Cheap and most certainly cheerful! (Mariner Club Hotel (Alcudia, Mallorca))

Member Name: nickwock

Product:	Mariner Club Hotel (Alcudia, Mallorca)
Date:	26/01/09 (226 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, friendly and fun

Disadvantages: Basic

We decided to treat ourselves to a foreign holiday last year, it had been seven years since our last and much has changed since then! We now had a four year old to consider, so our holiday requirements were very different to last time. As this was Oakleys first holiday we decided to take just one week early on in the year, incase he didn't like the heat, decided not to go all inclusive incase he didn't like the food and we ended up living on cheese sandwiches and also needed somewhere family friendly, with a kids club and entertainment. Another important factor for us was the price. We are also having our loft converted so the holiday had to be cheap! Anyway, the very helpful lady at the travel agents helped us book the Mariner Club which is in Alcudia, Mallorca through Thompsons.

So, early evening on 11th May we flew with no problems from a scorching hot Cardiff airport and found ourselves two short hours later in rainsoaked Mallorca. After waiting around for over an hour for our bags and then for a further hour and a half while they finally sorted out who was supposed to be on which coach, we sped through the torrents for an hour and finally arrived at the Mariner Club apartments at midnight, and joined a queue of disgruntled holidaymakers to check in.
Luckily the staff were efficient and friendly and it didn't take us too long to recieve our key and directions to our room which was just above the clean, bright, marble foyer, up a short flight of stairs. We quickly dragged our cases and son up to the room, burst inside - and I nearly burst into tears. Our accomodation was the smallest I have ever been in, with two wooden framed sofa beds either side of the room and a pull out truckle bed under one for oakley to sleep in. My wonderful hubby quickly set about pushing the sofas together (resembling a double sized cot) whilst struggling to manouver the other furniture to make room. Oakley had to make do with his little bed on the floor which looked like a big drawer, but we were all so exhausted we quickly fell asleep.

===The next day......===

In the morning, awakening in my wooden cot, I could actually see the funny side. Oakley looked like a little puppy, but he slept well enough! Ian popped down to the bar for some water and after a nice cup of coffee we decided that as we had paid less than £500 for our holiday, we didn't really have anything to complain about! The room was clean, cool, reasonably well furnished and we weren't planning on spending all our time in the room anyway. The room was rectangular with a seperate, nice sized bathroom in one corner, consisting of toilet, sink, over sink mirror with light and a bath with a shower. We ended up storing our suitcases in the bathroom. There was a double wardrobe with hanging rail, shelves and safe at the bottom and shelves to the side, ample space for our clothes. In the living area was our sofas, a small table and three chairs, a wall mounted portable t.v. (only showing BBC1) and a pine double cupboard. The kitchenette was placed on the shortest wall and had a hob, sink, toaster, fridge and a few small cupboards. At the end of the room, large sliding doors led on to the balcony, overlooking the rest of the site and the swimming pool. Not too bad a view. The balcony had a wall mounted clothes horse, plastic patio table and two chairs. Overall, the room was basic, a little dated, but not at all bad for the price. We left the sofas made up with our bedding and used the chairs but it was difficult because of the lack of space. My main gripe was the bedding. Two of the sheets were nice crisp cotton, but the over sheet which we needed in May was made from that scratchy material I didn't think they even sold anymore, my nan always had some as her spares and they feel like recycled attic insulation mixed with cardboard. Not nice.

The Mariners Club itself is a rectangle shape, with all the accomodation looking inside toward the pool. This does give a nice secure feeling, there is a side entrance/exit onto the street but the main entrance is through the reception.

===Reception===

The reception is in the middle of the front 'block'. There are a few soft sofas, plants and little tables about and the toilet facilities which were small, but always spotless. At the very end is a storage room for suitcases and a soft play area for toddlers, with padded mats and walls, but strangely, no toys. The Thompsons rep has a desk in reception and if she isn't there, her timetable will show when she is, usually at least once a day. I wont go into much detail about the rep, as I'm reviewing the hotel, not Thompsons, but I will say they offer loads of trips, we only went to the Pirate show, which I certainly recommend, but they are quite expensive. She did leave loads of leaflets around for people to take.

===The Bar===

The reception leads through to a nice sized bar, with more soft sofas and a large t.v. As well as alcohol, there is a good variety of ice lollies, chocolate, crisps and sweets sold, aswell as water and cartons of milk. Through the day, food can be ordered at the bar. Details of the weeks entertainment can be found on the wall here. Prices are verging on the expensive, a little more expensive than over here I would say. The staff who work on the Bar are also the staff who look after the restaurant, some english and some mallorcans, everyone is helpful and friendly.

===The Restaurant===

Just to the left of the bar is a moderate sized restaurant where they serve breakfast, lunch and evening meal. Breakfast is usual english type, fry ups, cereal or toast. Lunches are a variety of sandwiches, chips, sausages, that kind of thing. The evening menu has the usual chips & sausage etc, but also pizza and spaghetti bolognaise amongst others or a buffet style. We chose this a couple of times as you can visit as many times as you wish and as there was quite a good choice (about five choices of main meal) there was bound to be something we all liked. They also offered a choice of chips, rice and salad. Sweets were mainly ice cream or fruit. If I remember correctly it cost about 9euro.

