"This year we thought we would do something a little different and take our year old and month old baby for afternoon tea on Halloween, Cattows tea room is in a lovely location only in the next village to where we live who...offer great cakes and food so I thought the special spooky themed advertised afternoon tea sounded fantastic and not too far to travel. Firstly I had checked before booking how getting to the farm would be on the day as we had no interest in going to the halloween farm, I was reassured that the normal entrance would be open for cafe visitors on so we could avoid the Halloween entrance all together. To our dismay the entrance was locked when we arrived and we were diverted to the muddiest field for the halloween event, it was chaos and a complete field of mud! Non of the secruity guards could direct us to where we should have been going at all and just added the the stress is trying to get to the other end of the farm to the tea rooms, wading through fields of mud. We finally arrived where we were then greeted with a wait to be seated as the tea rooms where very busy. Thankfully the afternoon tea event had been located in separate rooms which we both glad of due to the noise of the main seating area and how busy it was. The space had been decorated nicely and the tables set out with plenty of space. A waitress explained all hot drinks were unlimited and inclusive to the afternoon tea event and we each ordered our drink. I also requested a cup of hot water to heat some baby milk as my little one was starting to get a little grumpy. Afternoon came, no drinks arrived. I had to ask twice for the hot water and eventually went to the till point to enquire as by this point we had a screaming baby and a year old wondering where drinks were. None of the waitresses seemed bothered to action our request. We waited over ten minutes for drinks to arrive, minus the glasses for our jug of water which were forgotten about entirely! The food looked great and the quality of the cakes and sandwiches were very good. Unlimted' Hot drinks were very hard to come by and I only got a refill as I asked immediately after having had my first arrive for another. Tables around us were all commenting about the lack of service. Toilets were very dirty, a lot of mud I am guessing brought in for outside. My husband had to mention to a server that the men's toilets were blocked and overflowing. Overall I feel the experience was a let down, this could have been a fantastic event if more was invested on service as the food and decor were very good. All of the things letting it down could have been addressed if the staff had been a little more attentive and approachable. I felt there was very little direction for the very young team who didn't really give anything in the form of customer service, they looked disinterested and unable to deal with any sort of query. I didn't come across a manager or anyone that seemed to be in charge and directing the team."
