Royal Albion Hotel, Brighton > Reviews > fantastically bad !

Author's product rating:   

Value for Money	Terrible
Quality of Rooms	Terrible
Standard of Service	Terrible
Quality of Facilities	Terrible

Advantages:	it gave us some thing to talk about  !
Disadvantages:	if you value your life you may find its at risk of being shortened   !

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I don't advise staying here unless you have a very good sense of humor!!!! .
It was a real life 'fawlty towers' to say the least!.
we booked up last minuet to join a group of friends for a wedding also staying at the royal albion,
on first arrival there was no where to park , we knew they had a deal with the NCP car-park, but to get there and find out where it was we need to book in , so had to leave it on the curb outside while we went in , and with traffic wardens in sight which seemed to be every where !
we got given a map to the car-park , which we needed because it is around 1 mile away , in-fact 0.8 miles to be correct , so I definitely would advise risking your car on the curb outside while you at least get you luggage upstairs , oh and its still going to cost you around £9 per day. AND A WARNING IS NEEDED HERE ... i wouldnt want to be doing that walk frome the car park to the hotel if i was on my own and it was dark , very vunrable as theres a lot of alleys and back roads to either go down or walk past . with drunk revellers on the way !
anyway ..
when we did eventually get back to the hotel after a trek across brighton with our bags we went to our room , best described as a very dated mucky old bedsit. the bedding was a bit sparse , very old .... should have been on display in a museum , or cut up and given to the cleaner so she could have a duster she seemed to be needing one badly by the layer of dust on the bed side lamp shade !! and condsidering the room temperature wasnt exactly warm they could have done with a couple more blankets , but surprisingly the bedding... the sheets at least were fresh crisp and clean , I gathered they use a laundry company at least ! but sheets and towels alone isnt enough for me to declare the room as clean !!!
.... and then the beds pushed together to make up a double , ok its common in hotels or this but these beds were 2 very different beds from each other indeed!
one was a firm hard matress .... the other bed more like a trampoline to put it mildly so there was a lovely gap between the two hidden by the sheet over the beds for any one on the skinny side to get wedged down !.....
any way thats all for the good bits anyway . ho ho ho !!,
the carpet was old and mucky too , there were wires hanging from the very low ceiling as you enter the room hanging out of the air conditioner , hope the wires weren't live incase they get a tall guest !
the walls torn and dingy the paint work splattered and stained and i dont want to know with what in the bathroom! and on the subject of the bathroom had a good wedge of muck in the corners and edges , it was basicly clean , ie no stray hairs or tide marks to see but it hardly sparkled which it easily could have done with a little bit of elbow grease!! and the ceiling had 3 different damp / wet patches one with slow occasional drips from it too.!! brilliant ! and i have more to write about regarding the celings further down this review !

now you may say I just got unlucky with our room but as we had friends also staying there we got to see quite a range of the hotels rooms!!!
it was rather fun to gawp and gasp at each others room horrors !
2 of the rooms our friends were in were basically the same as ours ....but smaller yet with more furniture cramed in , large chairs squashed into the space on one side of the bed , and both rooms led out to what I first thought was scafolding but it was actually a balcony , which i declined on the offer to stand on , just incase !

the luxury ..superiour room !! on the way to this friends room which was down a net work of maze like narrow corridors that were creeky and loud as you walked past other rooms , felt like a ramp or duck boards in places ......
anyway .... I suddenly got dripped on !! I look up and i cant belive it , the ceiling is hanging down full to bursting with water ! no joke it was coming out from different points of the ceiling and all the way down that corridor , so I can only assume the rooms along that corridor were also getting a watering too.
I said to my friend about it to phone the reception about it , but she already had ... and about 30 mins ago!!!!! so they were obviously in no hurry to find the leak so we phoned again to remind them, shortly after it was stopped and turned out to be a jacuzzi above leaking away and with someone in it , so it wasnt as if it was even left unattended to overflow and a accident !, but lucky for them they didnt get to appear through the ceiling with the rest of the water !!

