Acapulco Beach Resort & Hotel
From InYourWorld
Contents |
[edit] Location
Catalkoy, Kyrenia.
[edit] Directions
About 8km east from Kyrenia. Take a right at the first roundabout you reach when entering Kyrenia from Nicosia. Follow this road to some traffic lights, go straight over, at the round-a-bout turn right. Continue for about 8km until you see the "Acapulco Casino" sign indicating you turn left on a long uphill bend. After another 1km or so you should reach the main gates to Acapulco.
[edit] Description
Acapulco Beach Club & Resort Hotel lies secluded in a small bay. The resort looks to be surrounded by military encampments which are only visible because of the tell-tale red square placards on the fences in the distance! Otherwise the location seems remote. This is perhaps its biggest selling point.
The hotel consists of two types of accoomodation bungalow and hotel room. The bungalows occupy a piece of land to the east of the main hotel. There doesn't appear to be that many of them. The main hotel is laid out over two wings and 4 floors. The room numbers on the 3rd floor begin with a '3' and the ones on the 4th confusing begin with a '7'. This caused some confusion especially since there was no one available to show me to my room when I checked in.
Situated under the hotel lobby is the casino which we didn't venture into but judging by it's available floor area can't be very big unless there's more of it underground.
The hotel also has a large conference hall which lies to the west of the hotel and slightly up the hill from the pool. The hotel was the location for a large wedding the night we arrived.
Checkout time is noon.
[edit] Cost
The advertised rate for a two person hotel room in mid-July is £128. This makes it a relatively expensive place to stay in North Cyprus if you can not get a discount.
However, one of the problems with Acapulco is that you are very much a captive audience and that the 'extras' are not particularly cheap and actually approach/exceed the costs you would pay for similar items in the south. Therefore your accomodation bill (which you bizarrely pay up front) is only part of the story. So unless you plan on bringing a lot of your own stuff with you you will also be paying for the additional items that you need. That said, if you can fill up at the provided meals and avoid buying any other drinks the costs could be mitigated.
[edit] Things Nearby
The hotel has private access to approximately 1km of beach which is monitored by lifeguards. The beach here has grey sand and shelves steeply at the beginning and then flattens out. At time of visit there was quite a lot of seaweed in the water turning the sea a little brown in places. Probably not suitable for small children.
Other than that there is very little in the immediate vicinity.
[edit] Accommodation
We rented a family room which was of adequate size and well laid out. The room was furnished to a good standard and the cot we requested was clean, new and safe. The room had a television which, amongst other channels, had BBC Prime.
[edit] Facilities
- Health club (with spa and small selection of aerobic equipment)
- Private beach
- Casino
- Wireless Internet
- Hotel Shop
- Kids Club (for the over 5's)
The Hotel Shop deserves special mention because it is mostly useless. It sells newspapers, magazines, pool toys and confectionary but there is no access to water, snacks or any other drinks. These have to be purchased from the hotel.
[edit] Restaurants & Bars
There are numerous places to eat and drink at the hotel.
- The Lobby Bar - has nice outdoor seats overlooking the grounds and the sea. Service here was awful;
- The Aquarium Bar - nestling in a 'fold' of the large swimming pool it serves drinks and lunch-time food. Service here was awful. No menus, high chairs or place settings seemed to be available to us;
- Self Service Restaurant - also, bizarrely where you get your beach towels, this restaurant has plenty of drinks and food available and a large seating area. This is perhaps the only place I'd recommend getting food from because you are in charge of the service;
- Aphrodite Restaurant - this one was closed when we were there but it seems to offer an a-la-carte menu;
- Buffet Restaurant - breakfast, lunch and dinner are served in the buffet restaurant for those guests with the appropriate board. Whilst there was quite a selection of food here and the service (for drinks) was good, the quality of the food was understandably low.
[edit] Swimming Pools
There are two outdoor pools and one indoor pool. The indoor pool was shut when we were there for refurbishment. The kids pool is quite small and is quite cold (because it's in shade) until lunch time. Even so our kids had great fun on the mini-slide in the pool. The larger pool is very large and has water slides at one end in a separate (but connected) pool area.
The water slides are good fun, however they are in need of some attention since the connecting pieces of the slides are not flush and you feel every-one as you slide down. They are also a large focus of attention for the male weekend-hordes who use them as a way to demonstrate their prowess in various acts of stomach churning water slide brinkmanship.
The flooring around the swimming pools can be extremely slippery.
[edit] Guide Rating
The hotel is nicely situated. The decor and surroundings are well kept and the facilities are good.
However, it's not somewhere I would return to for 2 reasons:
- Hordes of day-trippers descend at weekends and pay an entrance fee to use the facilities. They effectively take the place over. There is insufficient parking for all the extra people and the pools and restaurants and bars are filled to capacity. Once the day-trippers left the hotel was much more pleasant to be in
- My experience of the hotel staff who supply any sort of paid-for-product was negative. Which is bizarre since these people might actually get tips.
