"We visited this beautiful hotel for the first time to celebrate my husband’s significant birthday. First impressions were that the hotel was huge, the main building stunning and the grounds surrounding the pools beautifully well kept.
We stayed on the 5th floor on the non-privilege side and found this a good, quiet location. The rooms are large and newly renovated and the bathroom had a walk in shower with quality toiletries. We appreciated the added touches of bathrobes and slippers, free safe and mini bar containing beers, water, soft drinks and snacks.
We arrived late at night and were immediately checked in and escorted to our room by a very helpful member of staff. The wristband you are given at check in serves as your room key which is very useful and is also scanned when you order drinks. It will take you a while to find your way around the hotel especially as the main sets of lifts are numbered differently.
We found the food in the buffet restaurant to be good. Breakfast had everything you could want, fruit, cereal (even porridge), breads and pastries, eggs cooked fresh in any way you want etc. Particularly liked the English back bacon, although this wasn’t on every day. Lunch and dinner were similar with 2 types of fish and 2 types of meat always cooked to order alongside other things like wok vegetables, pasta, pizza, great salad bar etc. A few nights at dinner a lady was expertly cooking crepes which were delicious. We found breakfast and dinner to be very crowded in the restaurant but we were always escorted to a table and, for dinner, drinks order taken immediately. Queues at the show cooking were never too bad and the chefs were lovely. We found lunch the most enjoyable meal as it was quieter and we liked to sit at the outside seating area which was lovely.
We had 2 visits to the a la carte restaurants included as part of our stay and went to Sakura for the first visit. This was a fun show but we only managed to get onto first sitting, which at 18:30 was quite early for us. We booked La Brasserie for our other visit to celebrate my husband’s birthday and had a lovely evening. The food, service and views of the sunset were amazing. My husband had received a lovely surprise earlier in the day of a bottle of Moet, a cake and balloons which was a birthday package the hotel provides arranged by our sons.
There are several pools at the hotel and whilst we loved swimming in the main pool under the bridges we preferred the area around the infinity pool. This is adjacent to the Tropical Terrace bar which is a great place for a drink or a coffee. There are plenty of sunbeds at the hotel including day beds and there is no need to rush to reserve them (in fact this is not allowed)
In the evening you have the choice of several bars. The Tropical Terrace is great for watching the sunset and has entertainment in the early evening some nights. Charlie, the saxophonist is a highlight. The lobby bar behind reception is a lovely chilled area and has a pianist a couple of evenings. The main entertainment is in the disco bar once the mini disco ends but we found this quite disappointing. We enjoyed 5th Avenida and Rock does Opera but found the tribute bands eg ABBA, Beatles and Legends disappointing. However the bar staff were fabulous, producing delicious cocktails and other top shelf drinks under a lot of pressure. It seems wrong to name people as they were all lovely but Noel, Esequiel and Alejandro were great.
As we were leaving late on our last day we requested to keep our room on. You have to return on the morning you are leaving to see if this is possible and it costs €45. We were lucky enough to get this and found it well worthwhile. However one thing that we felt was unfair was that, although we were all inclusive this ends at midday on your last day. You do get a card to enable lunch in the buffet but any drinks including coffees are chargeable after 12:00. This just seems to sour what had been a wonderful experience and I would ask management to reconsider their policy."
