"Posted by: A man who has seen things he cannot unsee
Let me paint you a picture. You've saved up £3,330. You've told your six year old he's going to a Nickelodeon hotel. His little face. The excitement. The anticipation. You've watched the promotional videos approximately 47 times together. SpongeBob. Slime. Magic.
Reader, there was no magic.
The Welcome — or Lack Thereof
Upon arriving at what is marketed as a 5 star resort, we were handed room keys with all the warmth and enthusiasm of a Soviet-era bureaucrat processing paperwork. Room number. Keys. Goodbye. No orientation. No explanation of facilities. No mention of how to access the theme park, navigate the hotel, or indeed how to escape it in the event of a fire — more on that shortly. We learned everything through a combination of trial, error, and increasingly desperate WhatsApp messages to a QR code.
A QR code. Five stars.
The Room — A Study in Creative Maintenance
Our room greeted us like an old friend — if that friend hadn't cleaned their house since approximately 2019. Cobwebs adorned the corners with such confidence they appeared to be load bearing. The balcony, which remained unwashed for the entirety of our seven night stay, appeared to be cultivating its own ecosystem. The mini fridge — restocked a grand total of twice across seven days — sat in the corner like a forgotten appliance in a house clearance.
The bathroom sink moved. Not metaphorically. Physically. Side to side. A gentle wobble that suggested it had seen things. It had loosened its grip on life much like our grip on the notion that this was a five star establishment.
Most impressively, the patio door did not lock. At all. Not a stiff lock. Not a temperamental lock. No lock. In a hotel room with a balcony. With a child. A six year old. Who would absolutely, given half the opportunity, have been on that balcony at 3am investigating the Turkish night sky. Each evening became a logistical exercise in child containment that no holiday brochure had prepared us for.
The Elevator Situation — Dante's Seventh Circle
Three elevators. Seven floors. Hundreds of guests. I have queued for shorter periods at passport control in JFK on a bank holiday Monday. The elevator situation is not merely inconvenient — it is a philosophical experience. You will contemplate your life choices. You will question the decisions that led you here. You will consider, briefly, whether the stairs are an option — only to be informed by staff that the stairwell is a fire exit and therefore not for general use. The fire exit doors, it should be noted, were locked on multiple occasions. I will leave the health and safety implications of that sentence to your imagination.
The Culinary Experience
The buffet food was, I will generously concede, decent. The staff were largely lovely, though my Northern Irish accent — which I have been told resembles a Welsh man arguing with a Scotsman inside a tunnel — proved an insurmountable barrier on multiple occasions, resulting in a relay race of staff members until someone could translate my request for plain pasta for my diabetic child.
Plain pasta. The one thing on the menu my Type 1 diabetic six year old could reliably eat. It was available. I am grateful. The bar is on the floor and we cleared it.
Breakfast options for a diabetic child were essentially nonexistent. Carb heavy, sugar laden, and presented with the nutritional guidance of a confectionery convention. When you're managing a child's insulin to carbohydrate ratio at 8am in a foreign country and the buffet resembles Willy Wonka's fever dream, it adds a certain frisson to the morning.
The Pricing — An Academic Exercise in Audacity
£20 for a cocktail. £10 for a bottle of beer. £3 for a can of juice that is, inexplicably, not included in your package. The promenade shops, which are admittedly aesthetically pleasing, were charging £110 for toys that a reasonable person would expect to find in a petrol station for £12.99. I did not buy the £110 toy. I am not entirely sure who does. I assume they arrive by private helicopter.
The theme park wristbands require topping up for food and drink, presumably because the hotel felt that having already relieved you of £3,330, there remained some money in your account that needed addressing. Cash only in several locations. In 2026. On a resort that charges £20 for a cocktail.
The Theme Park — Seven Rides and a Dream
My six year old, who is approximately 116cm tall, could access a grand total of seven rides across the entirety of the Nickelodeon theme park. Seven. I have counted the apostrophes in this review and there are more than seven. The remaining rides taunted us from behind height restriction signs like bouncers outside a club we were not cool enough to enter.
The rides themselves appeared to have been cleaned last sometime during the Obama administration. SpongeBob.. the icon, the legend, the reason we came stands at the entrance to the theme park green and grimy at the back, like a beloved childhood toy found in a skip. The exterior of the hotel, which is less than two years old, has achieved the aesthetic of a 1980s Blackpool bed and breakfast that has weathered several difficult decades. The stairwells feature paint cracks so dramatic they appear structural. It is genuinely impressive how much character a building can develop in under 24 months.
The Pool — Available Weather Permitting, Hours Permitting, Mood Permitting
The outdoor pool closes at 5pm or 6pm depending on the day, the alignment of celestial bodies, or the personal preference of whichever lifeguard is on duty.. the logic was never made entirely clear to us. There is no indoor pool. In a hotel. In a resort. That charges £3,330. When it rained for three of our seven days, the pool was essentially inaccessible, leaving us to contemplate the cobwebs in our room and wonder what we had done to deserve this.
Lifeguard enforcement was, shall we say, selective. Guests launching one another into the water with the enthusiasm of an Olympic diving competition — fine. Guest considering entry to the pool — intervention required immediately.
The Staff — A Mixed Bag Presented Without Apology
Some staff were wonderful. The guest relations team organised a birthday surprise for our son that was genuinely touching. The dolphin show and I say this without a single note of sarcasm — was absolutely spectacular. World class. Genuinely magical. The dolphins were the undisputed highlight of the entire trip and the staff responsible for that show deserve every award available to them.
Other staff appeared to find the guests a source of considerable entertainment, gesturing and laughing in ways that a generous person might interpret as cultural and a less generous person might interpret as pointing and laughing. Management staff in jackets were observed being openly rude to waiting staff in front of guests which was unnecessary, unprofessional, and deeply uncomfortable to witness.
The toilet doors on multiple floors did not lock. In a family hotel. With children. The implications of this require no elaboration.
In Conclusion
My son had a lovely time because he is six years old, autistic, and will find genuine joy in a puddle if there is a stick nearby. He swam. He went on seven rides. He watched dolphins. He was happy.
The hotel charged us £3,330 for the privilege of a broken patio door, an ambulatory sink, cobwebs with squatters rights, three elevators for a small nation, locked fire exits, £20 cocktails, seven accessible rides, a locked gym, an app of breathtaking uselessness, and a SpongeBob who has seen better days.
Two stars. One for the dolphins. One for the plain pasta."
