On my previous post “Let the Countdown begin!” I told you all about our day before the holiday so now its time to tell you about the real deal and all the happenings on our very first holiday as a family of 4!
Originally this trip was choose and planned by my Nephew and his girlfriend and was supposed to be a family affair with the little cousins having a fun week in the sun together. As life goes my nephew delighted his Girlfriend with a rather lovely diamond ring a few months before the trip and with a big wedding in planning they decided a holiday is off the cards this year. We booked our All Inclusive Holiday to the Pirate Village Resort in Santa Ponsa, Mallorca as a package deal (which included flights, accommodation as well as the All Inclusive Deal) from the holiday website On The Beach.com.
After we arrived and picked up our suitcases at the Mallorca airport we were greeted instantly by our friendly taxi driver Mike with a sign with our name on who showed us to our ride! I decided to not take up the offer of the onthebeach.com add on service to let them book me a private taxi which would have set me back nearly 140 Euros (return) instead I did some research and manage to find the private Taxi Company called Taxi PMI who charged us 90 Euros return! (The journey from the airport to Santa Ponsa took about 30 minutes in total!) This was including both the children’s car seats (you can add them on to your liking from Maxi Cosi’s to Stage 0-1 and 2-3 or a Booster Seat. We also received a text message 48 hours before our departure time (when we booked the taxi back to the airport for the journey back) which even answered back when i confirmed our taxi and time. A throughout brilliant A* Service which I can only recommend for anybody travelling from the airport to their resort.
Upon arrival at the Pirates Village Resort we were greeted at the reception area by a friendly Spanish receptionist who checked us in swiftly and gave us all the info we needed for our welcome. Unfortunately due to us arriving around 11am our room wasn’t ready yet but we were able to store our suitcases in the locked up bag room and go and explore the hotel and all its surroundings. A little TIP which I will defiantly follow next time around make sure you have a separate jute bag of swim stuff, shorts, t-shirt and a sundress ready to be taken out of the suitcase when arriving at the hotel at least you have something light to wear until your room is ready (sweating in denim jeans wasn’t that ideal!).
The reason why we have chosen this hotel was because it reviews showed that it is a very family orientated Hotel with a Kids Club, Baby Pools, plenty of slides and lots of evening entertainment (mainly for the kids).
I thought tell you all about each different area of the hotel and what we thought of it. I would like to think that when people do their research there might stumble across this post and would like to have information on every single bit of what the hotel has to offer (that’s how I was researching it) and what we thought of it.
THE HOTEL:
The hotel itself has very mixed reviews on pages like TripAdvisor etc. with some people describing it as a abroad Butlins but I would say it defiantly has a lot more to offer. Yes the Hotel corridors have lost some of their paint and it does look a tad dated here and there but its clean and the staff is very friendly and is always here to help when you have a question or a wish! There is also a Wash machine and a tumble dryer which was very handy! We choose Pirate Village due to it catering for Family and its being very child friendly and we haven’t been disappointment on the activities they had to offer! There was never a boring day or evening in sight and plenty of late nights because we had just too much fun!
Picture courtesy of onthebeach.com
THE ROOMS:
I loved the fact that each single room did face with the balcony towards the inside (the pool area) of the resort and we where lucky enough to have one on the 2. floor which was very handy when we were stuck in our room rather a lot towards the end of our holiday (more about this in a bit). Our Family Apartment consisted of a hallway which led to bedroom which housed a desk & chair, a king size bed (as well as plenty of room for a travel cot next to it) a double mirror wardrobe and a little bench for your shoes. Then there was a good-sized bathroom with a large shower, the sink had plenty of storage space underneath it and the usual toiletries came in a little plastic zip up bag with the hotels logo on it. The wide hallway then went into the living room area which had a little kitchenette with a microwave (very handy!), hob, sink and fridge (a little bit rusty looking but it did its job!) and cupboards fully equipped with all the kitchen utensils, pots and pans and plates, mugs and cutlery. Also in the living room was a small round table with 4 chairs, a tv and a couch with a single pull out mattress underneath it. We had our own little balcony overlooking the pool area with some plastic chairs and a table.
THE POOL AREA:
Next to the main pool which went into a medium shallow (just enough for Finn who is 6 to stand in) pool area and then sectioned off there where 2 little baby pools and a tower in the middle of it all. There was plenty of sun launchers and umbrellas for everybody going around (and yes there was the usual sun launcher reserve frenzy going on – and no there weren’t any Germans in sight I swear!!) which happened just after 9am when the pool guard (who looked a bit like ‘Luther’ I kid you not!) opened up the chains of the sun beds. Fair enough we didn’t come in high summer season so it was full but not crowded at all! On the other side of the main pool was the kids area which had an open slide, a closed slide as well as a large blue 4 lane slide and a massive bucket of water feature with a climbing frame and a little slide which ever so often splashed down all its contents into the very shallow water. The main pool had a good temperature but unfortunately this couldn’t be said for the slide pool which was most of the time rather chilly!
