Total Nightmare Experience - Zero Stars Earned
Our girls soccer team scheduled a brunch there after 8AM game at South County High School. We had reserved tables & were immediately seated in their back dining room. We had two servers assigned to us since we had both kids and parents in our large group. It's at that point where everything went south.
As we were being seated another soccer team was just arriving in the waiting in the reception area until tables could be pulled together for their large group. They ended up being seated in the back room across from us, about 10 minutes after we arrived.
We waited 15 to 20 minutes the staff to get us menus and take our drink orders. 15 to 20 minutes later, they came by again and took our food orders. After the food orders were taken it was 45 to 50 minutes before the food arrived. By this time, the other team had already ordered, received & eaten their food, and were in the process of paying their bills, ......all before we had received a single entrée.
Our servers were completely confused as to how to handle a large party. Obviously the servers on the other end of the room, with the other similar sized soccer team, weren't nearly as clueless.
As our food finally arrived, the other team was getting up and leaving the restaurant. Our servers were completely befuddled on how to distribute all the entrées, so parents had to get up and distribute the meals to all the tables for the servers.
Each family ordered their own food by player number to make it easy. Something we've done at close to a dozen other restaurants without any problem. It's too close to 30 minutes for the serving crew to sort out the check well we sat at empty tables and waited.
Two hours after sitting down we were finally walking out of the restaurant. A handful of parents had already taken all of the children ahead to the next soccer game because we were running so far behind schedule.
By the time we left, we had approached the manager 4-5 times in an effort to get things expedited. He was obviously in way over his head, and completely unable to help us in anyway.
Given our dining experience was a complete disaster, you might think the restaurant would make some effort to compensate us, either by adjusting our bill in some way (e.g., waving the cost of the beverages), or maybe giving us some free meal certificates.
But we're talking IHOP here, not a normal customer service focused dining establishment. Based on all the poor reviews for this place, it's no surprise we were given nothing but a continual stream of "I'm sorry's".
2 hours after being seated we left the place. 10-15 minutes of that time was spent eating (wolfing down our late food), and the other hour 45 we were watching a bunch of incompetent IHOP staff run around in circles. read more