The pub, facade, and decor were A+. If you're coming to just have some drinks and food, this is a great place -- this is the only reason they're getting two stars and not one.
HOWEVER, if you're actually STAYING at the hotel....think twice. Being an American Anglophile...this was the perfect place to stay in my dreams. It looked like something straight off a postcard, the proximity to Hampton Court Palace (our reason for traveling outside of downtown London) was fabulous...seemed like a no brainer.
Once you leave the pub and are escorted upstairs, the atmosphere changes immediately. The rooms are unappealing, dirty. We had the Henry Tudor room. By the name, you know that'd be considered the hotel's macdaddy room, right? Wrong. The room is right off the stairs....you hear the doors slamming shut all morning/night, and they had a low battery alarm beeping all night that no one bothered to shut off. SO annoying...made it very difficult to go to sleep....the hotel was already not worth the 200 pound price tag. ...but since the pub was so lovely and the surrounding area was so nice...I wanted to keep giving it the benefit of the doubt.
The biggest reason this hotel is getting such few stars is the fact that there an electrical explosion in our room in the middle of the night (fire SHOT out of the outlet/my phone charger cord)! It had been charging for hours normally until I heard a very loud buzzing and then a BOOM...sparks, fire...the cord was black, the voltage converter was black. Suddenly...absolutely no power in the room. When we informed them the next morning, the hotel staff did not apologize once, offer to replace our damaged chargers, take some money off the bill, etc. Instead, they blamed it on us and our voltage converters. Their solution for the experience was them just trying to find us chargers that the hotel employees had that matched our iPhone 5s. We had been in London for a week prior to this in many public areas, our lovely Hazlitt's Hotel (total opposite experience of King's Arms), and cabs and never had any trouble...our cords were ruined leaving us without our phones....and even our phones have been acting funky since the explosion....no surprise of course. iPhone chargers are 30 pounds a piece from Apple...we're out 60 pounds and an afternoon of chasing down charger cords around Kingston Upon Thames -- not an enjoyable way to spend your very limited suburban London time. The attitude was the most enraging part....kind of a "what do you want us to do about it?" Our experience with the English has been nothing short of incredible, kind, polite, generous, and friendly until this...granted, the hotel manager/maintenance man were not English...but they did treat us like crazy people...like fire and sparks over a foot long inches from my face and night (knocking out all of our power until the next morning when they finally arrived back at reception during business hours) was no big deal...and again: our faults...
Our new chargers then from Carphone Warehouse did not work there at all when we got back...then we got back to London and guess what: our chargers worked. So again....CLEARLY their electricity is as antiquated as the building.
Would still love a refund for our chargers.
If you stay here inspect your room before committing to staying and certainly do NOT plug in any mobile devices...phones, iPads, computers have a high probability of being ruined an unusable for the rest of your trip. Shame on you Kings Arms for not taking better care of your hotel patrons.
**pictures of burned charger/converter attached** read more