Let me start by saying that we had an amazing week at PineBay! The resort is beautifully designed, the swimming pools are lovely, the private beach is fantastic, and the water slides are great. You can enjoy food and drinks throughout the entire day. The buffets offer a really wide variety of high-quality food, the pastries are delicious, and there really is something tasty for everyone! The coffee in the two cafés is also really good.
There are plenty of activities to enjoy: you can play table tennis, take part in all kinds of games by the pool, play football in a large inflatable sports hall, play tennis, dance at the fun mini disco, go to the kids’ cinema, and much more.
All of this is definitely worthy of a 5-star resort!
The beach club is a real bonus, with delicious food such as dürüm döner. One thing we did find disappointing was that beer, both here and at the pool and amphitheatre, is served in paper cups. From both a sustainability and taste perspective, it would be much better to invest in reusable hard plastic cups that can be washed. This would create less waste, and cocktails, mixed drinks and beer simply taste much better from a proper reusable cup than from a paper one.
There were, however, a few things that were disappointing or simply not good enough. Our room had quite a few issues. When we checked in, the floor in the children’s room was extremely dirty. Only after reporting it to reception for the third time did a cleaner come to clean it, and even then it was only cleaned superficially rather than thoroughly.
The curtain in the children’s room was partly hanging off, the seat cushions were dirty and covered in white stains, and the shower drain did not drain properly. There was also not always hot water available for showering. Some of the lights did not work, although fortunately these were repaired quickly.
What was definitely not up to 5-star standards was the housekeeping. When we checked in, there were two small piles of sand in the entrance area, one on either side of the door. Amazingly, that same sand was still there when we checked out a week later. The beds were made, but the bed linen was not changed once during the entire week. We were also barely provided with any toilet paper, and clean towels were simply left in the entrance area on the corner of the sofa instead of being placed neatly in the bathroom, for example.
Another disappointment was that the swimming pools were so incredibly cold that it simply wasn’t pleasant to get into the water. These were definitely some significant downsides to our stay.
Having said that, the beds themselves were extremely comfortable and we slept very well, which was great!
What we appreciated most of all were the shows in the amphitheatre. They were of an incredibly high standard and absolutely spectacular. WOW!
Conclusion: Many aspects of this resort were definitely worthy of 5 stars, while unfortunately some others were absolutely not. BUT despite these issues, we really enjoyed our week at this resort and had a fantastic holiday!