Elounda Residence

Wonderful holiday experience where you feel the genuine Greek hospitality!

We had a lovely hotel stay at Elounda Residence whereby the highlight was the organised Cretanland festival with their own Club for UNESCO!

My review of Elounda Waterpark Residence

Positives:

• new build of rooms (2 bedroom family apartment) was great and probably the highlight from this stay. The rooms were comfortable and more modernized than advertised. They were clean upon arrival. However staying in the newer rooms are only available depending on availability it seems. 2 balconies (1 very spacious). The beds were comfortable and there was lots of room.

• options for pools. There are 2 pools, one is outside the main restaurant (not near the slides) which seemed to be the quieter one. I do think if speaking to the hotel, if you want to make this one known to be quieter and more relaxing, maybe ban ball games. It also seemed cleaner. But it was nice to sit around this pool sometimes and it’s also within a few steps of the bar unlike the other pool.

• The slides - one of the main reasons we booked this was to have the slides for the kids. The slides were great fun.

• maybe as we visited at the start of July so it wasn’t as busy, but there were sunbeds available even at 12pm which was good as no one enjoys fighting for sun beds

• manager Pavlos was friendly and gave us option to change rooms and showed us the alternative (didn’t realise the other rooms were so old).

• some staff were friendly (young ladies at reception in the evening) and gave recommendations of the local area. Also they were quick to clear the tables with dirty plates

Negatives:

• reported a broken kettle on the second night and was not replaced after multiple requests to all week

• cleaners - they came at random times but didn’t speak English at all to understand requests such as ‘can we have a new towel please’. We stayed for a week and they didn’t change our towels once, just folded the dirty ones. They didn’t do much cleaning, seemed they emptied the bins and made the beds but didn’t do anything else like clean the toilet or sweep up mess for example

• Can’t be helped, but the hills. If you are not in great physical condition, it’s probably not the hotel for you. The amount of hills you need to walk up and down to reach the pool area, to the restaurant or your room are quite strenuous. There is a buggy that can be called to take you around if needed but that isn’t feasible to do all the time. Even going up to the bar for drinks throughout the day require going up a couple of flights of stairs which felt like a chore just for water. We did think that if not a bar then water stations could have been made on the same level as the main pool area to make this easier for all guests to make the most of their all inclusive benefits.

• evening entertainment - very naff and needs some attention. I’m not sure you can even call it evening entertainment. There wasn’t much on. Not even really a designated area for it other than a small outside bit. They had what they called a Greek festival on but it was just a few olives and some flags with no real spectacle at all the entire week. One night was kids karaoke which they seemed to enjoy but really was naff and I don’t know how they can advertise having entertainment.. there was not much to do in the evenings after dinner. They had opened a ‘fun park’ as we arrived located at the bottom of the hill past the slides, but it was mainly for younger kids. The pool table/table tennis area needs a revamp already.

• The food - half of my group are fussy and half are not. Those who aren’t fussy felt the options were ok and adequate and enjoyed some of the food. In saying that I didn’t come away from a meal once thinking it was really delicious. Sometimes it was too bland. Maybe really liked the odd dish every other day. The staff were very quick to change dishes that were running low which was good. The main restaurant is outdated in terms of aesthetics and requires a refurb. The desserts were ok but cheap. Usually some sort of chocolate mousse, a cream based one, or fruit. The good thing was that they do have a snack bar which is open till 4pm and doesn’t require the hike up the hill to the restaurant. Just 2 flights of stairs instead. They had fish fingers or chicken nuggets usually, with chips and a few other random kid friendly options. The kids in our group loved going to the snack bar for the unlimited ice cream which they thought was really tasty, so did some of the adults too. Also would’ve been good if there was a menu you could order from as well even if you had to pay for it (for fussy eaters)

• pool cleanliness - the main pool (near the slides) was often quite dirty with bits/dead insects and there was only 1 time in the week through the day that a lifeguard was using his net to clean it. I’m sure it’s cleaned every morning but having it cleaned through the day would have been appreciated as it was quite off putting being surrounded by bits of dirt or dead wasps

• One thing I did miss compared to other holidays was having other restaurants, bars, shops etc locally. The resort is in the hills and not near to other things going on so you’d need to get a 5 min taxi down to Elounda as the closest place but it is nice to be able to walk to places nearby usually.

• late check out unavailability - we were told we’d have to ask the day before leaving if one of our rooms could be kept until we had to leave for the airport. Our flight wasn’t until the evening so we didn’t need to leave the hotel until 6:45. We were told it would be €10 an hour and maybe we could keep a room for showers/luggage storage. However the receptionist said we had to ask the morning of leaving. Management said we had to leave our rooms at 12 as they were all of a sudden fully booked (was not near full) but could still use the other hotel facilities including their courtesy room for showers/changing. This was disappointing as through the day we did see available rooms.

Other comments:

• they play the same songs through the speaker at the pool which got on our nerves.. has put me off Calm Down and Con Calma for life