After the Monarch agent decided to play Houdini and disappear into the night, leaving 200 or so passengers stranded at Dalaman airport without any information regarding our flight delay, we were eventually herded into the alleged 3* Dalaman Park Hotel. Fortunately we had expected a pretty poor standard of accomodation, unfortunately we didn't plan for the Dalaman Park!!!

This place is the bowels of the earth - staff were rude and unhelpful, the rooms were disgraceful and clearly hadn't been cleaned for years and our "balcony" was simply a home for two air conditioning units, both churning out 100 degrees of heat and both leaking dangerous fluid onto our floor (the most common cause of legionella bacteria is the "overspill" from aircon units).

We were travelling with our 3 year old son, and my parents (both in their 70's) so a 24 hour stay here proved a little tricky to say the least as the rooms were too dirty to stay in and the hotel airconditioning was broken so the "lobby" was like an oven. We couldn't allow our son to enter the pool as this was without doubt the dirtiest water outside of the BP oil slick in the US.

The "food" which was provided by the hotel was absolutely disgraceful, now don't get me wrong, we didn't expect gourmet and michelin stars, however as I have strict dietary requirements and any deviation can lead me to be seriously ill we decided to pay for food from the "a la carte" menu to ensure that I stayed within my guidelines. I was quite shocked when a fat angry chef stood direclty in front of me and began shouting and refusing to serve us, so the family were subjected to chicken nuggets, chips and dry spaghetti (I on the other hand went hungry!). Breakfast was a similar affair with bread and cheese on offer this time (there were however chicken nuggets still on the floor from the night before in case anyone felt especially hungry).

The only positive point from this hotel is that we now know that we'll never be going back there again as the alternative option of sleeping in the middle of the runway of Dalaman airport would certainly be the more favourable proposition!!!