Reading all the raving reviews here on TA, we thought this would be the best choice for second part of our Mauritian honeymoon. We couldn't have been more wrong.
It is nowhere mentioned that you are scooted around with golf-carts and if you want to escape the resort it is either a kilometer long hike uphill or you are relying on the hotel's services to take you to the parking lot.
The lush gardens are absolutely horribly designed. There is only one place where you can "cross the bridge" between your room and the restaurant/beach and you need to go through reception area for that. So while you see the beach from your room its at least a 5 min walk around to it. The layout is a small maze.
The room itself may look contemporary but with awful design faults. You can go to the toilet that has a single LED bulb but you can not switch it on unless the bathroom is alight. Toilet paper refill works interestingly - we got a half roll, half WET one. The bathroom is in one with the living/sleeping area, and can only be separated by a thin pull-down cover. The bed has a seating area around it - about 10 inches thick. This makes getting in/out of bed quite interesting. Bed linen has dark spots. The small jacuzzi/bathtub on the terrace (one of the main points booking this room) is so old, used and broken that it has the mosaic tiles broken up from the bottom and has mouldy grouts. YUCK!
But this is not yet the worst part of the whole AI experience.
It is food. I have never been to a 5* property with this awful selection and quality of items. Upon arrival we had to resort to the Takamaka bar's small snack selection and got a burger each, however ingredients were swapped up (pineapple slice in beef burger but none in the chicken burger). We were hoping for something - A LOT - better for the amount we paid. Boy, we couldn't have been more wrong.
It was Mauritian night for dinner and food was just ok - for us.
So the deal is - the on site a'la carte restaurant is closed for renovations (the other reason why I booked this resort at all) and you can only PRE-ORDER food from its menu 24 hours in advance! You need to choose what you want to eat the following night... but whatever proper food items on the menu are with supplements of course (and hefty, 800-2500 MUR ones!).
Therefore only the buffet restaurant is open at all. Breakfast was again just ok, on the contrary lunch was served beachside in heavy and uncomfortable wind under the shade of palm trees - so the missus was shivering cold. Food was extended by 3 items compared to the bar selection, so again very limited and appalling. If you want to have 5 more items to choose from all of those are charged as supplement between 400 to 2200 MUR on top of your AI package. Dinner again was buffet but we only found 2 single items edible (some chicken in cream sauce and fish with almonds) but the rest are just - pardon my french - cr*p. Okra in coconut sauce? Garlic roasted potatoes that are barely cooked, let alone roasted? Nothing to eat the sauce with because the only side dish available is the potatoes. Lamb moussaka was like old minced lamb with a bitter aftertaste. Desserts? 7 items, most based on whipped egg whites (white chocolate mousse, meringues, coconut macarons, marshmallows, popcorn tarte??? and some very old looking fruit salad). And this is the only selection in a 5* resort! You can't get bar food (as in a hamburger or a sandwich) for dinner either, only if you order in room and that, of course, is with a supplement.
So I went to gain further information on this and was told that this is what it is, but the main restaurant will open up again in 2 days with a Lobster menu, which is available, of course, WITH A SUPPLEMENT of 2800 MUR pp! Of course there are no other options. At this point I was just so dumbfounded and offended that I left.
The only upside is that their cocktails/mocktails are fairly decent.
Not exactly sure why we paid nearly 500 euros a night for this. Unless if you wanna eat (more) decent food you'd probably need to fork out half of that nightly, again. Or drive around to other establishments, perhaps?
But then, here we are, 4 days left of this misery. Hope it ends quickly.
One thing is sure: we will avoid all Accor Hotels establishments from now on.
