20 Apr 2024
Unfortunately, the Széchenyi Spa portion of the deal didn't happen. I received several confirmation Emails from TripAdvisor, including one which said 'here are your tickets,' so I believed everything was sorted.
We arrived at the spa to be 'greeted' (for lack of a better word) by two female receptionists, one of which who was unbothered by us waiting in the queue who spent several minutes (no exaggeration) cleaning her glasses and not looking up at us. The other receptionist was incredibly rude and unhelpful as well, as upon showing her my TripAdvisor tickets, informed me she couldn't use them as she needed a QR code. When I said this was all I had, she sat back, crossed her arms, and refused to help any further. Eventually she got fed up with listening to me and told me to just go through, only for us to find that we couldn't as we needed a wristband. We went back to the receptionist (who would've known that we couldn't get through!) who just sat back with crossed arms demanding a QR code, saying I needed to speak to the booking company.
We retreated to outside and I went through my TripAdvisor Emails and clicked the button 'contact tour operator', which I had no reason to do so up until this point as I thought everything was fine. It was here that I'd discovered I was sent a message from Hungaria Koncert requesting my Email address (why they didn't receive this from TripAdvisor is beyond me!!) so they could send me the QR code for the spa. I responded and asked for this to be sent right away as we were waiting at the spa, and even phoned 15 minutes later asking for this to be expedited, and was told they had my message and the code was going to be sent 'in a few minutes.' After waiting 10 more minutes, my friend and I were both sick of the experience and decided to leave. The Email with the QR code never arrived. 0/5 stars for the spa portion.
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Regarding the cruise, I'm delighted to advise this was a much better experience and we enjoyed this immensely. The food was great - some of the best we'd had in the city - and the entertainment was wonderful. The evening experience on the Danube was really lovely. I'm not sure what I was expecting but I was only slightly disappointed that we just did a loop up and down the Danube, but I guess the positive side is that you return to the same dock as you depart, so you don't need to plan to get home from a strange ending point.
The only thing that hampered our cruise experience was, at the very end, a member of the wait staff approached our table and presented us with a code for us to leave a review on TripAdvisor. I had been planning to anyway as we'd had a lovely time. However, two things really struck me about this interaction:
1) We'd barely seen this gentleman all evening and we were both surprised to learn that he was apparently *our* waiter. The only time he'd spoken to us prior to this point was when he tried to deliver drinks to our table that weren't ours! In fact, we never got asked at any point what drinks we'd like, and we only had the welcome drink and the waters on the table to enjoy all evening. The empty glasses and plates we had were collected by other members of staff throughout the evening, and we'd presumed that all wait staff attended to everyone, so we were very surprised to learn we were supposed to have had a specific waiter!
2) After giving us the code to leave a TA review, this gentleman then hovered closely nearby to ensure we were actually leaving a review. I spent some time typing up a good review, and he returned a minute or two later while I was still typing and stated, 'Wow, you've written a lot.' I quipped, 'I have a lot to say!' but then was a little unnerved to find that he then stood at our table, watching over me, until I was finished. After I was done, he *literally* started pushing buttons on my phone to make sure my review was logged. I found this deeply unsettling and honestly, bullying. His behaviour makes me believe he would earn some type of commission based on reviews received. Suffice to say, I was so bothered by this behaviour that I promptly deleted it after we returned to our hotel, because I didn't like the feeling of being pressured into leaving a review on the spot, and also, this really left a sour taste to the overall experience, which up to that point, had been great. 3/5 stars for the cruise portion, which would've been 5/5 had we not had such a poor interaction with 'our' waiter.
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In summary, if you are considering this experience I would actually recommend as I feel it would've been great value for money (had we been able to actually use the spa!), but be sure to check in with the tour operator and get your spa QR code well in advance. And don't allow the wait staff on the cruise bully you into leaving a rushed review at the end!!