We stayed for four nights in the Family Paradise side of the resort and we did the All-Inclusive. We really wanted to like this, and there was certainly aspects of it that we did like! Unfortunately, this stay fell short of the expectations set by the marketing and didn't really represent value for money.
The initial strategy of requesting payment for the stay via email was one that set off alarm bells, but seems to be par for the course. Not sure I love it.
Upon arrival we were greeted warmly and escorted to our room. The room was of a good standard of cleanliness, although fit and finish was pretty second-rate (doors that don't close properly, strange paint touch-ups, etc). The beds are certainly quite hard, and the rooms are very noisy (corridor noise and beyond, and it starts at 7am). The curtains are not particularly heavy/dense so they do tend to let quite a bit of light in. Not the type of place to go if you're a fan of sleep-ins.
One of our group was diagnosed a coeliac between the time we booked and the time of our stay so that added a new dimension. We advised the hotel in advance that this was the case, and asked at check-in if there's anything we need to know/do. All of the menus indicate you need to advise them in advance if you have someone who requires gluten-free. That's an interesting point though; the word coeliac is not one that the staff here know. A lot of them know gluten free though. The menus are very light-on if you're GF so it's worth knowing that in advance. It's also worth knowing that some of the items marked GF on the menu are not actually GF (sometimes the staff will tell you, other times you'll know yourself). Even so, we found that at Grand Cafe and Rama Live it was an incredible struggle to work out what they were labelling food as. Some food has "GF", some has "G", and some has nothing. If you ask the staff you'll get multiple answers that conflict with each other. It's still a mystery to us, so ultimately we just had to stop going there. They ran out of GF food at Maha so... yeah, if you're GF you absolutely do NOT want to be doing all-inclusive.
A disappointing aspect of this was just how many of the things advertised online were not things you could actually enjoy due to damage/neglect. On our trip for example, here's a list of some of the facilities we tried and what we found:
- Air hockey table: broken
- Basketball throwing: hoop broken
- Bicycle rental: bikes in very poor condition, no instructions on how to hire, but nowhere to actually ride them anyway
- Kids e-lounge: closed
- Kids boxing: gloves have been lost, can't use
- Banana billiards: table surface in terrible state, uneven setup, cues didn't have ends on them
- Junior kids zone: staff felt *very* unfriendly here, unclear how the room even works despite visiting twice
- Trampoline: exposed edges injured a kid before we were about to go on it, decided to skip it
What was particularly strange was that the little they had in the way of signage instructions was usually wrong. They advertise the Rama Live buffets but provide no suggestion that you should be booking (apparently you have to). We turned up to Jukung and were turned away due to no booking. What's the sense in an all-inclusive if you're supposed to pre-book everything, especially if nobody tells you that you need to be doing so? We have no earthly idea if/when Bumbu Indian restaurant opened, much less whether they serve anything to all inclusive guests. I believe Chopsticks the Chinese restaurant runs a modified set menu for all inclusive, but again hard to work out what they are getting at. Jukung seems to be the pick of the places to eat, but the service there can be pretty hit-and-miss and due to popularity you are likely to find sometimes you won't get in, and if you do it'll be sitting inside rather than in the nicer outside seating because everyone seems to pre-book those and then they keep them empty for an entire sitting waiting for them.
JJ's bar upstairs from Jukung was a nice spot with good service. Similarly, the lazy river bar had great service, although it would be good if they could look at the food offering there because they only do a couple of things and in our case none of it GF. Maha poolside resto at the family side was pretty good from a service perspective, and I had some pretty okay food there, but they are finished by 5:30pm, at which point the family side turns into a ghost town.
I knew the family and main side are separated by a two minute walk and was prepared for that. What I wasn't prepared for was that two minute walk to be a gauntlet of local village sellers so that we'd get hassled each time we moved between. I can put up with that when leaving the hotel, but I'd prefer not to when I'm staying "within" the hotel.
I wasn't thrilled with safety generally at the hotel. The lazy river is one of the nicest spots to be at the hotel, but be warned that it has several bricks along the bottom of the pool that are sticking up and will be pretty painful for you to find with your foot. It happened to two people in our family. I was not impressed with the hotel's indifference to glass in and around the pool. Lots of people with glass bottles sitting on the side of the pool, and in some places broken glass that nobody seemed too interested in doing anything about. I was pretty turned off when I got to the swim up bar and saw the spirits bottles absolutely covered in flies. Probably nothing that can be done about that, but it's not something that made me thirsty for cocktails!
Panorama bar is supposedly the place to go of an evening for 'premium spirits'. I'm not sure what the definition is on that, but it wasn't a place we loved going back to as it had no real atmosphere or energy. Maybe it needs some live music or something? Hard to say.
Food-wise, we found things often looked better than they tasted. Consistency seems to be an issue here; on multiple occasions we saw ordering the same drink or dish would yield wildly different results. The policy of wanting you to sign for everything despite having all inclusive was tedious.
Ultimately I ended up sick in bed all day on our second last day with gastro and had to call the medical clinic. 4.5million IDR and 24 hours later I was okayish again, but both of my kids got sick subsequently. The doctor was in pretty heavy demand, so I'm sure it happens quite a bit.
At the end of it all, I can see the appeal of some aspects of this property. Certainly the staff here work very hard, and two thirds are very friendly too. But there were just too many promises made online that our family were looking forward to that ended up being unfulfilled. We were absolutely cursing ourselves for going all-inclusive given our issues with GF (we just couldn't take the risk), finding that we couldn't get into some of the restaurants, and getting sick so we couldn't even use it. We are told you can add all-inclusive later at check-in for all or part of your stay, so perhaps that might be worth looking at? It bugged us a lot too because we knew Chef Bagus II was right out the front of the place and would do really nice food, understood GF safety, and was cost effective.
I tried to raise some of these concerns with staff but despite assurances on some items we couldn't observe a physical change.
You might find that this property is exactly what you are looking for, and I certainly hope you do. In our case I unfortunately feel I ended up with very poor value and a property that in many aspects did not live up to the marketing or the reputation.
