Great setting - shame about the staff

We visited the hotel for a wedding - which went very well, the setting is beautiful and the public rooms are very attractive, well decorated with plenty of character.

Unfortunately the staff let the place down, they were rude - one waiter was particularly so - and acted as though everything was far too much bother for them.

Breakfast was quite poor, they didn't manage to keep the buffet stocked, despite the dining room being half empty and our waitress had to come back and ask us 3 times if we wanted tea or coffee, as she kept forgeting!

The infrastructure also needs some investment - we had no cold water in our room so couldn't take a shower, brush teeth or flush the loo! Very poor.

I would say that all in all this place is way too expensive for the quality of the service - they should knock at least 50% off the price to make it comparable with other B&Bs in the area.

Not bad at all...

A nice enough place. Lovely communal areas and gardens and views but the rooms don't quite rise above average in a 1980s sort of a way.

The bar was excellent and the staff gave some great recommendations of local pubs. Ruthin's a great little town and well worth exploring.

The best thing...the breakfast sausages. Buffet breakfasts are usually full of the cheapest ingredients possible but the Welsk leek sausages were fantastic. Just the thing to help with a nasty hangover.

Delightful Experience

Beautiful friendly hotel with great facilities in a wonderful setting. Staff are very friendly. Rooms are very large and in an old castle. Some peacocks roam in the grounds but are not particularly noisy as they have been reduced in numbers over the years. I have stayed there about a dozen times over the last 20 years and it has gradually improved. Meals in the restaurant are exceptional. Excellent value for money. Can't wait until I return. My friend was enchanted with it. I didn't see the ghosts. Plumbing can be a little noisy, dating from the 1920s.

Nice for photos, shame about the main staff

We got married at the castle in June and thankfully we are fairly laid back people as i fear had we been perfectionists our special weekend would have been ruined.

Dawn who is one of the wedding coordinators is completly rubbish at her job, so unorganized and says yes to things you have asked her to do - even though she has really forgotten all about the conversation and has done nothing about it. If you are planning on getting married here - ensure you get Russell who is alot better.

We booked a taster session and meeting with Dawn a month before, only to find she had gone home when we arrived! she claims she doesn't know who made the booking as she would never be at the castle at 6pm - we have kept the email that she sent telling us what time she had decided she could meet us to discuss our wedding - strangly enough she chose 6pm!

We were given the keys to our bridal suite on arrival only to find our room hadn't been made up or cleaned from the last people.

We had booked ourselves and guests into the restaurant for a meal the night before the wedding - 1 set of guests wanted to eat earlier so we booked them in for 6.30, when they arrived at the castle they were told the restaurant doesn't open until 7pm and it is now full so you will have to eat elsewhere! At no time when booking the tables for the friday night were we told the restaurant opened at 7pm and it amazed us even furhur that why the staff couldn't have reserved them a table at 7 just in case - seeing as they were paying to stay at the castle for 2 nights and in fact the restaurant was fairly empty that evening - they certainly were not full!

The table measurements we had been given for the top table were so wrong that the flowers we had ordered and paid for didn't fit on the table.

Our evening buffet was taken away - 45mins after being served - when it should have been out all night.

We asked that the chocolate decoration on top of our cake be kept for us, only to find out the following morning that they had smashed it up and 'chucked it' -(there words)! on the plate with the other cakes the night before!

Private documents with my address & contact details on were left on the side in foyer for all to see (along with a load of other guests documents) on the sunday evening after our wedding - when we spoke to the acting mangeress 'Vicki' couldn't see what the problem was because our wedding was y'day! Precisley we thought so why weren't our details shredded or locked away?

All the bar and waitressing staff are fab - great at their jobs - especially Mark & Frank and are very attentive it's just a shame the rest of the staff are useless as this could be a great venue for a wedding.

A Very Nice Experience

We really enjoyed exploring the grounds and the ruins of the original castle structure. The atmosphere was great right down to the creaky lift that never let us down. Our rooms were large and the hot water and water pressure were plentiful. Beautiful town and setting!

