Just returned from our second consecutive annual holiday at RP and thought I'd add my comments to those I made last year:
Once again the overall holiday was fantastic - aided by the record breaking temperatures in the first four days the cooler weather towards the end of the week was much appreciated!
My only grumble last year was that the excellent food served in the Oasis bar/restaurant was let down by it being severely understaffed. I wrote to the management about this and whilst I didn't receive a reply it looks like I wasn't the only one to make this comment as the service this year was greatly improved by many more staff. The park as a whole seemed much busier this year and so the swift serving of the food was impressive. However, Oasis still lets itself down badly by simple under-management. For example, the ridiculous 'triple queueing' system on the theme nights (Chinese on Saturday, Indian on Wednesday and the promo breakfasts) where you queue for about half an hour to order/pay for your food, then queue for another fifteen minutes to collect it and if you want drinks you start to queue again! Then there was the constant problem of cutlery running out and ordering a drink from the bar was an ordeal in itself! With, on occasions, three staff serving but for some reason only one till operating, once you ordered your drink the staff would mysteriously disappear into the kitchen to fetch glasses and it would take what seemed an age for a simple drinks order to be processed.
With the newly added outside dining/eating area which was a welcome addition during the hot days and evenings, plastic glasses were required to be used if you ate/drank al fresco, unfortunately, due once again to a shortage of staff and/or bad management, these were never collected from the tables and tables rarely cleared/cleaned meaning that plastic glasses were often unavailable.
I think the scenario that summed it up perfectly was on our final day. We decided to have a breakfast in Oasis before departing for home and discovered many new holidaymakers had arrived and the restaurant very busy. My wife found a table and I joined the long queue at the single till to order and pay. Half an hour later I joined the next queue to collect four breakfasts, on collecting our drinks my wife found our table had been nabbed in her absence and there was also no cutlery at all. The line to collect food had now become a farce with people returning asking for knives and forks, missing toast, butter etc. Each request for cutlery was met with the one person serving breakfasts asking 'how many?' disappearing into the kitchens and returning with the requested amount of knives and forks. Only when I asked for mine did I see that these were being taken from a large pile in the kitchen!
A young lad was taking knives and forks out of the trays after they had been washed and was carefully rolling them up into papaer napkins, piling them up on the table next to him and starting again! No one had thought of collecting all of these up and bringing them out so people could eat! By the time I made it to my table (after approx 45 mins of queueing and frequent re-visits to the queue to ask for toast, butter, marmalade instead of the mango chutney I was given and the cutlery, my breakfast was stone cold. It's such a shame that such simple fundamentals of running a bar/restaurant are being missed and cause unnecessary problems on what is otherwise an excellent holiday. We can all appreciate that some of these problems are to be expected when the park is so busy and staff are rushed off their feet but I'm sure some simple management is all that is required here.
For example, why do they not have one of the high level glass racks running the length of the bar to store glasses? Why is it not the responsibility of just one member of staff to ensure that glasses - plastic or otherwise - are returned to the bar area, and that tables are cleared and cleaned quickly and there is always a plentiful supply of cutlery? Why does the cutlery have to be rolled in yellow napkins? Just chuck it in the trays and stack the napkins next to them and we'll happily sort it out ourselves! That said, I didn't allow it to spoil my holiday but just felt it a shame that the superb quality of the food could not be complemented by the organisation and service. (continued on next page)
