have one! (Chessington this was a premium room more than twice as expensive as your normal rooms!! I ran a bath instead and tried the TV that is a special feature of the room, it didn’t work!)

We found out that there was no entertainment in the hotel and the hotel shop wasn't open for the whole of our stay as one staff member told us, we only have the shop and the entertainment on in school holidays (you have preschool themed rooms and entertainment, most parents or pre-schoolers will holiday outside of school holidays so this is madness as the hotel was full of parents of toddlers looking for the entertainment and like us looking for a shop to buy something to put in the room to counter the disappointment our boy had from his deflated balloons) and we were not able to walk around the reserve as we had in previous years as we were told that it wasn’t for hotel guests anymore yet in previous years the reserve had been open until 7pm for guests of the hotel to walk round.

So we had nothing to really do in the evening apart from sit in the room or sit in the lobby, the room did have the Gruffalo and the Gruffalos child on the TV but after watching it over and over we were all a bit fed up on the Gruffalo!