Mercure Doncaster Centre Danum Hotel - Horses, Horror, and Hash Browns
- Nigel Slippers
- Sep 7, 2025
- 4 min read
The official blurb says this is a stylish, historic four-star hotel in the heart of Doncaster, where modern comfort meets warm Yorkshire hospitality. What it actually delivers is a front-row seat to the Betfred St Leger Festival apocalypse, a lift so small it should be in a doll’s house, and a breakfast buffet that felt like a covert government experiment in psychological warfare.
🚶 Arrival – The Pub Gauntlet
No parking. Instead, a ten-minute death march through Doncaster’s finest on race weekend. At 5 p.m. the streets were already a battlefield: pubs spilling punters into the gutter, bouncers at every doorway like nightclub bosses, and drunk bodies strewn across the pavement like it was a dress rehearsal for 28 Days Later. By the time I reached the hotel, I needed therapy more than a room key.
🛎️ Check-in – Doncaster Debate Club
The welcome began with an attempted extra charge for breakfast I’d already booked. Out came the Accor app like Exhibit A at the Old Bailey. Five minutes of awkward arguing later, another staff member reluctantly fixed it. Upgrade? I asked three times. First guy just smiled blankly, second tried fobbing me off with a drinks voucher, and the third mumbled something about “subject to availability.” Translation: “Don’t waste our time, mate.”
🐴 Corridor of Horses & Lift of Doom
The corridor décor theme is horses — fitting, since half the racecourse seemed to be lodging here. At the end stood the ancient ThyssenKrupp lift: tiny, rattly, and proudly labelled “5 persons / 375kg.” Five what? Five toddlers? Five jockeys stacked like circus acrobats? Even my suitcase looked nervous stepping in.
Each ride was a clattering horror that ended with a beep so shrill it could wake the dead — or at least the Clubland ravers at Novotel Newcastle Airport. Naturally, my room was parked right next to it, so I got the full beep-opera all night long.
🛏️ Room Reality
Credit where it’s due: the bed was comfy — a proper double, not two singles zip-tied together like at ibis Budget Newport. The room was clean, and the desk was big enough to look productive at.
But amenities? Forget it.
No USB ports (apparently sockets were rationed after the war).
No phone (smoke signals unavailable).
No minibar (the only bar was in my imagination).
Tea tray = one Yorkshire Tea bag, three sachets of Nescafé Original, and a single Bronte chocolate biscuit thin. A ration pack dressed up as hospitality.
🚿 Bathroom – Herbal Tease
Modern, clean, and spacious, stocked with fancy Elemental Herbology toiletries. Lovely touch. Except my shampoo bottle was already empty, presumably enjoyed by the last guest. Nothing like inheriting someone else’s lather to make you feel special.
🍺 Guinness Crimes & Dining Tragedy
My free drink voucher led me to a fridge so bare it looked like student halls after Freshers’ Week. Draft beer? None. But there it was: a can of Guinness Surger — salvation! Until the barman poured it straight into the glass like it was lemonade. Flat. Dead. A Guinness war crime, fully worthy of The Great Guinness Glass Audit.
Cue me explaining the mystical science of the Guinness Surger machine. Ten minutes later, after fetching it, plugging it in, and looking at it like it was nuclear equipment, he finally produced a pint that lived.
Dinner? Forget it. The restaurant was closed, and the backup “menu” consisted of four options no human had ever chosen willingly. I escaped across the road, where even the restaurant had a bouncer. Once I proved I wasn’t drunk, I got in and devoured grilled goat’s cheese and beetroot — my Kryptonite, and the only meal worth remembering.
🍳 Breakfast – The Burnt-Lid Olympics
This was the grand finale of Doncaster hospitality. Four staff stood gossiping by the entrance as I walked in like a lost extra from The Crystal Maze. No instructions, no guidance. When I asked, the response was a shrug that could win medals.
Every hot tray had a scalding lid and no labels, so I played “Mystery Box Roulette,” burning my fingers eight times to reveal… disappointment.
Hash brown so soggy it could be wrung out like a flannel.
Beans with the flavour intensity of warm tap water.
A sausage so vile I spat it out on the spot. Possibly horse meat — fresh from yesterday’s losers at the St Leger Festival. Suddenly the lack of labels made sense: plausible deniability.
I left wishing I’d just gone to McDonald’s. At least there the hash browns come crunchy and without hoof.
📶 Wi-Fi – Now You See It, Now You Don’t
At first, the Wi-Fi looked promising — a few solid bars, enough to tempt me into believing Doncaster had finally cracked the code. But then it started cutting out every few minutes, like it was powered by someone pedalling furiously in the basement. Eventually it gave up entirely. No Wi-Fi, no 4G, nothing. I was basically sealed in a digital Faraday cage, left alone with my thoughts, the lift beeping, and a horse statue silently judging me. Less four-star hotel, more enforced digital detox retreat.
🎭 Final Thoughts
Mercure Doncaster Centre Danum may have had a lick of paint, but the soul is still firmly glued to 1973. Between the festival chaos, the zombie staff, the lift that sounded like it was built by Meccano, and a breakfast buffet that should come with a health warning, this isn’t a hotel stay — it’s an endurance event.
Final Nigel Rating: 🐴🐴 out of 5. Two horses bolted. The rest? Almost certainly in the sausages. Curious how this hotel stacks up against the rest?
👉 See the full Accor-ometer: Beds, Beers & Bad Decisions
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