Gouves Water Park Holiday

Quite often people only leave negative reviews I felt I needed to come on here and ensure they get a good one! The hotel accommodated my son’s autism and eating needs - I am so grateful for the restaurant managers and chefs for booking his pasta for us. The facilities were great. Sadly we had a dated maisonette block but my other half was in the newer family suite which was lovely. The food could have been more varied and space in the buffet could have been wider to accommodate how busy it was - but the new outdoor seating area was fab! Entertainment was fabulous’ we only found the outdoor theatre later into our holiday and the acrobats show was unreal. The snack bar and gyros - top notch! My son got lots of ice-creams each day So many swimming pools and all the slides were great for the kids The on-site supermarket was pretty pricy so expect to pay over the odds for that.

So visited here half term, was ridiculously busy and too be honest it had pros but probably more cons! First positives, very friendly staff throughout the resort, great quality snacks at the snack bar each day, great choice of pools throughout the resort, breakfast each morning was fresh and constantly stocked with fresh items. Onto the negatives. Firstly the smell of sewage, each morning greeted with the breeze and the smell on the walk up to the breakfast on the Main Street, sewage smells by the clown shower next to the smaller bar, our bathroom in our room 4004 had a constant smell of sewage, there is clearly issues throughout the resort that need dealing with. The entertainment, very poor. Need more and outsourced acts, the only thing we saw over the 7 days was an African acrobats and a rock band, everything else was the entertainment group doing silly stuff. The quality of the drinks was very poor, the watered down juices been put into the cocktails and poor quality mixers been dispensed ruined most drinks on the resort. Whilst breakfast was great, only having two coffee machine to serve a very busy food hall, there was constant queues for these 5/10people deep and always a queue. My main gripe with lunch and dinner in the buffet was quality of meats used, very very poor and never chicken breast. Didn’t even have children’s choices each day apart from plain pasta or chips! Even onto the ala carte restaurants, found the quality of chicken in the Chinese chewy and grizzly , the brownies served were dry cakes. The Greek restaurant for us just gets everything wrong with the food, Giving you a table full of food on both starters and mains , much of which was very bland and having little taste wasn’t for us. If we’d got to choose dishes maybe there wouldn’t be so much waste. Whilst the snack bar was amazing, we found even this was repetitive after 7 days, things couldn’t have been changed here, even daily specials, just something that wasn’t the same day in day out! What we didn’t want was sunbed wars, as the week went on if you didn’t have a towel down by 10am you wasn’t getting a bed anywhere near slides, kids pool , etc. real shame as many were empty most of the day, no monitoring of the situation and nothing stopping you from reserving the same beds all day. For us this isn’t a five star resort, maybe three at best.

The best resort ever, especially the pink wave team and the bartenders❤️❤️❤️❤️ You guys rock❤️ the best ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Emma gave an amazing massage during this trip.

Pleasantly surprised. We had reservations about the hotel after reading the reviews. Being frequent visitors to Turkey, we knew that it wouldn’t compare, but we found the hotel great in general and Crete lovely. The food was fine, something for everyone. Typical AL buffet style. The dining room was carnage at times, but there were plenty of tables. Alcoholic drinks were branded and good. Soft drinks weren’t, and you could tell. They need more water stations. The snack area was great for lunch, the buffet for lunch wasn’t. Our room was nice. We had a premium swim up! Unfortunately the only thing that let it down was that we were at the very end/corner of the block (5081) which overlooked the dining room, awkward when getting ready! The noise made it feel you were actually in the dining room. A small screen would have kept it discreet. You couldn’t relax after 6pm on the terrace without someone looking down at you while eating their dinner! There was also very little sun on the terrace, a small patch for about 10 mins at about 11am! But for how much time we actually spent in there it was fine. Air-con was great and the swim up pool, although small, served a purpose. Our two 8 year olds had a blast, the water parks and pools were a huge hit - the play park was also great. The hotel grounds felt safe. The hotel did seemed like it had been upgraded. There was a lot of building work, inside and outside of the grounds. All in all, would we go back, perhaps? Maybe when everything is complete…and we would stay in a different room.