|
 Sunny Says there
are 95 visitors online
Sunnys' Hints: Remember, Look before you book @ holiday-truth.com! |
|
| Holiday-Truth Readers Reports |
Janet from Warrington travelled to Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare with
Flightline Direct
on a couples holiday.
There were 2 adults and 0 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 10 2008 | rated the Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare as follows:| Cleanliness |  | | Location |  | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment |  |
| said: Had a thoroughly relaxing holiday at this complex supported by good weather and views from hotel. Just returned after spending the week on the beach or in the pool. Would recommend it to all, plenty of facilities.
Think we have been spoilt now as this was our first all inclusive holiday, enjoyed the food and had lots of variety, enjoyed the cocktail menu also (which we worked our way through).
Hotel was well run with lots of friendly staff available to assist if needed. Rooms were good and maid service was daily.
Only downside is I don't really like cats and you can't get away from them here, even on the beach. Also, a note to point out is it was closing down for the end of the season so some facilities became unavailable as the week progressed. (Didn't really bother us as lots of sunbeds around the pool and on the beach.)
Will definitely go again but it will be late in the season as it's frightening the size of the place and how many people would be there in high season.
Click here for more information on this hotel, resort and region
| | |
Gordon D from Wolverhampton travelled to Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare with
First Choice
on a family holiday.
There were 3 adults and 3 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 08 2008 | rated the Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: We have just returned from two weeks in the Paradise Royal Mare, and can say it was a fantastic holiday!
There were six of us, two adults and children aged 15, 11, 10 and 8. We all had a great time.
The hotel is split in two, the main hotel is the paradise royal mare, and the second area is the paradise village.
The main hotel consists of the main building with the public areas, reception, main bar, night club, main restaurants some rooms above and two accomodation wings.
The paradise village is set in the same grounds, and is more sprawling with multiple lower accomodation blocks. Most of the blocks have smallish pools right outside - so that makes up most of the 10 pools in the complex.
The main pool is behind the hotel main building and is a perfect size, one half is fairly shallow and the sencond is deeper, going to 3.8M at the deepest. It is salt water, but there are showers next to the pool if you are worried about salt on skin.
The pool is very clean, they top up the cleaning fluids every day at about 7am so you dont want to swim until about 8, when it has a chance to mix.
There are lots of sunloungers around the pool, it does get busy at peak periods, you do need to get a bed by 9am if you want any chance of shade.
There is a smaller, shallow freshwater pool just outside one of the main accomodation wings, its nice - but its a long walk to the bars and snacks!
There were always sunloungers free here as far as I could see.
You can also use the pools in the holiday village, although we never did as the facilities at the main hotel area were so good, although the kids did try the second waterslide at the village. (The landing pool there is saltwater - which they didnt like)
There is lots of food available at the hotel, and we were very happy with the quality. The food at the main buffet restaurant does get a little bit repetative, but they do always have something different.
Breakfast can be had in the main restaurant until 10am (though its very busy from 9), and if you sleep in the snack bar by the pool is open from 10 and changes the food on offer slightly from breakfast through lunch until it closes at 5, when it becomes the Italian restaurant.
The quality and quantity of the drinks available is excellent, they do branded spirits rather than the usual local clones. They will happily make cocktails, there is a list of suggestions in a booklet in the main bar (which has free table service if you wish!)
or they will happily make anything that they have ingerdients for. The best barman works in the nightclub and the bar by the entertainment, and takes his time to make the drinks a bit better, squeezing a lime round a marguerita with salt and crushing the ice!
Snacks are also served at the main bar at about 11 to keep you happy if you have the munchies.
There are four themed restaurants - Italian, Greek, French and Chinese. You should get tickets for one visit to each per week of your stay. These have to be booked in advance at the main retaurant. The Italian and Chinese are buffet, the Greek and the French are fixed menus with a choice of main course (and chicken and chips for unadventurous kids!), and make a change from the main buffet.
