Belvoir Castle Reviews 158

Can't find anywhere to review their rental property side of the business specifically so I'll write it here. I rented a flat in Bottesford owned by Belvoir Castle Estates and found that the way tenants are treated is despicable. Absolutely no maintenance resulting in damp and mould being unavoidable (e.g. bathroom window that can't be opened, blocked roof drainage etc), ignoring requests to investigate fire alarm faults, mistakes with meter information so tenants paying for the wrong ones, I could go on and on. They were only too happy to send workmen, without warning, into the shared building to prepare a newly empty flat to get a new tenant in ASAP in the middle of full Covid lockdown though! Needless to say I don't live there anymore

We have just been served with a parking notice £100 fine after visiting the Cinderella Christmas event at Belvoir Castle.

We paid £85.75 in total for a family ticket, thinking this would be magical for our twin 5-year-old girls to see the Castle and Santa, this a lot of money for us, and was clearly overpriced and underwhelming in the end. The staff looked stressed and unhappy, we were charged £15 for 2 cups of COLD tea, and 2 small cakes, about 8 customers went back to the counter complaining about cold tea, when we did so they said they would bring hot tea over to us but then forgot and we waited 15mins and had to remind them. The staff had disappeared into the kitchen for ages. We have visited the Castle before in 2020 for an all-inclusive event and we were never changed parking separately. I did not see any parking related signs at any point, and we were rushing around with our twins, one of which was desperate for the toilet as we left the car. It was an extremely foggy day on 21/12/222 (go check past weather report) as well, dark and ice was all over the place. It was an honest unintended oversight not to realise the parking ticket was extra and we were not looking for signs when previously parking there has been free. You spend enough money on-site to justify convenient parking rather than dangerously on adjacent roads.

We spoke with the car park marshal too and he never said anything about a parking charge, directed us to the far corner of a gravel pit practically, where there were no lights and no signs. Not mentioned at ticket office either. **** [Amended] **** An appeal was rejected at first, but since accepted after a protracted correspondence.

When purchasing the tickets online there needs to be a clear up front message stating parking is not included for ticketed events.

I'm absolutely appalled now, that so many people feel scammed and upset and Belvoir Castle is willing to see their reputation collapse so easily.

AVOID BELVOIR CASTLE AT ALL COSTS!

Paid for Ice Skating, Santa's Grotto and Adventure Playground and what a waste of £100 that was.
Plastic ice skating that you can't even skate on and is tiny. Rink was even on a slight slope!
I paid over £25 for Adventure Playground when I booked it in Nov but Belvoir Castle ended up including it in the Ice Skating price (I guess because the ie skating was so poor) but they never informed me - I only saw it on the website. Emailed them for a refund but no response. UPDATE: they have responded and offered a refund
Santa's Grotto was a single room with Santa, hardly any build up to it and fod £15pp, I expected more.
Overall, a totally disappointing experience - would not come back here for Christmas celebrations.

Ice rink was just wet plastic, the ice skates would not bite into the surface so it was impossible to stand up as you can on synthetic ice and real ice. The walls to the rink were broken.
Paying for parking by the hour PLUS entry to the castle grounds hugely expensive. £30 for a family of 4, just to walk round the gardens and play area.

Paid for 4 people for Cinderella Xmas experience and afternoon tea for the princely sum of £188. Happy to do so for a quality experience.

Sadly afternoon tea was disappointing - poor food, dirty crockery and worse than average service.

Since we returned we have also received a parking fine for £100. It was a genuine mistake having rushed to enter the grounds as we were running late. We even bought a new ticket when we got back to the car having realised we should have bought a parking ticket on entry.

Well done Belvoir - you’ve lost another loyal customer. Good luck for the future.

GREEDY PARKING CHARGES! NOT CLEAR, NOW HAVE A £100 FINE AFTER PAYING £75 FOR 3 PEOPLE TO GET IN.

