Ohtels Vila Romana

"I’ve been coming to this hotel for over 25 years, since the age of 5 with my parents and I now come here with my wife and our own two kids! No hotel is without its faults, you will never get a perfect hotel, but Vil La Romana comes pretty darn close! I’ll start with the negative as that’s what people usually complain about: - Waiting time at the bar, I don’t believe this is on the staff, I’ve seen busier bars run with less people in my time and they can run quite efficiently, I believe this issue is with the tills and the cash/card machine they seem to be quite slow. My personal opinion is, getting the drink is quick paying for it is the issue maybe the hotel could look into updated tills to speed up this process. - Sun beds, again this isn’t an issue with the hotel or the staff it’s more an issue with the guests of the hotel and dare I say it mainly the British. Pool doors open at 8 and you could have people queuing at the doors from 6:45, I don’t know about any of you reading this but when I go on holiday I’m here for a sleep in, not here to be battling for bloody beds! The hotel has more then enough beds the issue here is, umbrellas are few and far between which I think is a good part of the issue a lot of people want beds with umbrellas and a pool view, the hotel can’t fix the pool view issue but they could maybe look at renting umbrellas for areas that don’t have them, this for certain would keep me in bed as the only reason I get up and participate in the bed wars is to get an umbrella!! Positives: - The Animation team, one of the reasons my parents brought me back here and I now bring my own kids is for the animation team. They are second to none, it’s a hard job constantly acting and looking happy and dealing with other peoples kids, kids are great but having 20 hanging out of you all day every day and still being great fun and a ball of laughs is a job well done! I will admit over the last number of years Pepitto from the animation team was fantastic. I’m sad to hear that he has retired and getting used to the new team is hard, that’s not to say they are in anyway less talented it’s just hard to get used to new faces, personalities and personas. Overall they still do a fantastic job and our kids love the games, fun and laughs! Finally one of the parts of staying in Vil La Romana is each day at 9:30ish while having dinner the Animation team and nearly every kid in the hotel will come into the restaurant screaming “WAAAAAOOOOOO”, “MINI DISCO”, this is a right of passage that’s been going as long as I can remember and it’s a little part I always carry with me, the kids love it. I’m sad to see a review below mention “screaming at dinner” and then this evening we had no “WAAAAAOOOOOO”, “MINI DISCO”, at dinner. I found myself saying it in anticipation of them coming into dinner. I understand from this guests perspective but this is tradition, at this stage every evening at 9:30 the restaurants been open for over an hour and a half before this where they could have had dinner! -Entertainment, the professional live shows that are on Tuesday to Sunday are good the singers, dancers and acts are great to watch BUT if you are coming for 2 weeks (14 days) be prepared to see the same acts/entertainment twice, nothing on the hotel or the acts themselves I’m perfectly happy to see things twice as long as they are good which in this case they are! -Rooms, rooms have had a massive renovation which is welcomed, not that they were bad before, for me the room isn’t a huge thing I look at as it’s a place to rest my head at night I spend max 6 hours in the room a day. The old style was a bit out dated these new rooms are very modern, everything has been done up within the room and the addition of the rotating fan on the ceiling as well as the AC is a god send for this 30 degree heat we are having at the minute! One slight issue I have with the rooms: we are a family of 4 (6 and 3) we have a double room or a twin I think it’s called which is the largest you can get before you get a suite, I think the ages of our kids are maxing out this room next year we will need a suite as the room size for 4 people is a bit tight! -Location, proximity to Portaventura is excellent, it’s about a 20 minute walk (Up Hill) to the park and if you get a taxi it’s about €8 to the park and €9 back as they take a different route back. Proximity to the town centre/beach, it’s about a 12 minute walk to the shopping street and beach which isn’t bad, unsure on taxi fare as we havn’t gotten a taxi into town. -Staff, staff are as friendly as I’d want them to be, they all say hello, thank you and good bye, friendly manner and welcoming. The one issue I’d have is as dinner getting a drink can take a while, not really on the staff again I think they may have too many tables to wait and ensuring all guests in their area are topped up with drink can be tough, possibly on the hotel to look at adding an extra few staff floating around just to look after drinks as I’d certainly have ordered a few more for the whole table each night if we had better drinks service instead we finished up and went into the bar to order, maybe this is what the hotel want to turn over table quickly due to the number of people which also makes sense! Slides- the hotel has 4 water slides at the back of the hotel, signage and overall advertisement informing you the hotel has slides and where they are could be better, on our last visit here the slides were new and we didn’t realise they existed until the second last day! This year we knew about them but from speaking to other families they didn’t know! The slide are nothing major, small and good fun you’ll use them 5/6 times a day good to change things up a little. -Waterpolo (Adults), not for the faint hearted, haha this daily game of water polo at 15:30 gets very heated which is great, all the adults killing each other for 30 minutes to try and win only for the game to always end in golden goal is great. Don’t change anything about this I always look forward to playing this every year! GO RED TEAM! Overall I love this hotel its brilliant, as I mentioned not without its faults but the positives out weigh the negatives and the negatives arn’t that bad! 9/10 would recommend to family and friends, you can get good deals on the hotel with love holidays and TUI. I’ll always come back here for a good summer holiday!"

