The clothes steamer was unusable, and an iron and ironing board arrived the next day only after two requests. Had the holiday description mentioned the steamer, we could have requested these at check-in. Otherwise, the hotel and holiday were fantastic: accommodation, food, drinks, entertainment and staff. SPECIALITY RESTAURANTS: Just to add the food at the TaJ (Indian) Restaurant was awful - definitely not curry. However, the food in the French and Italian restaurants was tasty and delicious.

very clean great room great views

Tired hotel needs a bit of a re vamp although hotel grounds and location were beautiful

Let’s start with the good : Mostly nice and friendly staff No stupid/complicated card swap system for clean pool towels Clean (albeit in need of updating) rooms Plentiful bath towels Branded drinks Decent tonic Some decent local bands / shows Good breakfast egg station And now the rest : I arrived at the resort wearing a surgical walking boot due to a fracture. The tour operator was made aware of this. At reception I was advised that our room was in the 3rd floor (long walk uphill and then 3 Flights of stairs - or a walk through the hotel and up 6 flights of stairs). When we pointed out my disability we were told that whilst there was no lifts in the resort the bell boy would help us with the bags. Not really addressing the issue. Three days later when we were booking a tour the lady we were talking too was so concerned about where our room was she intervened on our behalf. We were then told a ground floor would be available but by then we had already been informed by other guests that the ground floor rooms they had asked for came at a substantial premium and the rooms smelled heavily of damp. The specialist restaurants were not open everyday so getting a booking was nigh on impossible unless you wanted to be permanently on the app (which to be fair didn’t work most of the time - also confirmed by other guests). We didn’t eat in any and to be fair the feedback from other guests didn’t really inspire us to try too hard. The buffet restaurant was incredibly small with limited choice. There is a different themed night every night but the majority of the dishes stayed the same with only one or two additional dishes in line with the theme of the day. The meat was chopped in such a way that the cut of each piece was unrecognisable and mainly bone and fat with very little actual meat. The only “roast” joint turned up on Italian night and was pork but each slice consisted of 10% meat to 90% fat (to be fair the resort cats appreciated the latter). All the meat in the warming pans was dry, very salty and chewy, the fish was totally dry (my partner mistook the latter for a burger it was sooo bad). There was a serving station with a hot plate for burgers, chicken fillets and hot dogs to be cooked fresh but seldom anyone serving at it and at least 3 days in 10 where only hot dogs were available. Randomly there was a larger selection of hot (undercooked) vegetables for breakfast than dinner. Desserts were dry with synthetic cream, hot crumbles but no custard or cream and when we asked about ice cream we were told that this was only available at the parlour at the other side of the square. Don’t even get me started on the cheese options, definitely mislabelled - took one piece of ham but it looked odd and was weeping, not sure of the reason as we couldn’t identify the actual meat (another score for the cats). My favourite mealtime game was the butter equivalent of “Where’s Wally?” - just put it where people can find it and stop moving it around. On one occasion my partner had to eat the lukewarm soup with a teaspoon, despite asking the chef for a soup spoon. We were often shown to the table where previous guests had dropped food and drink on the floor that had not been cleaned. One morning at breakfast I was covered in a brown substance which had been wiped along the edge of the table and not cleaned when the table was relaid for the next guest. Nibbles restaurant was ok for lunch, only marred by the fact that they only had approx 8 items on the menu and at any given time between 1 and 3 were not available. As an example of the cleaning of the tables. They have a lobster / steak evening on a Friday but this is not on the all inclusive and come in at $50 - 100US per person which is quite a gamble given the quality of the food elsewhere on the resort. The resort communal areas were very dirty, with very little active cleaning being seen (3 days for a dead gecko to be removed from the stairs assuming the ants didn’t do it). Floors often had spill stains food splashes which were there for 2or3 days before being cleaned. We had to clean rain water and bird droppings from the pool beds ourselves every morning. The pools themselves were never cleaned while we were there even though there were frequently dead crabs and other unidentifiable debris floating in the water, we saw one test of the water while we were there but no cleaning took place after this despite the murky condition of the water. The “main pool” is much smaller than it looks in the brochures, I would say that if you wanted to swim it has capacity for no more than 10 people and the water is so shallow it was only up to the chest of some 10 year olds we saw in the pool. It also had very few beds unless you wanted to pay for the use of a cabana bed (minimum $30-120US a day depending on what add ons you wanted. The entertainment took place in a large hall that was open to the elements and therefore had no aircon. With the high temperatures and lack of even rotating fans on the ceilings the hall became suffocatingly hot very quickly. As mentioned above there were a few good local bands although they all did more or less the same set. The Carnival and Fire shows were good. There was a tendency for a DJ to fill all the gaps blasting incredibly loud music to an almost empty room. There is one night where all the music in the communal areas is switched off and you get to sit in silence while a “silent disco” takes place despite the only people dancing being the staff of the Vibe Team. Your alternative is to sit with your partner with headphones on for the music but no conversation. We also had reason to go to lost property, however, after providing all the information they requested, they never contacted us in anyway and the lost item was not returned. Adding some advice: Take copious amounts of strong insect spray, whatever bites out there laughs in the face of mosquito bands and to buy a small can of spray at the resort comes in at $40US. Unlike other resorts there is no standard spraying of communal areas. I am aware that Tripadvisor give this resort a 4.2 rating but if you examine the reviews many of the 5 star reviews focus on single elements such as the gym, keep fit, Aqua aerobics etc and not the resort as a whole which skews the overall scores It is not clear to us when TUI last checked this resort. We have booked many 5 star resorts with them and this is by far the worst we have experienced. TUI need to get out there as a “secret shopper” and revise the grading they have given this resort.

Truly magical experience on my 10 year anniversary in grenada