Total misleading scam. So they advertise on both their website and A boards all around the grounds that Christmas 2022 has Christmas Market stalls cafès an ICE RINK and fabulous Santa's grotto in the Engine yard! Be careful when booking as there are 2 Santa's grotto.. one in the engine yard priced £15 per child and one in the castle which you Cannot go to inless you ALSO pay £25 each to go in the castle PLUS the Santa's grotto cost..we opted to just go to engine yard..paying for 2 kids to ice skate and see santa. Total £40. We also booked the cafè restaurant there and had the day planned out. We got there atb11am and it was dead, empty nothing open no Christmas ambience nothing. The Santa's grotto is just a room. No walk through..the gift my child got was a £1.50 game which she left there..very disappointed. The so called ICE rink is NOT ICE but plastic 1mm squares that was the size of someone's front lounge..absolutely rubbish and no one could skate on it. Everyone was complaining there every parent we spoke to. The cafè was underhand.. with staff all saying they had no staff and the choice of food was abysmal. Just sandwiches manly or cancer baps. Horrendous and over priced. I got given "off" oat milk and had to throw 2 teas away as they tasted like fish. I had stomach ache. Kids were so disappointed the ONlY Christmas ever ent I had planned and was Total rubbish. None of the Christmas Market was open. No stalls no pop up cafès or anything else. We also got ripped off during covid Christmas 2020. Having paid alot of money fir the Santa's grotto and castle experience and due to government saying public places could not open. At last minute no one could go in castle. Fair enough..but to this day they never refunded my money. Another parent there said same happened to them and they are reporting to trading standards. About right. False advertising and rip off con business. The future of this place looks grim.. do not visit

We booked tickets to the Cinderella Christmas event at Belvoir because the idea of seeing Father Christmas in a castle sounded magical. Having family that visited last year, we expected our visit to include a light trail, but there was absolutely nothing outside the castle. The decorations were beautiful inside, and worth a visit to see, but the Santa experience at £15 a child was pitiful. The whole thing cost our family £85 and we were there an hour and a half including our visit to Santa. We left feeling disappointed and completely ripped off!

Christmas experience was incredibly poor. This year they have only decorated the house and if you would like to attend the light walk you need to return in January and pay yet again. Tickets prices were expensive bearing in mind we walked round in less than 30 minutes (and that was a slow stroll). Most disappointing Christmas experience in many years and will not return to Belvoir again as everything is orientated to making more money.

We were so looking forward to
Visiting Belvoir castle for the first time & particularly for the Cinderella experience. We went to Castle Howard’s - Narnia last year, which was decorated by the same team, so we had high hopes for Belvoir.

Firstly the parking situation was very frustrating, took a good while before us and the gent on the machine next to us, realised that the contactless wouldn’t actually work & it was coins or nothing luckily we had £6 in coins!

After we had made it up the hill, we were pleasantly surprised walking into the castle, with its roaring fires and gorgeous decorations.
We were also greeted by a very friendly lady.
After we left the entrance Hall, we went up the stairs where there was a brilliant brass band playing.
We then we’re totally confused by the layout. It followed the story of Cinderella, but there was no clear direction of where to go & my 8 year old daughter was unhappy that we didn’t go round it the right way.

Belvoir itself is magnificent in its design & history. I felt that the level of decoration let it down, I hate to compare different events etc but as this was designed & decorated by the same company, it’s hard not to.
I just found it underwhelming, the decorations were beautiful, but so few in number. It didn’t feel as opulent as Narnia at Castle Howard did. The story & the displays felt very rushed in my opinion.

We left the castle and headed down to the engine yard, as we had booked Santa over there.
It’s fair to say we were starving, the 5 of us adults had driven 1.5 hours with our 6 & 8 year old children.

Many of the stalls in the Christmas market were closed. So we decided to go to the stalls next to the cafe/restaurant.