These are spread around the hotel grounds, split between the royal mare and the village.
The rooms are split between the main hotel and two wings. Rooms in the main hotel are slightly smaller and only sleep up to 3, the larger family rooms are in the wings. The main hotel rooms are plusher, with carpeted rooms and hallways compared with tiled floors throughout in the wings. We stayed in two family rooms, but had a late checkout room in the main building. We were advised by a guest who was on their fourth stay, that they email the hotel some time prior to departure and request a room in the main building as its quieter due to the carpeting.
The hotel staff were very friendly, and helpful. We had booked a late checkout with first choice when we booked the holiday, the hotel had made a mistake and neither of our two rooms could be kept on as the next guests were arriving too early. The reception apologised for the mistake and gave us a room in the main building until 12pm when were picked up rather than the usual 6pm, and transferred all of our luggage to the new room while we sunned ourselves round the pool!
The location is excellent, with onsite shops and other shops and facilities just a few minutes walk outside.
The bus stop outside the hotel gets you to Rhodes in one direction (hotel side of the road) and Falaraki in the other. Both destinations cost 2 Euros and take about fifteen minutes.
The buses do get very busy to Rhodes so you can expect to have to stand if you catch the bus at about 6-7pm.
Taxi's dont cost much more - so this is an option if you dont want the hassle of a bus.
The entertainment staff are Italian, and I have never seen a harder working animation team!
They start around the pool at 10am with yoga, followed by aerobics in the pool, water polo, beach volleyball, darts, football, pool volleyball, more aerobics and latin dancing. They take a break from 12 until 3, but can be seen rehearsing for the coming nights show, I dont know how they get the energy!
They are very friendly and do their best to get everyone involved, but will eventually accept that you are too lazy to join in...
The hotel is right on the beach, the beach has lots of parasols and loungers - but they do go quickly. Its set in a small bay and the water is like a millpond - hardly a wave. The beach has gritty gray sand and is
not for you if you like long expanses of white sand.
The transfer in was only 20 minutes as we were first drop. The transfer back was about 1 hour as we went the scenic route via Rhodes to pick up 2 people (thanks to first choice for giving us the mystery tour which got us to the airport last)
The checkin on the return flight was awful. We were picked up at 00:45 and got to the airport at about 1:50am. There was a huge queue and it took until 3:15 to check in. This was not helped by the fact that at checkin the cases had to be put on the belt and weighed, ticketed and then taken off again, and carried to the security scanner, rather than going straight on the luggage belt. This was apparently for security so that the cases were scanned in the presence of the owner - in case of problems.
The first choice checkins were always the longest queues (as they nearly always are!) so I'd look for this hotel and resort via another operator if I was to go again.
Rhodes airport is a joke, and its not a funny one.
The scene after security was like a news film from a refugee camp in a warzone, hundreds of people lying down in the coridors. There are about 20 seats in total in the main area of the airport, with about 20 more at each gate. With at least 100 people on each flight that results in many hundreds of people with no seats for several hours. Its bad enough if your flight is on time - I hate to think of what it would be like if you were delayed!
That moan aside it was a great holiday, and I can't find a fault with the hotel and location.
| | |
Dom from Lincoln travelled to Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare with
Thomas Cook
on a couples holiday.
There were 2 adults and 0 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 05 2007 | rated the Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: First ever visit to Rhodes and we stayed at the Paradise Royal Mare in Kallithea for a week.
Our overall impressions were that it was a lovely hotel in a great location and we stayed there just at the right time, ie. at the height of summer, over 2,000 people stay there, but at the beginning of May when we went there were roughly about 200 – which meant plenty of free sunbeds by the pool and down by the beach! Also, meal times were never crowded and so it it was the perfect time to visit – not sure I would want to go and join 2,000 others there though.