"We visited this hotel 2 years ago and enjoyed but there were a few negatives. This time we also enjoyed and would recommend . Some issues had been ironed out and some remained . One massive improvement was the check in procedure. There were far more staff and they were far quicker and more efficient. Another huge plus point is the renovated rooms . They have done a great job. One slight negative is the choice and variety of food did not seem as good as 2 years ago. We were never left hungry and it’s still a decent enough selection. However I was slightly disappointed with the quality. The majority of the staff are friendly and do a great job. The hotel is well maintained and kept fairly clean. All In all we enjoyed and for the price we paid it is good value."

"So this place has had some bad publicity because of the ‘sun bed wars’ which does happen but I was there at 8 most mornings and ALWAYS got 3 beds but then chose to sit at the tables and chairs as it was better for us. Anyway, forget that, me, my wife and my 4 year old son had an amazing week here. On the front of it the room was a little rough around the edges and could do with a small upgrade (the shower was spraying out near the tap but didn’t stop it functioning and was a really nice shower) the AC and fan are fantastic I had to turn them off during the night as I got Baltic (a little tip, take a magnet for the balcony door and override the AC sensor as it turns off when you open the door) the beds were huge, wardrobes were adequate and the bathroom was lovely with some low level lighting on motion sensors for late night ablutions. The dinner hall was busy at opening and other times but time it right and it can be really quiet. The food choice is generally what you’d expect to find on the continent BUT they have a HUGE charcoal grill for doing the meat dishes on and everything that comes off is sublime. They have a theme section that’s different every night and your standard buffet food. Always somewhere to sit but can take a while to get out of the place whilst you queue to pay for drinks. The pool is beautiful, big enough for you to swim in whilst there’s kids jumping in everywhere and throwing balls around in rubber rings me and my boy were in there all day for a week and we had bags of fun. The slides were a little rough, loose bolts and the bit you slide into at the bottom was full of stones which left a rough landing(not great) and the splash park stopped working for the last 2 days. The BEST part of the holiday was the entertainment team, I can’t praise them enough. It’s a true vocation for those guys. They will look after your kids like they are their own. But also the lads got involved with the water polo and made it bags of fun. The kids club is probably better for kids under 4 as my boy was bored in there. But the passion they showed from minute one to the minute we left was fantastic. Honestly if you’re travelling with kids they are going to have the best time with these guys like I said I can’t praise them enough I would return on the strength of them alone. The shows at night are brilliant as well. Belting performances. All in all I would say the bar staff need to be a little be quicker, the rooms need a bit of TLC along with the slides and some other facilities but for a last minute, cheaper than most booking it was perfect for us."