Crystal Waterworld Resort & Spa
Belek, Antalya Region

Mr J Pawson, Lincoln

Crystal Waterworld is a modern hotel with great facilities. The bedroom we were staying in was a two bedroom family room, overlooking a garden area. It was well furnished, 2 single beds, TV and minibar in the first room off the corridor, short hall way with wardrobe space and the bathroom, and the a door through to the double bed, again with own tv and minibar (stocked daily) and balcony. Beds were firm but comfy, and each bedroom space had individually controlled air conditioning. Cleaning was everyday, but was cursory (don't look under the beds!).

There were many bars across the complex but sometimes, as in all mixed nationality hotels, queuing was hit and miss, but most of the time the barmen had it under control. Free beach towels changed as often as you want, comfy sunbeds around the huge main pool (100mx25m) - always available and no need for a 6:30am stampede. Slightly less comfy around the busy/noisy aquapark pool. The aquapark had 2 sessions for the rides and sometimes, depending on the availability of lifeguards, got a 'bit hectic' in the splash pools trying to get a rubber ring off the previous rider who mostly were reluctant to give them up.
Breakfast was served in the main restaurant and busy at times - a very wide selection of food for breakfast including stews, rice and chips (but no beans)! There are several places to eat through the day, the beach bar with a small selection of snacks/salads, the main restaurant and the aqua-park restaurant which we mainly used at lunchtime with extensive offerings. in the evening, the main restaurant and 4 A La Carte restaurants are available. The main restaurant is bedlam for the first hour when it opens with huge 'scrums' around the popular items, first night for us, both children ended up covered in food from some of the 'ruder' guests food from the barging and pushing! However the quality of the food is excellent and plenty of it, but don't expect your usual British fayre for any meal as the majority of the guests were Russian, Khazakstan and Turkish, with a splattering of German, French and about half a dozen British families during our fortnight.

I have rated 4/5 due to the issues around the aquapark at times, the extremely busy restaurant and the quality of the cleaning (and lack of toilet rolls!), but overall a good location, excellent facilities, friendly helpful staff, and sometimes not all British can be a good thing.

Mr M Parlakyildiz, London

Dirty.

Mrs F Ishraq, Dundee

Has everything under one roof, would definitely visit this hotel again and the kids loved it.

Mr M Sangari, London

It was lovely but the guys who work in bowling or play group were very rude. I did my complain about it because all other things was fine.

Mr B Stoyanov, Varna

Entertainment team can do better, the DJ was not so good - the music he played was the same whole vacation. The rest was good.

Miss C Mortlock, Erith

Everything was brill!

Mr S Abboud, Nazareth

Wonderful stay for families, very recommended.

Mr S Abboud, Nazareth

The room good and the cleaning service very good. The water park very good especially for children.

Mr S Symons, Loughborough

Where to start? Whilst I would like nothing more than to forget we ever went to this hotel, there were a few (and I do mean very few) good things about this hotel! To be fair to people who are booked to go to this hotel, I am going to give a very fair and honest review based on my experience.

We arrived here late evening on 4th July and as soon as we got to the reception to check in, we felt very unwelcome. There is nobody there to greet and welcome you. Waiting at reception like lemons, reception staff continued dealing with their Turkish speaking guests who have no manners and just jumped the queue. We were eventually seen to and when we explained we wanted to check in, we had a form shoved in front of us and told to complete. We eventually got our keys but no instructions as to where to go and still no warm welcome. Luckily the bellboy was on hand to take our luggage and show us where to go. We entered the room to find we had a pokey little room with just a double bed- nowhere for my 4 year old to sleep! Off we trot back to reception to explain the room was too small and that we had paid extra for a "deluxe room". After arguing with the not so lovely lady on reception, I demanded to speak to the manager. A few minutes later, she came back and told us they will change our room - result! Once we got into the room, I have to admit it was very nice!

The shower in the room was brilliant- a real power shower.

Don't expect your room to be cleaned everyday- in our first week, the cleaner didn't show up on 4 days! When she did clean, the floor wasn't swept or moped! TIP, make sure you hang the thing on the door to say you want the room cleaned- once we did this, we had no problems.

Food
Let's start with a positive- the food is very very nice! Plenty of choice and for the fussy eaters, there's chips for breakfast, lunch and dinner! We certainly didn't struggle and enjoyed everything we ate.

Now for the negative- the main restaurant is the most disorganised, dirty restaurant I've come across and meal times was nothing less than a cattle market (and that's being nice)! They are clearly very short staffed in the restaurant and the chefs cannot keep up with demand- be prepared to wait in long queues for anything up to 10 minutes for food!

Waiters were not managed or organised and we often had to wait to have a table cleared for us to use! Once we finally had a table cleaned, we had to wait for somebody else to come and dress the table! On a couple of occasions, we got so fed up of waiting that my husband cleared and dressed the table himself- just what you would expect to do at a 5* hotel!

I have never seen such wastage of food and dirtiness - plates and plates of uneaten food were left on tables to be thrown away! I wouldn't mind so much but because of their greed, we missed out on certain food as it had run out- the hotel really need to be able to accommodate for the numbers and it's inexcusable for food to run out!