Our Romantic & Ghostly Experience

Myself and my then boyfriend from the USA stayed a night at Ruthin Castle in february 2003.

It was a pleasant interesting stay, food great and atmosphere truly inspirational.

We had a little ghostly experience, during our one night stay, having come in from a night out.

We tucked ourselves into bed and chatted about the day, about wandering inside the dungeons and exploring the old castle ruins. I asked one simple questions which was " I wonder where the grey ladys grave is " and low and behold the curtains flew up in the air and the windows were wide open, it was as if someone had blown into the room. The windows had been shut very tight, there was no sign of any wind that night, and it seemed odd that it happened as I mentioned the wherabouts of the grave.

needless to say we had to sleep with the bathroom light on from then onwards, it was very spooky and took me a long time to sleep. I felt like someone was watching me, Im not sure I could stay there again ., BUT it was an experience for sure. So if your interested in a spooky romantic hotel then this is the place for you !!

Melanie and Mike

A nice experience

The castle grounds are lovely, the staff very considerate and helpful and they have recently acquired internet access for guests at a reasonable price. The room was clean, comfortable and had great views of Ruthin! Close proximity to downtown Ruthin which is a very sweet town, small population and great shops. Don't miss the Castle Diner down the road a bit, great food and friendly waitresses. Everyone from the postmater to the owner of Elfair, a Welch shop, were informative and friendly. Don't miss the opportunity to stay in Ruthin at the castle, you won't regret it. Also, a great area to book if visiting LLangollen via Horseshoe pass, another can't miss opportunity.

A Best Western Castle?

What an incredible place. Although, I dare say that Best Western could afford to spend a few pounds sprucing up the old place. The rooms were comfortable and the atmosphere is quite charming. The grounds are lovely and worth exploring. Peacocks are all over the place. I was told to make sure I didn't leave the windows open on my ground floor room. Apparently, the peacocks are quite curious and they have been known to enter rooms through open windows. I would definitely stay here again.

Lovely Area and wonderful experience

The provenance of staying at Ruthin Castle overrides the shabby-chic furnishings and rooms. The rooms were spacious and clean and the beds comfortable. The history and outside setting is quite lovely. The dinners and breakfast buffet were excellent and the wait staff well trained and efficient. The Medieval Banquet was entertaining and the food excellent. A piece of jewelry was left behind when we moved on. The hotel located the item and mailed it on to me in the US. The item was very precious to me and their honesty and efficiency gained them very high marks. I would recommend staying here again-for the experience of staying in a castle, if for no other reasons.

Hard to believe this is a Best Western property - thought they had better standards

Having stayed in Best Western hotels all over the US, I have come to expect a reasonably priced hotel that is clean, heated, and safe. This place didn't live up to my expectations at all. I'm glad we stayed at a castle once in my life, but I would really look into it before I stayed in one again. Apparently the central heating system was broken, or at least that is what the hotel staff told me. Maybe it was too early to turn it on as it was only mid-September in Wales. The room was a long walk from reception, the room was musty, the shower curtain was unable to keep the water in the bathtub, and there was truly no warm place except when lots of people were gathered together for a meal generating lots of BTU's. The staff were able to arrange for some portable space heaters if you asked for one, but there was a limited amount available.

The staff as a whole were quite pleasant with the exception of one head waiter who forgot the cardinal rule that the customer is always right, and he was clearly in the wrong! The meals served were good, but when the food was gone, they acted like they didn't have any more, and had a hard time keeping up with the breakfast crowd. The bar carried non-alcoholic beer which is often a hard thing to find in the UK, so that was a plus. The medieval banquet was quite nice, and the singers were excellent. The castle appeared to be in quite a state of disrepair, and I would go as far as to say it was falling apart. I would say this castle had a bad case of damp and mold. Some of the areas were clearly dangerous to walk in, and were sign posted as such, for example the dungeon area. There were lots of peacocks around which are quite pretty, but if you are familiar with being around Canadian geese, they leave a lot of green land mines about. There is a rock circle similar to Stonehenge, adjacent to the property. Not the best of beds either. I wouldn't recommend staying here without an inspection of the property first.