===Outside===

The bar then leads through to a large size patio where the evening entertainment is held. Also here is a pool table and an air hockey table and plenty of parasols to keep the sun off. Next is the freeform swimming pool, surrounded by plenty of sunbeds There are two fountains in the pool which the kids had great fun with, but a word of warning, the pool is not heated! In May it was brassic! Oakley hardly seemed to feel it, jumping in and out and only coming to us when his lips were nearly blue to be wrapped up in his towel! There is also a shallow kiddies pool at the far end, connected to, but sectioned off from the main one. After this is some bright play aparatus with tube slides which the kids seemed to love. At the very end is a little garden shed, where they hold the kids club. The girl working there was very helpful and gave us the necessary paperwork which we needed to read and sign, very much like the paperwork you have at a nursery, giving permission for him to go and advising of any allergies etc. Oakley never actually went to the club, so unfortunately I can't review it.

===Location===

I think it's fair to say, the outlook directly at the front of the hotel isn't that great. A large parcel of bogged down waste land greets you and the area looks a little dilapidated and in need of attention. There seemed to be a couple of stray dogs, and quite a bit of evidence of them (if you get my drift).

The beach and Port of Alcudia was 900 meters away, which was a brisk 20 minute stroll and it's worth it to get to the beach which is lovely. We found the walk quite nice, very flat and most of the pavements in good repair. The reception staff will call for taxis, which we took advantage of only once, I think it cost about 5 euro. There are also horse and carriages available from the port and pedal karts for hire which are big enough for to take a family of five, although this looked like much harder work than walking!Being May it was a little like a ghost town, very quiet with many of the properties shuttered up, until you reach the Port. The shops here sell quite a bit of 'tat', such as money boxes, plastic toys, name keyrings etc, most of which I've seen in England. There are a few places to eat here and on the beach, we found a little restaurant called Pipers on the beach, run by Mallorcans and they were wonderfully helpful and friendly, Oakley had a free ice lolly every time we visited and they made lovely fresh pizza. We also visited a gorgeous restaurant at the Port, but I can't remember the name, it wasn't cheap, but the food and service was fantastic.

Take a left from the reception and within a few minutes you come to some small shops, restaurants and a Spar supermarket. The water, milk and alcohol is a lot cheaper in the spar, they also sell a few souvineers. The restaurants are more like good old english cafes, but serve food well into the evening. We tried the Britannia for Breakfast one day, the prices were more reasonable than the hotel, with more choice and bigger portions. It definitely seemed to be very popular, many people back at the hotel were raving about the curry's and the liver & onions (yuck!) but we didn't go to Spain to eat what we could at home, so we didn't return (although the breakfast was very nice!).

A 10 minute walk following the road from the right of reception brings you to the Belleview centre. This is a long strip of shops, market stalls and restaurants. It is really busy here in the evenings, with people touting for you to choose their restaurant. There are also many pickpockets here and we saw a couple of people complaining their wallets were gone from zipped pockets. Our rep had forewarned us, so we were prepared, but we didn't really feel we could relax. Although, we did eat tapas and paella in a lovely restaurant. If you keep walking around to the end it will eventually lead you back to the Port of Alcudia where the atmosphere is more relaxed and there are planty of bars, shops and restaurants to choose from.

There is also a water park which only takes 10 minutes to walk to, which we passed on our walks to the beach, but we never visited.

===Entertainment===

The hotel provides entertainment every evening except for Sunday nights, which is when most people are leaving or arriving. It all starts about 7ish, with a disco and dancing games for the kids, all led by Lee. He does seem to be a very be a very busy chap, I'm not sure he had a night off at all when we were there and he was always milling around throughout the day, doing quizzes and trying to arrange pool activities. Following the kids time is bingo and then a show. The shows we saw were African tribal dance - quite a loud show with drums, fire eating and acrobatics, a parrot show - a lady with about five parrotts doing tricks such as driving a car and a couple of singers, neither were too bad! The kids were allowed to stay through all of this and we didn't get to bed much before 11pm - there wasn't much point as it was quite loud and could be heard in the room anyway! We didn't mind though, the rooms have curtains with blackouts behind to keep the rooms dark so Oakley usually slept in a bit later.

===Home again, home again!===

Although it wasn't a great start, we really did enjoy the holiday. The weather brightened up which helped! The hotel is quite basic, but it doesn't pretend to be anything else. The staff were lovely and the entertainment was really quite good, especially for kids. After talking to a few other people there we found out there are two types of room, studios (which we had) and apartments, which have seperate bedrooms. I wouldn't go again, but thats mainly because there are so many other places to see and I found Alcudia to be quite 'english' - although the beach is lovely and there are still quite a few good mallorcan restaurants to choose from.

Sorry it's been another lengthy review and if you made it this far - Thankyou!

Summary: Hotel complex in Alcudia, Majorca.