Golden Odyssey Hotel

"The hotel is a little out of the way, with around a 25-minute walk to the more built-up area. If you're travelling with younger children, I'd definitely recommend taking a pushchair. We don’t mind the walk, but some people may it was 10 euro in a taxi or you could use the hotel beach bus at set times during the day. The beach is pebble. We stayed in a Superior Family Room, which was decent overall. Fresh towels were provided daily, the beds were made each day, and the room received a light clean. The air conditioning worked well. Our room was in the 800 block and overlooked the quieter pool area. However, there was a strong sewage/rotten egg smell coming from the back of the property, which was present throughout the entire holiday and was very unpleasant. On the last day you could even smell it in the bathroom coming from drains. The pools and slides were great, and the kids loved them. However, some of the lifeguards around the children's pools were very strict and seemed to change the rules frequently. For the first four days, inflatable rings were allowed on the slides, then suddenly they weren't, which disappointed the children. Guests weren't allowed drinks by the kids' pool with the slides, yet lifeguards were walking around with bottles of water this was new rule on the 6th day of the holiday. We ignored this rule we disposed of our plastic cups after each use and had soft drinks by the pool. The food was probably the biggest disappointment for our family. Some guests seemed to enjoy it, but we didn't. The burgers from the snack bar tasted strange, and the ice cream was only available between 2pm and 5pm. Breakfast options were limited; I mainly ate fried eggs and beans, while the kids struggled to find anything they liked. The soft drinks were very weak and lacked flavour, especially the Diet Coke, which tasted like coloured water. No many still drink options only water fresh juice only available in main restaurant. Coffee was not the best but better than nothing. There was no bottled water provided in the room on arrival, and no snacks available despite us arriving at 2am after a long flight. I found this quite thoughtless for an all-inclusive hotel. The eggs at breakfast were pre-cooked and left on trays rather than freshly prepared. In other all-inclusive resorts we've visited, there has usually been someone making omelettes or eggs to order. Food choices overall felt limited. The battered fish was poor quality, with soft white fish and skin left on underneath the batter. Many dishes were pork or veal stews, often with fatty cuts of meat. At breakfast there were no individual yoghurt pots for children, only large trays of plain or strawberry yoghurt. The chicken nuggets were also disappointing, being brown inside and not tasting very nice. On the second-to-last day, my children became ill with sickness and diarrhoea. We heard of several other children being sick around the same time, so it's possible it was related to the food or pool, although obviously we can't say for certain. For most of the holiday, my children lived on plain pasta, chips, pizza, pancakes with chocolate sauce, and chocolate bread. Occasionally they ate chicken wings, although they sometimes said those tasted a bit strange too. We ate out twice during our stay and they enjoyed those meals much more. The staff themselves were lovely and I can't fault them. The slides and pools were fun, and the children had a great time despite some of the frustrations. When the kids became ill, staff quickly provided fresh bedding and spare sheets, which was appreciated. We booked the holiday last minute, so the price was reasonable for the school half-term break. However, I would have been very disappointed if I'd paid full price. In my opinion, this hotel is nowhere near a 4-star standard. The weather at the end of May and beginning of June was fantastic. Be aware of additional costs: we paid €70 tourist tax on arrival and €80 to keep the family room until our departure. The on-site shop is also quite expensive. Overall, if you've already booked, don't panic—you won't go hungry, but you may not particularly enjoy the food. If you're allocated a room at the very back of the resort and notice the smell, I'd recommend requesting a move straight away. We put up with it for the entire holiday and wish we'd spoken up sooner. Also, if you're travelling with young children, be prepared for a fair bit of walking and definitely bring a pushchair. I ask myself would I return to that hotel and the answer is no."

"dimitri omar and chico are the best :) x"

"We booked this as a last minute holiday for our family of 6, 2 adults and 4 children. We loved the look of the hotel and as we hadn’t visited Rhodes before we took a chance and booked. The reviews seemed great and the travel agent said it was a fantastic place! The location is derelict, it’s a 20 minute walk to the nearest beach and shops, which in hot heat is quite a trek. The rooms where variable, we had 2 rooms and one of them didn’t have functioning air conditioning, they seemed quite modernised, however the bunk beds where extremely high with a tiny barrier to prevent falling. Both my young children had to share a bed on the bottom bunk. The bathrooms are a concern, they are fully tiled, no support system to prevent slipping, just a glass screen which did nothing to prevent water entering the entire room. The rooms where not cleaned daily, out of 7 nights, we had our room cleaned twice and on 5 occasions we had to ask for clean towels, which we then had to argue for because staff made out we were stealing them. The stench from around the resort was vile, sewage smell constantly filling the rooms, we couldn’t have the doors open it was awful. The restaurant is a queue and wait system, which I’ve never encountered at an all inclusive, as we are a family of 6 we struggled every meal time to get a table and got turned away until it was quieter, which by then the food had all gone. The only thing they replaced regularly was chips, once things had finished that was it. We did eat a couple of times in the restaurant and I have to say the food is absolutely disgusting, no variety at all, nothing matched, fruit was all tinned, no melon, watermelon etc. the kids menu was the same every night, food constantly being reheated and reused. The pizza guy was good, but made one pizza at a time in the massive pizza oven which made queues constantly backed up, by the time you got to the front there was none left and you’d to wait. We had to eat out several times because it was awful. The snack bar was ok, same food every single day and nothing was signposted so if you’ve allergies this is something to bear in mind, the staff are all Philippine so no English at all. Also, there is only one place for drinks which is the snack bar, no spirits or cocktails are allowed during the day, just fizzy pop or beer on draft which I saw children accessing, not monitored at all. The swimming pools are not the cleanest near the snack bar, the water was constantly full of rubbish or leaves, murky looking, the slides area and the two pools in the far side of the hotel were cleaner, however need to have some work done to the base as my children have chunks of skin missing out the bottom of their feet from manoeuvring round in them. The staff in the hotel I found very friendly, with a couple of exceptions. The reception staff are ill mannered and rude. We had a couple of encounters with Diana especially, who was not helpful in the slightest, I have lodged a formal complaint against her for the way she spoke to me and my 13 year old son. Dimitri is amazing! The entertainment staff are fab, a bit pushy with the sports itinerary during the day but overall friendly. The lifeguards are absolutely disgusting, we encountered a couple of events whereby they were physically grabbing children and removing them from the slides area, we also made a complaint about that. Something to bear in mind is that check out is 11am, and the cost of keeping the room on is 80€, until 5pm and then 10€ per hour after that. There is NO LUGGAGE ROOM, your belongings just get kept in reception for anyone to look through which I found very uncomfortable. They don’t let you use the shower room when departing unless you pay 15€ an hour. Concluding on this, I have to say this hotel definitely needs to have some improvements made, it’s no where near a 4* hotel, it’s more like a 2.5/3. We got told off a local taxi driver that the hotels gain a star if they have a church attached to the resort, which ours did but was not used, therefore they can label it a 4* when it’s actually a very poorly managed hotel. It’s misleading."