A Very Different Kind of Family Hotel Stay at Hard Rock Hotel Penang

We were invited by Hard Rock Hotel to spend Mother’s Day weekend with them in Penang and honestly, from the second we walked through the doors, it felt like somebody there had decided their personal mission was to make Jax feel like a minor celebrity.

Not in an over-the-top awkward way either. Just genuinely thoughtful.

We arrived a little early so our room wasn’t ready yet, which was completely fair because we were absolutely those people turning up before check-in with backpacks, snacks and mild travel exhaustion written all over our faces.

So we headed to Starz Restaurant for the Mother’s Day brunch.

And this pretty much set the tone for the entire stay.

The restaurant doors opened and one of the staff members, Joe, immediately smiled and said, “You must be Jax.”

Jax completely froze.

Looked at me.

Looked back at Joe.

“How do you know my name?”

Honestly, his face was incredible.

From there it just carried on all weekend. Everyone remembered names. Everyone stopped to chat. It never felt forced or scripted. Just warm.

The roast dinner nearly finished us off

The Mother’s Day brunch was our first meal at Hard Rock Hotel and possibly one of the most aggressively British moments we’ve had since leaving the UK eight months ago.

A full roast buffet.

After months of rice, noodles, curries and “shall we just get another quick street food dinner?”, suddenly standing in front of roast potatoes, all the meats and gravy felt slightly emotional.

We massively overdid it.

Multiple times.

Nobody showed restraint.

Jax had already announced before we’d even sat down that he intended to “fully commit” to the roast potatoes, which he absolutely did.

The buffet itself was huge but still good quality, which isn’t always guaranteed with hotel buffets. Sometimes quantity wins and everything tastes vaguely tired. This wasn’t like that at all.

And because it was buffet style, Jax loved the freedom of just wandering back up whenever he fancied another plate.

We stayed there far longer than intended, mostly because we physically couldn’t move very quickly afterwards.

The Roxity Kids Suite was honestly ridiculous

Once our room was ready we headed up to the Roxity Kids Suite and this is where Jax completely lost his mind a bit.

The suite has a main bedroom for adults, then a separate kids room with its own huge bed, books, toys and PlayStation 4. You can borrow games and controllers from the kids club free of charge which, for travelling families, is actually such a smart idea.