Firstly the prices were surprising, however you expect to pay more at these things don’t you.
Half our our group ordered separately 2 hotdogs, 2 portions of chips a coffee & 2 cokes, this was around £26, I ordered 2 pizzas, 2 potions of chips, 3 hot chocolates & a black coffee this was around £45
My parents & brother didn’t wait very long for their hotdogs, the hotdogs were in a tiny bun & cold & at £5.50 we thought this was bad.

As for our pizzas & chips we waited & waited around 40 minutes, before I went up to find out what was going on. The lad cooking the pizzas seemed to be struggling with making the pizzas, cooking & shouting the orders out. I felt sorry for him & didn’t blame him at all, he seemed to have no support. I asked him how long our pizzas were going to be, but he didn’t seem to know. I then asked if we could have our chips as our kids were fed up & he literally shouted through to the guy in the kitchen 3 times before we got our chips.
I then asked the lad if our pizzas were actually in the oven & he said no 🙈 at this point I decided to cancel our expensive pizzas & just get our chips.
Chips were awful as well, undercooked.

There were a few shops near the yard Santa grotto that were open, but the prices were unreal.

Santa grotto wasn’t anything special, however the elves were very welcoming and friendly & Santa was fabulous, he was really funny & engaging and spent a good amount of time talking to the kids & showing a real interest.
This was literally the only saving grace of the day.

I thought we were going to have a special family experience, but I just felt like we were continually ripped off & everything felt scrimped on regarding the amount of decor in the Cinderella experience & engine yard grotto & I wish we’d gone back to Castle Howard.

Had a nice visit round the castle but would never return or recommend . The ticket was a bit pricey but I was having a special day out . The £100 parking fine I received in the post two weeks later a really nasty shock . It was not very clear where the machines were or how to pay for the parking and I thought it was included in the ticket to see the castle . I have never not paid for parking in my life and the five was totally out of proportion . It’s about time they changed their parking management as I expect this will lose them a lot of custom/ money in the long run . I will not be returning or recommending . Bel out castle you now have a terrible reputation for not looking after your visitors . It’s totally spoiling people’s experience . We don’t mind paying for parking but these fines are really awful. Your staff at the ticket office need to make it extremely clear about paying separately for it and how to do this !

Don't bother visiting unless you like paying parking fines. Belvoir Castle appears to be running a parking scam, or so it might seem. Even the BBC have a news item on how visitors have been caught out by the parking charges and had to pay £100 penalty charges - Google 'BBC Belvoir parking fines'. See how many bad reviews are here - all mentioning the 'parking scam' and yet Belvoir still have not sorted their unfair parking out! We visited and initially parked in the disabled park (by mistake). A Belvoir employee came over and asked us to move our car which we did immediately - at no point did the Belvoir Castle employee inform us that the parking was not included in the ticket price (also extortionate) and neither did the staff in the ticket office. How many more people will have to pay £100 parking penalties before no one dares to visit the castle? we will certainly never return!

I telephoned to ask if it would be possible to carry a wheelchair up the stairs so that my freind could see the Cinderella Christmas Exhibition. She is unable to walk for very long but could walk up the stairs. I was told that it was not possible too have a whealchair through the exhibition as they were expecting thousands of visitors. We planned to go tomorrow and today there is excellent availability for tickets. I am unsure how they can be so unhelpful. I am not even sure if it is legal to ban a disabled person.

NOVEMBER 2022; Ice rink was terrible; the synthetic ice is not suitable for any kind of skating: My wife hs been skated on ice from childhood and this time she could not even “drive” herself forwards. Disappointed kids, dreadful experience. The size of the rink is tiny, I suppose it is not even the size that is stated on the site.

NOT WORTH PAYING FOR!!!
Rubbish! What a lot of hype for not a lot of adventure!!
Dangerous for smaller children who I would think it's most suited to. I'm surprised it passed safety inspection.
The climb to get to the long slide isn't safe.
It's very disjointed, as when the children use the other slide at the top there's nowhere for them to go back up without having to go back through the 'boat' and run around the path so not suitable for smaller children.
Not very well thought out.
Shame as I live in the area and would use it with my grandchildren but won't be back again.
Used to use Cafe Alley which was very good but what is there now is not a patch on them. The greedy duchess put paid to them.
You need to give value for money not rip people off!!

