This review is going to be a long one, but with many good and bad bits to give both sides of Drimsynie. Things I wish we knew prior to booking/coming. If it’s too long, then scroll by, but I hope it helps someone!
Starting off with the good things! Had a lovely stay here for my 21st birthday with my family (Pondview Lodge 3). The lodge was beautiful, comfy, spacious enough for 5 adults and a young child that took everything but the sink with us. There was plenty good condition utensils/equipment for a self catering family, we really didn’t need half the car load we took! We booked on the Archery, Water Walkerz and Wild Wild West activities and they were great. The pool, sauna, steam room and jacuzzi were all great too! The food in The View restaurant and from the DH Takeaway was delish and none of us could fault it. The deals for the kids menu was fab, but for the 3 days we were there the menu and specials were the same for lunches and dinners, not too much choice. Alcoholic drinks were cheaper than soft drinks - £3.15 for a Pepsi!
On to the bad bits. We had a 2 hour drive to get to the lodge and my family had a 3 hour drive and 2 hour ferry to get here. With leaving so early and having such a long journey ahead we called reception first thing prior to arrival and asked about early check in, as normal check in is 4pm. We were told it couldn’t be guaranteed but it shouldn’t be an issue - bit contradictory? We arrived at 1pm as we knew we would be able to use the facilities until we got into the lodge. We asked on arrival if the lodge was ready as we had called but it wasn’t. We then asked again at 3pm (just 1 hour earlier than check-in) and it wasn’t ready. We then asked again at 4:15pm, AFTER check-in opened, if the lodge was ready yet, and reception called for an update on the lodge. On the phone we heard reception say Pondview Lodges 1 and 2 were ready but 3 wasn’t. We had been up to ask 4 times so they knew we had been waiting probably the longest, but we weren’t able to get one of the other lodges. Despite the couple in front of us in the check in queue being allowed to change to other accommodation as theirs wasn’t ready?? Angry was an understatement at this stage. We got into the lodge at 5:30pm and after complaining twice about this we finally managed to speak to Management and got a refund on our £75 rover passes for activities! The negatives about the activities are the badminton equipment badly needs updating and more than half of the arcade machines either were out of order completely or just swallowed pound coins without doing anything, and returned no tickets to claim prizes. We thought with it at least being July and peak summer time they would have the arcade machines working! Also no cash machines worked in the complex, we had to drive into the village to go to the post office to lift cash! As I mentioned the meals were great, however we booked in for 8 people at 7pm for my 21st birthday meal on the Saturday night. We arrived at 7pm to have no table prepared for us and we only got seated at 7:20pm. I’m appalled to say that our meals arrived at 9:35pm, my 3 year old nephew had fallen asleep before he got his meal!! We saw at least 3 different families complain which really put a downer on the evening for all of my family, especially the additional 2 people who had traveled an hour to join us for the meal! The meal came to over £150 and that’s excluding 3 rounds of drinks, for the staff to not even apologise for the delay or offer any type of discount for waiting 2.5 hours to be seated and served - they weren’t even busy!! We were the last ones left in the restaurant! My recommendation would be to either book in for dinner at 5pm if you have a hope of eating before 10pm or take your own food for dinner. We were then back in the same restaurant with the same menus for lunch the next day for nobody to say sorry again about the delay with the food the night before when it was all the same staff.
Overall a lovely stay as we had enough fun as a family in the lodge to distract from the negatives! Would probably stay here again in future as it’s great for kids but wouldn’t hurry back. Apologies for the long review but I wish I had known information like this before we came - hopefully it helps others.
