Coalson Plantation & Inn, Thomasville

The Melhana Plantation is a really nice place -- great main house, nice rooms, and a really great 1930's indoor tile pool. Construction on the farm started in the middle of the 19th century, and it's been improved several times since. The room we had in the Foshalee building was great, and a good price at $99/night. They had a main house with a large, nice sitting room, and a dining room. It was well maintained, with antique furniture. Another sitting room was in the wing of the main house. The pool house was from the 1930s, and was very nice. It seemed well maintained. It has a glass enclosure, separate men's and women's dressing rooms, and some nice seating. The pool is made of 1" square tiles, and goes to 8-feet deep. It's very nice and quaint. The Foshalee building, where we stayed, had been converted from an original barn building of some sort. It was very nice, though, and showed obvious care had been taken in the restoration and maintenance. Our room included a continental breakfast. The breads were pretty good, as were the fruit juices. But the fruit might have been sliced yesterday, and the coffee was just a brown beverage (i.e., the standard stale, pre-ground stuff). It's odd, though: the brochure about the plantation found in the rooms actually mentioned this big, full breakfast involving eggs and ham. We were told when making the reservation that only a continental breakfast was provided, so this was fine. There were a few significant deficiencies, though, which lead us to suspect that the Melhana is suffering from poor management at the moment, and possibly in a period of decline because of it. Housecleaning had missed a few used towels in our room (yuck!). The shower had *incredibly* low pressure. The light in the shower didn't work. The "front desk" button on the phone called a number that was never answered, and it was difficult to get the attention of anyone at the front desk either to check in, check out, or to repair the plumbing and lighting issues. There was no working lighting outside of our room, making us stumble around after dark. There were no napkins in the dining room for breakfast. In general, the Melhana has a lot of potential, but needs some management that cares about attention to detail.