Aqua Fantasy Aquapark Hotel And Spa

Good

Please read it all. I know it’s long. I was really wanting to like this hotel. We booked it Friday and flew Wednesday as our holiday to France was cancelled due the fires unfortunately, there were a few things holding me back. What was good, was really good but somethings were niggling at us. We paid considerably more than what others have said the paid for 1 week and told we could not upgrade or have late check out I have had better for the price in other areas of Turkey. Happy to pay more than what I paid if it’s right. They need more staff and some modernisation.

WiFi - excellent Pool clean - very good- apart from a Phantom Pool Pooper one day so it got shut down😂 Room was ok, shower was powerful and hot. Ice Cream area good choice. Pool bar staff good, fill a Stanley Cup to last. Towels for pool - excellent service. Pearl snack bar - this was best area for food in my opinion. Top bar by reception was good. In terms of quality and wait. Never wait long for a lift Link to waterpark is great. Plenty of sunbeds - if people can actually walk a small distance to find them. Not up early to get a bed. Pier is lovely to see the sunset. They look after the cats and dogs around the hotel Nice selection of shops on site.

Poor Towels on sunbeds all day and not used, a row of nine towels which nobody would move after an argument the day before. But hotel says will be removed if empty for two hours. Nope. People putting sunbeds in walk ways stopping buggy’s or disabled getting through to the pool. They should be told to move down to the empty areas. It causes frustration for some. Pool side VERY slippery, Need more wardrobe space for a family room. Main restaurant - quality of meat and quantity of some food generally. Some staff are good but some move at the same pace as sloth making the ques huge. Pancake and fried eggs especially in the morning, meaning the evening. People at meal times filling plates with everything that was available leaving nothing for others and staff not questioning. I mean with an EXCESSIVE amount of food. Some food was OK but very hit or miss. Both myself and daughter were poorly diarrhea and sickness and son had tummy ache. We don’t drink alcohol so nothing to do with that. MY SON IS CURRENTLY IN A&E with severe sickness just 24hrs after leaving and arriving home. Others had this too. Because there was not enough food, apart from salad, fruit, bread which was alway full you would get your meat and wait ages for something else making it cold it vise versa. Some food was out and crusty. Never had evening meal at a hotel where there is not drink service to the table, only the last day were we offered this. Had to get our own in the smallest of glasses. As not enough staff dirty plates left around which does help flies. Beds are rock hard. Had items stolen from pool area Luggage room is just an open room at the front of hotel for anyone to take your luggage! Sliding doors in bedroom were filthy. Pool entertainment could be invested in, polo or one other game which is essentially the same game repeated. Steak house, food needed to be warmer and considering it’s a steak house the steak was not cooked right. Staff were very good though and offered to replace them but I was over it by that point with evening food. Nice jacket potatoes. Give me the chicken and rice at the Pearl every time.

Would have given average but now poor due to how ill we have all been

We’ve had a really good family holiday at Aqua Fantasy and there is plenty to like. However, having stayed at several other all-inclusive family resorts, our overall feeling is that while many of the individual elements here are very good, they don’t quite come together to create the seamless resort experience we expected.

One of the real highlights is the accommodation. The family rooms have a great and fairly unique design, giving parents and children their own spaces while keeping everyone together. They can also be paired with a standard room for larger families – something we haven’t seen elsewhere. Our rooms were modern, clean and very well maintained, with excellent housekeeping and room service.

The staff also deserve particular mention. The service we’ve received across all areas of the hotel has been exceptional – friendly, helpful and consistently excellent throughout our stay.

The aquapark is fantastic and our children absolutely loved it, but it feels surprisingly separate from the hotel. You leave the hotel area and cross a car park to reach it and, importantly, the hotel’s all-inclusive food and drinks aren’t available once inside (although this is made clear in the holiday information). This meant we tended to limit how long we stayed – having already paid for all-inclusive, we were reluctant to spend significantly more on food and drinks for a family of six, particularly on hot days. Rather than moving seamlessly between the hotel and aquapark, we generally found ourselves choosing one or the other.

There are plenty of sunbeds around the hotel pools, so thankfully no 8am scramble. The downside is that many seem to be reserved by guests who then disappear to the aquapark for hours, making it difficult later in the day to know which are genuinely being used and which have simply been abandoned with hotel towels left behind.

The beach is good, but surprisingly for an all-inclusive resort there is no Aqua Fantasy beach bar. The nearby bar that appears to be part of the complex actually belongs to the neighbouring TUI hotel and isn’t available to Aqua Fantasy guests. To get a drink, you need to leave the beach, pass back through the hotel gates to the nearest bar and then return. Again, it makes the beach feel slightly detached from the all-inclusive experience and meant we tended not to spend as long there as we otherwise might.

The food is good, but we found the overall choice and variety more limited than at other all-inclusive resorts. We did have a lovely meal at the Italian restaurant, which was a real highlight. Our children were also amazed by the lack of readily available ice cream! There is essentially one ice-cream outlet for the whole hotel, it isn’t open all day, and there isn’t ice cream with desserts in the main restaurant – a strange omission for a large family all-inclusive resort.

For us, though, the biggest thing missing is the evening experience. The entertainment itself can be excellent – the fire show was outstanding – but the entertainment area feels detached from the rest of the hotel. There isn’t that central, well-lit outdoor space where families naturally gather after dinner for a drink, conversation or a game of cards. We’ve experienced that evening holiday vibe at many other all-inclusive resorts and really missed it here. The hotel appears to have the space to create it, and we think it would transform the feel of the resort.

We were also surprised that, for an “All Inclusive Plus” hotel (as marketed by Jet2holidays), activities such as bingo, bowling and billiards cost extra. We don’t mind paying a small amount for additional activities, but bowling was around £6 per person – £36 for our family of six – which feels expensive and not far off UK prices. Even the games and video tables in the bowling area carry additional charges. Lower, more nominal pricing would feel much more in keeping with an “All Inclusive Plus” family resort.

The location is also worth considering. There isn’t a town or much else within walking distance, so this is very much a resort-based holiday – making the on-site facilities and evening atmosphere even more important.

That leads to our overriding impression. There isn’t one particular thing we could point to as being fundamentally wrong with Aqua Fantasy. In fact, many parts are excellent. It just feels like a hotel that has evolved into what it is today rather than somewhere designed from the outset as one seamless all-inclusive aquapark resort. Somehow, the individual parts haven’t quite been stitched together.

We have experienced other Turkish all-inclusive resorts, at a comparable price at the time, where for our family the whole concept simply felt more seamless. Two years ago we enjoyed one so much that, almost as soon as we returned home, we booked it again for the following year. We chose Aqua Fantasy this year because we wanted to try somewhere different rather than return to the same place for a third year.

We’ve had a really good holiday here, and some members of our family would happily return. But we’re not leaving with quite that same feeling of “we have to come back next year.” For us, that probably says more about our overall experience than any individual criticism could.

Aqua Fantasy has lots going for it and could easily be someone else’s perfect family holiday. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed our time here – it just hasn’t quite won us over in the same way as some of the other resorts we’ve experienced.

(If the hotel team reads this review, we would genuinely welcome a response to some of the specific points we’ve raised. We’ve taken the time to share them constructively because we’ve enjoyed our stay and believe Aqua Fantasy has the potential to be even better, so a meaningful response would be much more appreciated than a standard “thank you for your feedback and we hope to welcome you back” reply.)