Øystein E.
Castle Loučeň is truly something to behold. The surrounding gardens are beautiful; often looking like something straight out of a fairy tale. Along with its many hedge labyrinths, the castle area offers more than enough to justify the roughly one-hour drive from Prague. In short, highly recommend spending a morning here, preferably with a camera for pictures!||Unfortunately, this is where the positive feedback begins and ends.||My girlfriend and I spent three nights at the Resort as part of a larger wedding party of about 40 people. We’d booked a deluxe double room – slightly more expensive than the normal rooms, but well worth it to us since it meant we’d be able to share a bed. Because of this, we were a bit surprised when we arrived to a downgraded room, with two single beds at opposite ends of the room. Still, we figured this could be easily solved by talking to the hotel staff.||I went to ask the receptionist. She wasn't busy; looking through websites on her phone. Surprisingly, she was visibly upset that I had bothered her! Nevertheless, I put on the warmest smile I could muster, ensured her the room mix-up was nothing to do with her personally, and that all I really wanted was a room with a bed big enough for two people. After all, that is what we had paid for.||While communicating proved a little challenging, after a little gesturing back and forth we eventually understood each other well enough. Or so I thought… Turns out that instead of getting the room we had paid for, we got the exact same room, but now with the two single beds pushed loosely together to form a rickety, impromptu double bed. While I appreciated the effort, sliding down between the two beds and slamming my head on the floor wasn't quite what I had in mind.||So back down I went . After another round of gesturing, the receptionist finally admitted they had made a booking error, and that there were in fact no more upgraded rooms available. Well, okay then. Nothing to be done about that, I suppose.||Except there was.||You see when she had said there were positively no upgraded rooms available at all, this wasn't true. What had actually happened, was that there were plenty of upgraded rooms when we arrived, but the hotel had wrongfully assigned them to guests who had booked *single* rooms, and were refusing to correct their mistake as "it was already done and too late to change". Interestingly, it was also too late to refund the extra we paid for our room upgrade. This meant that several of the guests in our wedding party has gotten free upgrades, which was nice for them I suppose, while many who paid for upgraded rooms ended up not getting it.||That bring said, not getting the correct room isn’t a major issue. Mistakes happen, and room mix-ups is a fairly minor one. But being continually lied to by grumpy hotel staff on top of it all was becoming somewhat annoying.||As luck would have it though, we hadn’t yet reached the bottom of what Maxmillian had in store for us. Here is a short description of the room we'd gotten:|- no towel rack or peg in the entire bathroom|- broken bathroom lock meant it was always open|- permanent room temperature of 30+ °C, making sleep nigh impossible|- two small windows, one with the handle broken off leaving it permanently closed, the other opening only partially (about 5 cm), making the room even hotter|- Un-insulated wiring sticking out of the wall. No idea if they were live wires or not, as I didn't fancy finding out.|- no smoke alarm (as we later found out, only about half the rooms had working smoke alarms)|- A small fan on the bedside table. Unfortunately, it was broken, only pointing down at the floor and giving off a loud “whirrRAPP!” every two seconds.|- a shower head that went no higher than 1 meter above ground level and only sprayed directly into the wall||After two nights of increasingly sticky non-sleep, my partner had finally had enough. She marched down to the receptionist and insisted we get a ventilated room with a working shower – and lo and behold, there was an available room after all! In fact – much like the non-existent double rooms from before – it had been available all along! All it took was a frightening dose of my girlfriend’s demonic wrath (I admire and fear her in equal measure).||With several rooms nearly uninhabitable and a staff that makes you feel deeply unwelcome at all hours, this one-star review is earned, unfortunately.
