Miracle Resort Hotel★★★★★

✓Brilliant hotel. Everything was fantastic especially the snack bar area and all the controls

✓Rooms is very clean and dinner is very good

✓We had an amazing time with my family

✓On paper The hotel itself really does have everything you could want from a family holiday — a beautiful pool, large restaurant, kids’ clubs, pool activities, staff on rollerblades and lifeguards around all day. On paper, it has everything. However, despite the facilities, I probably wouldn’t return. The staff are generally lovely, but the expectation to tip morning, noon and night became far too much. It sometimes felt as though you were expected to tip for absolutely everything. Some of the bar staff were also extremely rude when you went up to order a drink, even when I was the only person at the bar. On more than one occasion, I was made to feel as though asking for a Piña Colada was a huge inconvenience, which eventually put me off going to the bar altogether. The sunbed situation was also ridiculous. If you want a decent selection of sunbeds together, you apparently need to be down there before 5am. People telling you that you can get sunbeds at 8–9am really mean you might be able to find **one**, not several together for a family or group. The food was nice, but incredibly repetitive. By the third day, I had already had enough of it because there wasn’t much variation. A lot of it was also cold, although I appreciate it was the height of the season and the restaurant was extremely busy. Getting a table at dinner was stressful, even arriving at exactly 6:30pm. The rush was chaotic and the noise inside the restaurant was just too much. It didn’t feel like a particularly relaxing dining experience. The evening entertainment was mainly held in the amphitheatre, but it was ridiculously hot in there and sitting on the plastic seats wasn’t comfortable. On one occasion, children were throwing toys into the air which were hitting other guests, so we eventually decided to leave. Most of the entertainment on the stage near the pool didn’t start until around 10:30pm, which is very late when you have younger children. The Monday “Party” night was also, in my opinion, completely inappropriate for a family resort. Watching women dancing in a very sexualised way on a podium while the DJ was encouraging children and families to come up and dance was extremely uncomfortable. I found it completely inappropriate and left not long afterwards. The majority of the other guests were German, Polish and Turkish, and generally everyone was friendly. However, there was one incident that left a sour taste. A few members of our party were playing with a ball in the pool and accidentally splashed a child. The child’s father became extremely angry, and hotel staff told our party to stop playing with the ball. Around 10 minutes later, the same Turkish family were playing with a ball in the pool themselves. It was frustrating to see one rule being applied to us and seemingly another to them. Our room was clean and tidy, but the sleeping arrangements were disappointing. We were two adults and two children and expected two double beds. Instead, we had a very small double bed, a slightly larger-than-normal single and a camp bed. The camp bed was rock hard and my son refused to sleep on it, describing it as sleeping on a “brick”. The pillows were also extremely worn and lumpy. Despite asking housekeeping for new pillows on several occasions, they were never replaced. Outside the hotel, the surrounding area was very run down. The strip was dirty, there was a strong smell of sewage on most days and, generally, it didn’t feel particularly pleasant or safe to walk around. I have been to Turkey 13 times and have never experienced an area that felt so undesirable. Overall, the hotel has so much potential and, as I said, it really does have a lot of facilities. There are definitely positives, and the staff are mostly lovely, but for us the negatives outweighed them. For two days, my youngest was extremely unwell with vomiting and diarrhoea. I appreciate that illness can happen anywhere and I wouldn’t necessarily blame the hotel for this, but it certainly made those days particularly difficult and added to our overall experience. I also want to mention Jacob, one of the barmen. He was friendly and pleasant towards us, but I found the way he behaved towards one member of our party to be very sleazy and overly familiar. It was uncomfortable to watch, particularly as part of a large group, and it left a bad impression. Between the tipping culture, sunbed situation, repetitive and often cold food, late and inappropriate entertainment, room arrangements, uncomfortable incidents and the condition of the surrounding area, this just wasn’t the holiday experience we were hoping for. Unfortunately, this experience has cemented the fact that we won’t be returning to Antalya for a holiday. We’ll be sticking to the areas of Turkey that we already know and love.