Bang on the dot, food is swiftly starting to be taken away at the end of each session which personally I feel is unfair given that one of the reason people haven't finished eating on time is because they've had to wait in long queues to get the food in the first place! TIP, the best time to go for dinner is between 8.15pm and 8.30pm.

Finally, no staff in the restaurant spoke or understood English which was very frustrating when they didn't understand basics such as milk and bread! Whilst I don't expect them to speak fluent English, they do need to understand basics and not rely on other guests to translate!

Ice cream
For those of you who like ice cream, you're in luck- you can have it between 2pm and 6pm and then again at dinner. Be prepared though- you'll be queuing for god knows how long no matter what time you go to get it- pretty disgraceful that they only have one ice cream stand to cater for up to 2700 guests! Also, during the day, be prepared to walk anything up to 10/15 minutes to go and get your ice cream- yep, that's right! There's only one station at the patisserie and depending on where you are, you may have a long walk. Also please note, Mazlum finishes at 9.15pm so whether you're in the queue for ice cream or not, don't expect to get served- I watched him several times slipping away as soon as 9.15pm hit even if there was nobody there to take over from him!

Al a carts
3 of the 5 were open and I can honestly say all three were brilliant! A special thank you to Marich (HR manager) who personally booked these for us knowing how upset we were about the main restaurant! Marich even arranged for our table to be dressed beautifully at the seafood restaurant and arranged a lovely bottle of wine as an apology! It was lovely and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Marich is a real asset to this hotel and if more staff were like him, I'm sure we would of had a great time!

Poolside
Both pools are very nice and although we struggled to get a sun bed the first couple of days, we didn't have much problem for the rest of the fortnight.

The pool areas are very dirty and very rarely did you see staff cleaning! People would leave food and drinks everywhere and they would be sat there for most of the day!

Also, please be aware that the slides close between 12.30pm and 1.30pm as lifeguards go for lunch, although in reality, slides are closed from 12pm until 2pm - yep, you've read right! Again, I think it's disgraceful and totally unacceptable that the slides should be closed- why can't the lifeguards take it in turns to go and have their lunch? With all due respect, they do very little as it is! There's no lifeguards overseeing any of the two main pools or the children's pool so guests get away with almost anything. At the children's end, again, no lifeguards which means people are eating in the pool and walking up slides while others are trying to come down! Come on Crystal, sort it out!

Toilets
All I can say is disgusting! Very rarely did we go in and find them clean- again very poor for a hotel that's supposed to be 5*. Cleaners were around but clearly couldn't get around to all of the toilets regularly enough. Personally, I don't think its the cleaners fault- there's too few of them given the size of the hotel!

Entertainment
Sorry, can't say much about this as we didn't go to the arena at all. However, I would definitely suggest the Irish pub which is where we were every night. All staff in there were lovely and you can get wifi (which you do get all around the hotel including the room).

A special thank you to Serkan who is another credit to the hotel. He's very friendly and polite and always made us feel welcome at the Irish pub!

There is so much more I could tell you about this hotel but I think the review has gone on long enough! This is no way a 5* hotel and little things which could be sorted quickly let this hotel down. Given that we go away twice a year, this is by far the worst hotel we've been to in the last 4 years and I feel robbed, given the money we paid! It's definitely put us off going to Turkey again and certainly put us off ever going to another Crystal hotel!

Last but not least, a very special thank you to Oguzhan who was another great staff member and credit to the hotel! He is one of very few who spoke and understood English. Very polite and always smiling!

Mr N Tarbitt, York

Beautiful hotel and venue, excellent staff. Very clean.

Mr E Egfily, Nazareth

Mr H Keeshbafan, London

Perfect hotel for a family holiday.

Mrs E Warren, Girne

Room was not very clean, the floor was dusty and the toilet needed bleaching. Pool area was ok. If you wanted a sun lounger you had to get up at 6 as everyone puts their towels on then and leaves them there 'til they come back later, so we had to do the same. Food was ok, but the buffet is so busy at night and there's no queuing system so everyone pushing in front you and your kids. The resort is manly Russian, German and Turkish. I only met one other English family.

Mr D Collins, Edgware

Good hotel. Food very basic and only warm. Hotel clean but not in Belek, it is in Boguzkent so in the boon docks. Shops in the hotel charge the earth, moon, stars and the sun for their goods and the photo's from the photo guy will cost more than the holiday. Good hotel avoid the shops and vendors in the hotel though.

Mrs S Ramsay, Falkirk

Beautiful hotel, fab room, very clean, good towel art. Food amazing choice. You can eat and drink 24 hours a day. Staff very friendly. Only downside is there are few British guests, mainly Russian and German, although we never encountered any problems. Would definitely stay here again, well worth the money spent.

Mrs S Pechrak Manesh, Milton Keynes

A great holiday, generally with excellent food but lacked 5 star service and our room cleanliness was not good. It was great family resort, very big and good to go with several families together.