Chalet Les Balcons 3 Reviews

A bad experience overall

Reviewed 8 May 2014

Meals generally: Portion size/control was ridiculous. The kids in the group were often getting larger portions that myself and then not finishing them while I was left hungry. Their parents were ok as they could finish up what their kids had left but I would suggest that while noone likes waste, I would have preferred to feel properly fed. We went out after dinner a couple of times to supplement our food intake.
Breakfast: This was ok. I am still not convinced about spreading a whole cooked breakfast over a week with one item per day but there was usually enough bread to eat and fuel up for the day.
Lunch: we did our own
Tea: The cakes were good but as we were skiing longer than the other guests we rarely got more than a few crumbs
Dinner: Meals were ok, again the portion size was very small for people who are going out skiing all day. It annoys me that I can go to a chalet in France and be served what is essentially English food. Part of the reason I love going to France is for the good food, this ruined the holiday a bit for me. On the plus side, the wine was plentiful.

The Chalet hosts were nice but a bit impersonal. In other chalets i have been to the hosts actually bothered to get to know you and generally eat with you in the evening. It was as if they couldn’t get out of there fast enough to go out with their mates. I realize that most of them use chalet hosting as a way of getting out skiing for the season but at the end of the day i thought they could have been more committed to their jobs.

The skiing was great and we had good snow but as we went as a couple (teacher) during half term the chalet was run over with kids. We were in the room off the main living room and as such were woken up at the crack of dawn by the chalet hosts crashing about in the kitchen with plates and glasses getting everything ready for breakfast.

The Chalet was in a good location, nearly ski in ski out if you can deal with some slightly rocky off piste but at most a 100m walk.
During this holiday I made up my mind to only go with a self catering apartment unless I could convince enough people to spend twice the money to fill a chalet during half term.