The books tend to call it a 5-star ‘deluxe’ hotel, but for me it had more of a 4-star feel to it. Yes, it is quite grand, but if you stay at a 5-star ‘deluxe’ hotel you expect oppulence, and it didn’t really have that feel.
Attached to the hotel is the Paradise Village, but none of this was open – hence the line about “seven swimming pools” didn’t really apply, as most of them didn’t have any water in, which wasn’t a problem anyway as the main pool was easy big enough to cater for most people’s needs.
All the hotel staff were very friendly, the rooms were spotlessly cleaned every day, and the entertainment staff (of which there at least a dozen, all Italian) were also very friendly and there were plenty of activities to partake in during the day (boccia, darts, beach volleyball, aerobics, mini-golf, cocktail games, water polo, table tennis, etc...) if that sort of thing is your bag.
The only real downside was the food in the evenings – yes, there was quite a bit of choice, but it became repetitive as the week wore on. It was basically the same types of food every night, with minor variations. But let’s be fair, what there was very good (even tried rabbit for the first ever time!), although the kitchen staff were at times a little slow to top up certain trays of food when they became low, but that was just a minor quibble.
Also, guests get the chance to dine a la carte in the Dionyssos restaurant, where you could experience fine dining (booked a day or so in advance) and this made a nice change from the sometimes ‘canteen’ feel of the main restaurant (Sympossis) and is recommended. There was also an Italian restaurant and Greek-style taverna, although the latter was not ‘open for business’.
At breakfast there was something for everybody: you could have your cooked breakfast, cereals, or go continental, so there were never any qualms here. Also, for meals throughout the day there were two or three restaurants open and there was plenty of choice and you could help yourself to your heart’s content.
Drinks could be also be obtained throughout most of the day, with plenty of beer, wine, soft drinks and coffee on tap, not forgetting plentiful supplies of ice cream! At the beginning of the week, only a few of the (many) bars were open, but as the week wore on and more guests arrived, they opened up more of the bars around the complex.
Of course despite all this, you still get guests who complain, and I overheard a chap one evening complaining to the girl at reception that there was no provision for hot chocolate drinks as “not everybody drinks alcohol, you know”. There’s always one.
As English holidaymakers, we were definitely in a minority, as Germans and Russians/Ukrainians (some of them from the Russian mafia... honestly) tended to rule the roost (there were also French, Belgians, Danes, Italians and Greeks) and it had a very cosmoplitan feel to it. At this juncture, I must thank the gallant Ukrainian chap who dived in to the deep end of the pool (3.7m deep) to rescue my wedding ring, lost whilst swimming – it was too deep for me to get to the bottom!
So, all in all, a very enjoyable stay at a very nice hotel, one I would recommend to anybody.
On another point, if you are thinking about going on the trips organised by the travel company, we hired a car for the day (45 euros from the very pleasant Budget chap in the hotel) and travelled to Lindos (definitely worth a visit) and then on to the Butterfly Park (hardly any butterflies, but a wonderful place to have a walk through a forest that had a ‘Lord of the Rings’ feel to it), rather than pay 41 euros each for a trip to Lindos by boat – much better value getting a car for the day. Also, there were cheaper car hire prices just outside the hotel complex (about half the cost), but for peace of mind we went with Budget (and anyway, it only worked out at about £32, bargain).
Also, did the Symi trip – two hours on a ferry to the south of the island, followed by another hour to the main town of Symi, then a two-hour journey back to Rhodes. This was a disappointment as there isn’t a great deal to see or do on Symi. The approach in to Symi itself is special, seeing all the colourful, neo-classical houses rising up the hillsides, but after that there ain’t much more to the island.
Of course, we stayed at the Paradise Royal Mare at a quiet (and probably the best) time, so visitors in June, July and August could get a different perspective of the hotel during these busier months – things may not run as smoothly with 2,000-odd guests...
| | |
James , Elaine from Glasgow travelled to Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare with
My Travel
on a couples holiday.
