For me and my Chair it was Wheely convenient but did not deliver its promises
Written: Aug 08 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Very convenient. The Oriental Restaurant is Superb!!!
Cons: Wheelchair rooms have inaccessible bath rather than accessible wheel-in shower.
The Bottom Line: Make sure that, if you have special needs, you talk DIRECTLY to the hotel not just to the 'Le Meridien' Call Centre.
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| dramatist's Full Review: Le Meridien Gatwick |
As a wheelchair user, I had rather a bad first impression of this hotel. A friend dropped me at the entrance and left the car parked with my blue disabled badge on display in the allocated space by the door - so far so good. I then had to negotiate many yards of carpeted corridor to get a lift to the reception. Carpets and manual wheelchairs do not easily mix. It is fine in a room where you travel only small distances but carpeted corridors are the wheelchair equivalent of a cross country run!
By the time I had checked in and my friend, who had pushed me along the carpeted acres had been back to the car and rescued my bags, the car had overstayed half an hour and a 'jobsworth' car park attendant tried to charge a five pound fine for my friend to get out - disabled parking badge or no! My friend returned to reception and argued the toss. Finally, they released the car for nothing and my friend headed off to park the car for the duration. I retired to the room which, I was faithfully promised on the phone was a twin room with two beds and a wheel-in shower. How I was looking forward to the luxury of that shower - something I do not have at home!
A cheerful porter showed me into the room. There was the DOUBLE bed and there was the inaccessible bath!
Back at reception I asked firstly about the twin beds...
"Oh, all our disabled rooms have double beds only but we can put a Z bed in."
"That's not what I was told on the phone."
"Ah, yes, sir, but the central switchboard cannot guarantee local circumstances."
"What about the wheel-in shower?"
"What's one of those?"
I went back to the room. Half an hour later the Z bed arrived. Getting it in the room and leaving room for my wheelchair meant throwing out almost all the rest of the furniture. Out onto the landing went the armchair, the writing table and the dressing-table chair. In the middle of all the chaos, my friend returned and we decided to cut our losses and go down for a drink and something to eat. This was the first decent thing that happened.
We went into the hotel's Oriental Restaurant.
The food is exquisite, the service impeccable, and the price, for the quality of the whole experience, surprisingly reasonable. Things were looking up.
Thank goodness all we had to do in the room was sleep - there wasn't room for much else, what with my wheelchair and the Z Bed Finally, we did sleep - after a half hour battle with the wretched air-conditioning system which gave out nothing at all or an Arctic Blast with no stops in between!
It was really only the following morning that we saw the real benefit of this hotel - that oh so easy walkway into the North Terminal and our flight out.
Would I stay there again? Yes, for the restaurant and the convenience but I would insist on talking to the hotel, not the London Central Call Office before booking,
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
dramatist
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Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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