Went to the castle with my disabled wife. Was told at the ticket office we could re-locate to the disabled car park by the Castle. Subsequently received a £100 parking ticket as my wife was too slow getting to/from the car in the main car park prior to re-locating to the disabled car park. Appealed, but they said she took too long !

Had an awesome day at Belvoir Castle even though it was torrential rain! Adventure playground was perfect for my seven year old who stayed there for hours, and I went on it too and it is lovely - very different to the hideous ones you get elsewhere. Picturesque setting is lovely.
The castle is beautiful and even more intriguing as it is actually somebody’s home. Did feel like we needed to take our wellies off and put some slippers on as it felt a bit intrusive walking around somebody else’s house with all our outdoor clothes on. It’s a different feel to going around a NT/English Heritage/CADW property. This has heart and soul and family photos scattered around the rooms. There is a sense of the family in the rooms. We all really enjoyed it, and the staff are the people who make it so wonderful from Karl on the door who was just so welcoming and knowledgable to the amazing lady in the gift shop who was so kind and friendly to our family. Every staff member we chatted with was lovely, and really smiley and helpful which really counts for so much in this world. The staff all chatted to my children, and not just to the adults in the party, so included them in the talks about the gardens and the history of the castle, which was brilliant and captured their attention.
Even though it was torrential rain all day, we had a thoroughly great time. I’m a bit sad to see all these negative reviews as I didn’t experience any problem with the car park but maybe this is now resolved.
So upon arrival we saw grouse and pheasant trotting along the driveway and then squirrels and as we got nearer it was so foggy so it left quite an eerie Halloween vision of the castle. We will definitely visit again and I hope others may find this castle as wonderful as we did. Had a really good espresso too. And I’m picky over coffee.

The new Adventure Playground has been hiped up and given lots of publicity.
Just been this morning with our 2 grandsons aged 7 and 9. After 20 minutes they got bored, as there is very little to do. Definitely only for young children, up to age 7. It looks fantastic on photos, but play value is very low. We will not be visiting again.

Belton Park might not look as photogenic, but our grandsons can entertain themselves there for hours. Also suitable for older children and teenagers.

Whilst the visit was pretty good (as Historic Houses members), it was ruined by the weather (nobody's fault) and the car parking system at Belvoir. The website does not prepare you adequately for the fact that the car park AT THE ENTRANCE is run by an independent, commercial company, who issues £100 fines (with threats of legal action) if you overstay you time by even a minute, as I know to my cost. Remarkably, you are timed from first entering the car park and leaving the car park as registered on CCTV. It is a business model that seems to be designed to capture as many people as possible with a disproportionate penalty for a minor infringement. How many other car parks at public sites have the same attitude. Contact with the Castle Head Guide led to nothing. No sympathy was expressed and I was simply referred to the parking company and the Castle website. There was no evidence of a duty of care or a wish to help or sympathize. Why does this venue associate itself with this company? We will never return.

We were visiting Belvoir as new members of the FFA, and to attend the AGM. We arrived on 27. Sept and stayed at the Vale House, which is full of artwork. We had a wonderful dinner at The Chequers, and quickly mingled with the other members. On the 28. Sept we met the charming Duke, then tucked into biscuits and tea before the AGM started, then at 12:00 retired to the bar for gin & tonics. At mid day, we enjoyed a huge feast of ham, beef, stilton cheese pies and other tasty food followed by apple crumple and clotted cream.

The Castle is amazing, and unlike Windsor Castle has not been ruined by 1000s of visitors. It remains in excellent condition, with many artefacts well presented. All the staff were friendly, efficient and knowledgeable.

We plan to return again, so that we have plenty of time to understand the long and illustrious of the spectacular and handsome Castle. Its is perfect for events and weddings, and I strongly recommend Belvoir Castle.