Jackalope Hotel

Jackalope was a property that came highly recommended. It is located in a stunning part of the Mornington Pensinsula. Unfortunately our room faced a parking lot and the vineyards were nowhere to be seen. The room was spacious, but the bathroom area was strangely appointed. The toilet was attached to the glass wall and didn’t really provide much privacy. The breakfast service was a bit slow, but delicious. We dined at their restaurant, which strangely also had no views of the gorgeous scenery. We left slightly underwhelmed, even if there were no big problems during our stay, but we came with too high expectations.

Overall this is quite a luxurious property with two on-site restaurants (one formal, one casual), an infinity pool and spa, a new sauna, and corporate facilities. As Jackalope is also a winery, there is, of course, a vinyard (quite beautiful), as well as a cosy cellar door. The location is very pretty. We stayed in the vinyard view room at ground level, which we found to be spacious, clean and broadly on par with lots of other five star hotels, and the rooms were more spacious than average for a property of this star rating. This reflects the location, which is about one hour from the east side of Melbourne, and is nestled among bush and vinyards. There were lots of nice snacks and drinks that were provided free of charge in the room. The rooms include a turn down service (you receive bath salts and an eye mask plus pillow mist, lol!) The downside to this property is absolutely its service. I was really disappointed in our dinner experience in particular, at Doot Doot Doot (the formal dining). We had no choice but to opt for an 8:30pm sitting, which is a little bit weird in the country, but stock standard in the fancier restaurants of Melbourne, so whatever, 8:30pm it was. However, the *three course* (not degustation) meal took around 2.5 to 3 hours to unfold. I could still easily handle this, but I started to get annoyed when there were around 12 to 13 staff in the restaurant (that I counted), yet all of them were cleaning and sweeping except for one completely frazzled dessert-maker who was busy beavering away in a corner. I can't even begin to tell you how ruined our experience was by having the restaurant mainly empty, with everyone around us cleaning, whilst we waited ONE HOUR between the second-to-last course, and our dessert. Total buzz kill and you felt like you were keeping the staff there, when actually, they were then keeping us there! And then the whole meal for four people with just 2 bottles of wine was $1000. I could live with this if the experience was outstanding, but it was unreservedly a "meh" experience, or even a bad experience. Breakfast was also diabolically slow, and I held my tongue, but we waited, ultimately, 1.5 hours for breakfast to arrive. Multiple, and I mean multiple, other couples and groups started absolutely losing it, with one couple notably leaving without breakfast ever arriving. Our breakfast FINALLY arrived with: ONE dish missing altogether, and no single dish being "as ordered" - no doubt bc the staff member never wrote our order down to begin with. TWO of our dishes were meant to include baked beans and did not arrive with baked beans - yeah ok, big deal - but can you believe they then brought us a BILL for FOUR DOLLARS because one person (me) had ordered a side of avocado! I couldn't believe the pettiness. We were so relaxed about wrong orders and the ridiculous wait, but asking me to sign for $4 of avocado left a very bitter taste in my mouth indeed. The defence of so many managers is that w

This hotel has a lot of hype around it, but when you arrive you realise quickly that it is not so grand. When walking into the reception area you are greeted with a black painted area and staff that are not very helpful or friendly (actually rude in our case) What you don’t realise is that the black painted walls continue down the hall to your rooms..bit like a nightclub feeling. Our room was fairly big and actually had a white wall but mainly black. Let me pre warn you that the main theme for this hotel is black. Black pool, towels, etc…. They offer free ice cream and popcorn all day, so while sitting by the pool asked if we could have some ice cream only to be told that you can only have it in your room!!! Clean and tidy place but definitely not worth the price and if you still want to visit make sure you request a room looking over the pool otherwise the car park is your view. Plenty of other more unique and not black places to stay before this hotel.