Pictures marked with a X are courtesy of onthebeach.com
THE KIDS CLUB:
The Kids Club was for children age 3+ which I was a bit gutted about because MM was only 2.6 years when we got there. The security was top and they did not let any child leave on their own the door was always locked and every parent had to ring the doorbell and sign their child in and out on a sheet! What I really liked was the fact that all of the Kids Club Carers where also the main characters when it came to the entertainment at night from the bad priest to the Pirate’s Bride there all looked after the kids which i think helped a lot for the children to enjoy the evening so much! The only 2 criticism I had been that the staff did give the children Pepsi (luckily I was there with Molly-May so I told them that my 2 will have the squash) when its meal time where there take some of the kids meals in trays into the kids club outdoor area were all the children can sit on a long table and eat together. And the other thing was that although their different themed days (Sports day, Pirates Day etc) was filled with fun activities there also had 5 computers in the kids club itself where the children could play games. You can imagine that Finn rather liked going to the kids club for exact that reason. When the children want to be picked up the parents will either be phoned on their mobile or the room number will be called out trough the loudspeaker system. Wednesdays they have a Kids Club and Entertainment Free Day all day!
Pictures courtesy of onthebeach.com
THE FOOD:
There was a buffet style food in the restaurant had plenty of fresh food on offer from salads, to meat, seafood, kids food to plenty of deserts varying from ice-cream, local mousse, cakes, fresh fruit and cheese platters. Breakfast is served from 7.30am – 10.30am. Lunch is served from 1pm-3-m and Dinner from 7pm-9pm. Some of the food (especially the fish) did taste a bit bland which was a shame!
Throughout the day you could order some basic food like burger, chicken nuggets, chips and salad from the Snackbar which was always prepared fresh for you! At the bar itself you could help yourself to alcoholic (Beer) and non alcoholic (Juices, Soft Drinks, Water) from the tap and slush puppies as well as soft ice cream (which both the kids absolutely loved of course!) I liked the fact that they out just tiny little ice cream cups next to the machine so the kids didn’t overload it (although believe me MM did try that for herself once!) and can always come back for more!
THE AREA:
IF you want to read up more about the area itself you can check it out over here in the Santa Ponsa Tourist Information Page.
THE ENTERTAINMENT:
From Water Zumba to Football, Shooting and Pirate Treasure Hunts through the day onto the daily Mini Disco from 8-8.30 and then at 9pm the main show starts. From a sequel of a Pirate Show to a Farmers Story (which included the Fox throwing down lots of Farmers aka willing Dad’s from the Tower now you can guess who didn’t say no to missing out on such fun!), Bird Show and different themed Mini Discos all the way through the week. You also get some cheeky Pirates through breakfast sometimes who steal your food and show you their newest pet to stroke. Every single Entertainer/Pirate did such an amazing job and all the kids and most of the adults were messmerised through the show! By the end of the week Mr. C. had all the moves to the Mini Disco Parents and Kids song in the bag and even started humming it (it was a rather annoying ear worm but it made the kids happy!) There is Pirate Treasure Hunts around the pool through the afternoons sometimes which kept all the kids exited!
THE HOLIDAY MAKERS:
Now this might be something you not really read on TripAdvisor or any other review sites and maybe its relevant for some and irrelevant for others but we found that most of the Holiday makers in the resort where english, Irish, Scottish and some Italian’s too, yep no Germans in sight (except me) although Santa Ponsa itself is very german orientated when we walked through it most signs where in english and german and it has even a bar in the name of a very famous German Entertainer.
We where lucky enough to have met (from Day 2) some absolutely lovely and funny Holiday Friends which made our Holiday even better! It’s a shame that both families don’t live anywhere near us but we know whenever we will visit Yorkshire and Lancashire we can stop by and meet up again which will be lovely!
OUR VERDICT:
If you are after a very reasonable priced very kids friendly Hotel in term time I would recommend for our 8 night stay we paid around 1.500£ for the 4 of us that is with flight and All Inclusive included (and would have included a free coach transfer to and from the hotel which we didn’t use), Taxi Transport to and from the hotel was extra (see at the start of my post)! We where really unlucky that we caught a really nasty 24hr bug from what we think was bad bacterial in the water and although quite a few holiday maker in our hotel had it, it expired that on the flight back several other holiday makers based in various resorts in and around Santa Ponsa caught it too so the hotel wasn’t to blame, it did put a little downer to the last 3 days of our holidays because it went from Finn to MM then to Mr. C. and I got it right at the end full circle! Would we come again? No but that’s mainly down to the fact that there are so many other Places we still like to visit and I think returning to the same holiday resort twice will only ever happen if we can give it 5 out of 5.
Comments (1)
This is so useful as this is where we have booked for our holiday. We booked it mainly due to my son being pirate crazy and for the pools and entertainment too. We are going all inclusive, mainly for the drinks and snacks for the children but it is nice to know the food is better than I thought it would be. It looks like you had a lovely holiday (apart from the sickness) xx