Or to be precise, Fantasia Bahia Principe in Tenerife, advertised as a 5 star family hotel. It does a lot of things really well but a few important things really badly. As you walk through the door you can’t help but be impressed by the reception and the staff. No need for keys as there is a chip in the wrist band, nice touch.

The rooms are what you would expect for this class of hotel and were always kept clean and tidy with the mini bar refilled every day.

Ours had a sea view.

The hotel centres around the pools and this is where there is a problem.

Sunbeds are reserved from God knows when in the morning, there are signs all around saying not to do it but not enforced. I met a guy the first morning who was near the end of his second week, he said it was fine till the start of the English Mid term holiday, and we always blamed the Germans!! It didn’t help when some families wanted 6 beds for 4 of them, some in the sun and some in the shade.

The quality of the food and drink was really good, maybe not 5* but really good, staff were excellent and our glasses where never empty at meal times. There are a lot of negative reviews regarding the food on Trip Advisor I can only think they must have been at a different hotel. There are 3 speciality restaurants which can be booked up to 24 hrs beforehand, we couldn’t book any till the night before we came home. We went to the reception and enquired why this could happen to be told that we should have emailed the hotel before we left the UK to make the bookings!! the receptionist tried to help but couldn’t, we asked to speak to the duty manager, she wouldn’t meet us as she couldn’t do anything about it and it was up to the restaurant manager. It was sorted out the next day, but really shouldn’t have needed to be done.

All the shows in the hotel need to be booked as well, again do them early as we could only get in to two, one was supposed to be a Beatles tribute but ended up a Queen tribute. The lobby bar was nice to sit in and listen to the live music each evening, there is also a sports bar with lots of tv’s.

The hotel comes alive in the evenings with some really effective light shows, junior discos and live entertainment.

For me the biggest problem with the hotel is that it’s built next to a sewage works, it’s along side block 7 and 8. In the mornings you couldn’t smell it but for the rest of the day it was stinking, if you were in block 8 you had to walk past it to get to your room and not much chance you could sit on your balcony with a glass of wine. What was really disturbing were the kids playing 5 aside next to it.

Obviously we raised our concerns with the hotel and we got the stock “the hotel is aware that there are problems” answer. If we went back we would be asking for block 4 with a pool view, you don’t want block 7, ever!!

Would we go back?