Ramada review: new year's eve gala

To Whom it may Concern

My name is Rick West, my wife, myself and 4 other couples had booked tickets to the New Years Eve Gala event at the Ramada Inn, Jackson Point.

I would like to first like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to join a great event, supporting the local area and live entertainment.

Unfortunately, not only myself but all of the people that were part of the West party were extremely disappointed in most aspects of the evening.

I was contacted on December 21 2019 and asked what time we would like our dinner reservations, I responded on December 22 2019 "our group of 10 would appreciate a reservation at 7 pm for dinner" I received no response to confirm this.

We arrived at the dinner portion of the Gala at 6:45 and seated right away, we sat until 7:30 pm before we were asked what we would like to drink, a server took our drink order and did not return for 20 mins with drinks, and only after we inquired for them. Our dinner order was not taken until 8:10 pm, ( one of our party is a diabetic and we informed staff of this with no avail) the gentleman organizing the servers and staff offered us a complementary drink and apologized for the wait, we then waited again and received our meals at 9:15, but, they were not all of our meals, staff had brought out 6 plates of salmon, we had only ordered two and 8 plates of beef, the beef dinners came to our table 15 mins later (by this time us with the Salmon had finished our meal) and all meals were cold, (There was compliments that they were tasty, too bad they were cold), by this time the Connors Brothers had started playing, we skipped our dessert due to time it takes to get it to us, and running closer to 12 am.
We noticed another party of 8 arrive after us, they had two servers catering to them, this party left the room before us after there dinner and dessert. Our severer was running around looking after what seemed to be more then four tables on her own, I believe it was the manager that came to apologize to us and asked if there was any way he could make this up, we suggested to pay for the drinks we had, he agreed but charged us $31 for a bottle of wine we had, I agreed as to not cause a scene.

When we moved into the Live entertainment room to see the Connors Brothers play we were seated at a table with 10 chairs and only 4 new years eve hats, we were late getting in and only able to enjoy three songs by the band before they went on a 1 1/2 hour break, There was a poor choice of beers available, even though it was a pay bar, the beer our table had were warm and tasted skunky.
We were then informed that there would be a celebration for a group of people, we were not informed this was happening on the onset, did not except it and had no choice but to participate or return to our rooms, this was 1 1/2 hour of time the band could have played, we elected to return to our rooms.

We had comments from serving staff that "its a busy time of year" " we are short staffed"
" I was called in to work just yesterday" In my opinion if you are setting up a New Years Eve Gala by selling tickets, have a guest list at the door, you are aware of how many people and meals you need to serve, in this you must be able to organize and predetermine the amount of staff you will need to keep customers happy and meals out on time.

In no why do I wish this to reflect on the server we had at our table, In my opinion the hotel management, kitchen management and the event organizers are responsible for the unorganized events of the evening,
In short I would have to really think twice about spending $85 a person to return to such an unorganized event.

Thank you
Mr.Rick West
Party of 10