Hotel Elephant Park

Stayed in Superior balcony room with elephant bathing river view with my Kid and Wife. I should say it was the best decision of my life. I had an option to choose another resort nearby with similar name but im glad that i didn't choose it. Because only from this resort you can see elephants straight from your room and from the dining area. The stay was awesome, the view during full moon with the entire river lit in moonlight was fantabulous. I encountered two hurdles with the staff : I booked Halfboard room - which is, the price cover both my breakfast and Dinner. When i went for dinner, i said Dinner is on my package. Staff in Dining could'nt understand, after repeated explanation, The staff there said, "No buffet, but you can have from Ala-carte", usually in my country they give me an ala-carte menu and ask me to choose from. So when they gave menu i ordered 3 main and one starter and a two mocktail for three of us. Next day when i checked out, the lady staff in front office asked me to pay for Dinner. I said the booking was done on Half board, she then checked and found it was Halfbord indeed. But still she asked us to pay for that starter and two mocktail. I said the staff said we can choose from any on the menu. But she then said only one main is allowed per person on package. This was not conveyed during the time of dinner. For the mistake they done, they insisted me to pay for the starter and drinks. With the situation being so awkward, I just paid off without any choice and left. If staff does a mistake like this they should take responsibility not ask the customer to pay for thier mistake. When you book, make sure you ask whats covered in dinner and lunch and breakfast if you added in your package. Besides this I think this is the only property that gives best view of the river and elephants.

Good place

Overall hotel was very good, this is one of best location in Pinnawela if you or kids would like to see real elephant or elephant bathing .

Perfect location, ruined by hotel endorsed spice garden scam and insulting activities manager. Had a terrible experience with *** the activities and transport manager. He arranged a day of activities for us which included a free visit to the local spice garden Luck Uyana, where we had a very convincing and seemingly informative tour and demonstration of all natural, traditional Sri Lankan herbal medicinal products. Following the tour, we spent 49,000lkr ($210 AUD!) on all natural, herbal medicinal creams and oils which we had been shown and sampled during the tour, bought for ourselves and as gifts. When we got back to the hotel I decided to try the all natural traditional hair removal cream but as soon as I opened the jar I smelt the unmistakable stink of cheap chemical hair removal cream Nair. I had paid $90 AUD for a about $5 AUD worth of pure chemical Nair that had been dyed yellow and repackaged. The saffron pigmentation corrector cream was the exact same colour and no doubt was just cheap moisturised dyed yellow, and our pure sandalwood oil a blend of cheap plant oils and more! We understand it was our own naivity for getting scammed however we didnt expect the hotel to drop us off at a total scam operation. But what really made the experience bad was a Hotel activity manager *** response. He tried to brush us off, argued with us saying herbal medicines dont work on everyone and how do we know its fake products, but you could see on his face he already knew it was all a scam, and couldnt even pretend to hide it when he smelt the chemical cream himself. His story constantly changed and all we wanted was our money back, and to voice our disappointment in the hotel that we trust to look after us during our stay instead dropping guests off at a scam operator, and that they should not continue this in the future. ***did not acknowledge any of our points or agree we had been scammed and story constantly changed back and forward between he has never had a complaint and everyone loves this spice garden, to then saying he has taken other people back to get refunds and they will not stop taking guests there. He kept repeating that it is a semi government place, however that doesnt change the fact that we had hust bought a bag full of fake and chemical products. He was unprofessional, rude, laughed at us before we insisted he come back with us to get our money back. After a very unpleasant experience we spent the night at the hotel, just to wake up in the morning at 7:15am to message and screenshots on whatsapp from***showing some guest reviews that enjoyed the spice garden and saying "u know reviews dont lie". This is incredibly petty and unprofessional, we were trying to enjoy the stay and forget about the unpleasantness of the day before, why he thought it was appropriate to message me again in the morning to drag it all up again to try and prove some point. Hotel activities manager messaging guests early in the morning with messages to imply we are the liars since the few other random reviews "dont lie" is shocking.