now on too the final room which was the iceing on the cake , now this room was ment to be the luxury room , the superior room !!! but the best thing was it was by far the worst room out of all of ours ,!! the bed was very plain old grubby 4 poster with the old worn bed linen really baddly ripped and hanging wall paper on every wall , very heavily stained carpet that had obvious dust on it , the window frames were rotting and with full length from floor to ceiling gass , very mucky and fragile looking too, god help you if you tripped and fell through it as there was a knee hight /1 foot high railing the other side !! oh and only 3 storeys to fall down to the ground !
the room was stuffy this time and the windows stuck hard shut , un openable too ....
well this room also had smashed light covers a battered lampshade and tv that had a high pitch electical whine from it !! basically looked like someone had had a fight in it .
but to get to this room is was like a maze and down a very noisy wobbly ramp along one bit of a corridor.... now I like to check out the the fire exits incase i should need them , Ive never come across anywhere thats managed to not have one in sight before, but this this room was in a dead end corridor with no exit in sight for a good few corners of corridors ! they had the signs with arrows pointing the way ... how reliable they would be too work i just dont know with the state of the place and just to really make it extra safe your allowed to smoke in it ! window dosent open ..maze of a corridor !!! hello !! and goodbye!!!
the hotel reception when my friend asked if she could smoke said if you have and ashtray in your room you can smoke if you havent you cant .... this one had and ashtray !! unbelivable !!
.... but honestly i had to say to my partner that if we had got lumbered with this room i would have checked back out of the hotel before i even got down the maze to see the room it was so far away and noisey and creepy ..dodgey !
I have no idea how it scraped it through the health and saftey regulations .....

anyway .. if your 80 you may enjoy the organ player for entertainment in the evening down stairs for a perk !! if you dont fall down and re break that hip replacement from the loose carpet on the main stairs or from falling down one of many unmarked and un carpeted 3-4 steps you suddenly find yourself going down along some the dingy corridors !

well then theres the general security of the hotel .....it is of course non exsistant no porter , door person ...staff ....apart from one member of staff behind a desk in the front ....sometimes ......yet a constant influx of people in and out of the hotel building with out and eye blinked , big old gaps under your room door and no presense of there being any staff near ........
well I say no staff that is until the mornings!!! when we got a wake up call , great if we wanted one but at 8.00 am and hungover we didnt appreciate it much .... or the next one 30 mins later banging on the door !! blimey what the hell are the door handle ' do not disturb ' signs for ... i seriously thought they must be taking the mickey ...and then the sudden long buzzer that went of too early morning !!
our friend got there room cleaned ( i use the word cleaned loosley here ) this cleaning was without her putting the 'service this room' sign on the door, so they wernt happy as something went missing that they probably threw out as rubbish , it was only a lid for one of her toiletry bottles .. but an irritating problem to discover when you return to your room !
basically the whole place was a joke basically for what it claims to be and the impression there website and description they give of themselves , how did it get any stars at all there is nothing to give a star for , its just the building itself happens to be placed in a top spot opposite the pier, Ive stayed in some hotels before that were fantastic and some not so but this beat them all hands down . it was so bad it was actually funny ! the hotos you can see from some that there from the 80's as theres one with a lady with a classic highlighted short 80's haircut too much blusher and a jumper with very large shoulder pads that only could only possibly be worn in public during the 80 's .... even by brighton-ers fashion standards !
imy advice is save a few quid and book in at a travel lodge or B&B it would be far nicer !

and anyone who could possibley say that it was value for money or not an old wreck has obviously only ever stayed at the night shelter for accomoation.

which reminds me about the tramp we found loitering around the lobby looking for the toilets , my friend burst out laughing it was only some homless rag wearing wee smelling drunk old boy, who they had got bothered by in a pub the night before !!

did anyone of the staff there bother about him ........no `I dont think they even noticed he was there !!

oh did i mention the wires hanging out of the air con unit in the room ?? a little worrying , wasnt gong to touch them to see if they were live !

and still now i could go on with more but im starting to get hand ache from typing !