The experiences have been a mixed bag over the years at this Denny's. One or two good experiences, a few neutral, and a couple really bad ones. Unfortunately yesterday we had one of the latter.
I felt like we were held hostage there... TWO HOURS start to finish to take our niece and nephews for some pancakes. I'm glad we ordered an appetizer (nachos), although we were at about an hour in when they were delivered to the table. (I DID see them in the expo window for about 10 minutes just sitting there. I said to my partner and the kids that I thought that was our nachos just sitting there but what can you do? It turned out that it WAS and they eventually made it to the table, but jeeeesh.) We devoured them because we were so hungry. It was another 20-30 minutes before our food order came out. I was ready to just walk out... we were at about an hour and a half then... we had a lot of time invested.... but the food came just as we were discussing leaving.
I feel for our server and the team there. It was busy and they were doing their best to keep up, but there were not enough people working....and/or we got a very overworked server. There were some tables that were seated after us and gone before us, but maybe they just had the cojones to get up and leave when they understood the situation.
Long story short, it was terrible. I don't ever want to go back and feel like I might need to get some therapy to overcome the trauma from being trapped there for so long sitting in a booth on a cushion that had a giant dent in it from being sat in too many times with a spring poking my bum. It was terrible.... but I also need to take ownership and recognize that we were not technically hostages, we COULD have gotten up and left. We just kept thinking it would get better. Silly us.
Note, we've had that server before, Tracy, and when she walked up to our table I celebrated in my heart for our good fortune in getting her again. She made one of our previous experiences really great. Unfortunately this time she was having a hard time ... too many tables I'm guessing... and I don't know if I did something to offend her? I can't remember the details exactly but I asked her a question and it seemed like she was mad at me for asking. She just didn't have the bandwidth to serve or care for us. We asked for water for the kids so many times over the course of our time there and it only came towards the very end. Again, I don't hold her responsible... she was doing her best... a real trooper powering through a challenging situation with that full restaurant... and as far as I could tell, no one was helping her. I would hear the manager yell from expo "Tracy, your order is up!" "Tracy this!" "Tracy that!"!... but Tracy needed HELP. Probably all the servers did. There may have only been 3 servers, a hostess (who was also playing the role of busperson), and a manager. There was a full restaurant and a wait and it was just not fair to any of them. But again... they were doing their best.
My compassion for their plight translates into a "2-star" review vs. the "1-star" it should be. The food wasn't great. I mean, the nachos tasted incredible because we were all starving...but really, nothing was worth that wait or experience. read more