There were 2 adults and 0 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 07 2006 | rated the Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: This hotel was great fun the entertainment team were great I say Diago and Jonny where probably the best there.
When we first got there wasnt the best that we were thinking of but the second week was better.
The food is nice but you get sick of it at lunch same food all the time.
Make sure you email quik for a main building room we didnt get one but if you email them soon you'd maybe have a better chance.
Holiday was great fun probably the best one yet !
| | |
|
|
Figgy from Sussex travelled to Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare with
Cosmos
on a family holiday.
There were 2 adults and 1 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 07 2006 | rated the Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment |  |
| said: Amazing hotel, spotlessly clean and spacious. Very grand reception area. Staff very helpful at all times.
Pools and gardens all kept immaculate. Main pool sometimes busy and loud with all the activities going on, but plenty of other pools around if you want to find peace and quiet. Beach clean also, but not particularly sandy, more like grit and burning hot, and sea a bit rocky. The problems overcome by the purchase of some beach shoes.
Rooms were adequate and included safe and fridge, although beds were hard, air con worked efficiently so good nights sleep were had by all.
Food plentiful and tasty, if you are familiar with the area you will be aware of the syrupy pastries (baklava etc) which are in abundance every night. The whole restaurant experience is bad new on the waistline!!
| | |
Kim from Chelmsford travelled to Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare with
Club Dance Holidays
on a couples holiday.
There were 2 adults and 0 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 10 2005 | rated the Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: Just returned from Paradise Royal Mare Hotel.
There were plenty of choice of food but we found a lot of it not to our taste, some unrecognisable!
Sweets after dinner were piles of sugary mush, lack of fresh fruit and ice cream occasionally.
First half of week if you were not at the restaurant when the doors opened you had a problem finding a clean table, the staff were not clearing them. This problem improved immensely when some managers appeared on Wednesday night.
Had to change room as view from initial first floor room was of the reception area roof and tree tops. Paid 8 Euros extra a night for sea view room in main building, worth every penny.
Receptionist made it difficult for us but I persisted, took 6 hours to change rooms.
Building work around one corner of complex with shouts
from local workmen a bit off putting. Staff, except receptionist, very nice and helpful.
| | |
Joe from Oldham travelled to Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare with
Thomas Cook
on a couples holiday.
There were 2 adults and 0 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 04 2004 | rated the Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment |  |
| said: An excellent Hotel that is truly 5 star.
The rooms are very comfortable, email and ask for a main building room they are better.
The food is a good standard, but the drinks are expensive €2.50 for a litre of water, €3.90 for a pint of beer, it's half price outside the hotel in the local bars.
The place is spotless, with a well looked after beach and plenty of sunbeds to go around.
The animation team did their best but had only just got together when we arrived, and were improving slowly, you will be sick of the "La Bomba" song after a few days.
The staff are so friendly and cannot do enough for you, but this was a quiet time of year and they had time for you.
Joe.
| | |
Penny & Mick from Stockton on Tees travelled to Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare with
Thompsons
on a family holiday.
There were 4 adults and 0 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 07 2002 | rated the Aldemar Paradise Royal Mare as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: Excellent hotel - food superb - pools extensive. A guy did my portrait outside the dining hall and it was excellent, the staff were friendly and always spoke to you. champagne every morning for breakfast.
| | |
 Subscribe For FREE Updates Click Here To Add A Review On This Hotel
Can't find an answer?
Ask other holidaymakers by clicking here!
Click Here To Go Back To Rhodes Hotel Listing.
All postings on this website are the responsiblity of the original poster. Once posted all information becomes the copyright of Holiday-Truth.com.
Holiday-Truth.com and our moderators accept no responsibility for the content and / or the accuracy of information contained within this website. Holiday-Truth.com monitors all postings and may, at our discretion, edit a posting to remove obscene or abusive language, edit grammar or correct spelling.
© Holiday-Truth.com V0.96b
Privacy Policy
|
