Hotel Playa Paraiso: A Fantastic Time

The beach and the pool are spectacular. Lots of space and lots of chairs. Excellent. Despite hearing horror stories about the food in Cuba, the food at the Pestana was very good, including fresh fish, steaks, chops and chicken every meal cooked to your tastes, and a roast of pig, turkey, or beef on the buffet. Great Pasta Bar and pizza ovens wood fired bbq down at the beach for lunches. The rooms are the weak link, 4 of 5 rooms we booked were now hand showers as the clamps were missing and they  [... read more]are generally pretty plain jane, but we really did not spend much time in them so it was not a big deal. Bartenders and staff were friendly and very nice, no real line-ups at the bars. Ready to go back!

Iberostar Origin Daiquiri: Good Things Do Come In Small Packages!

We had a superior room without an ocean view. The room was great, clean, ample room to move about, the air conditioning worked well. Beds were more like a super single than double (still comfortable). All amenities were very close by, the beach was fantastic and the employee team were terrific. Great food, drink, and entertainment. I would recommend this resort.

Hotel Playa Paraiso: Great trip at a wonderful resort!

We stayed at this resort for 10 days beginning April 29, 2015. I had emailed previously to our trip requesting building 8 or 9 with a 3rd floor room and king size bed and upon arrival that's exactly where we were! During our stay we had 3.5 days of torrential downpours. I have nothing bad to say about this resort other than two things. Our room leaked during the torrential downpours from the window creating quite a mess. I spoke to the front desk about, the lady working asked what I wanted done  [... read more]about it and I requested either to be moved or else we needed more towels as we were using all ours keeping the water mopped up. She responded that there were no rooms available, even though the resort was not at capacity, and she would tell housekeeping. Bottom line, no additional towels were provided but the lady who cleaned our room happily removed the sopping wet ones daily!. Also, the beach bar is lacking, my husband is a vodka drinker and they don't carry vodka at the beach bar. For such a nice resort, I would have expected a much nicer bar down at that beautiful beach, it's just a shack. The food is the best I have ever had in Cuba, however we were there during the International Tourism event that was going on so that may have factored in. All a la cartes were delicious!! Awesome beach. Very clean!

Iberostar Origin Daiquiri: Great Resort!!

I stayed for 10 days in early May 2015. The food was great and staff very welcoming and personable. Everything was clean and well tended to. The bed and pillows were not the most comfortable. We had an updated room that was very nice although it had two super singles and not double beds. I would definitely go back again!!!

Melia Jardines del Rey: amazing resort

I would recomend this resort to everyone I know even though it was not totally finished yet when it is totally finished at the end of may it will be spectaculer the food grounds staff bars entertainment villas and rooms beach pool restaurants were all great my wife and I plan to return next year to see it totally finished we are looking at making this a yearly venture it is such a beautifull resort nothing bad to say about Melia Jardines del Ray I was very impreesed

Hotel Mojito: AMAZING RESORt

This was my third time at the resort and I will definitely be going back! Staff are super friendly and there is so much entertainment throughout the entire day! Great resort! I would definitely recommend it!

Muthu Colonial Hotel: Amazing Resort! !!!

Myself, Sister and 3 girlfriends spent 2 glorious week at The Colonial Resort. 30 to 34 degrees everyday. The Cuba people are so warm and friendly. We hung out with the Entertainment Staff who helped us to continued fun all day everyday! !!! The food was plentiful and Drinks of course :) The resort was clean and services spot on! !! Beach, AWESOME!!!! I would recommend this place to anyone. Always entertainment going on. I shall be back!!!!!!

Memories Flamenco Beach Resort: THE BEST VACATION OF ALL TIME

The staff and the whole resort was absolutely amazing. Not a friendlier group. This is first time away from North America and had 7 days and nights of fantastic times. My favourite part is coming to the room after breakfast to see what amazing things the girls of room service came up with our blankets. One word describes everything there. FANTASTIC. I have recommended this resort to all my friends and even changed our wedding plans to have it there next april.

Melia Cayo Coco: great trip

Great resort, good food with several places to eat near the pool or near the beach, very clean, fabulous beach, friendly accommoding staff. My only complaints are not enough shade palapas around the pool, and expensive wifi.

Memories Flamenco Beach Resort: Fantastic time!

We traveled Apr 15-29th, 2015 and enjoyed fabulous weather and found the resort to be 5* , Cuban style. Admittedly, we are not picky people. I look for a clean room and an awesome beach, and this place delivered that, and more. The rooms are somewhat dated but clean and efficient. The maid service was great: hard working and very friendly. As a couple who do not like schedules when on holiday, we opted out of our a'la carte meals. The buffet always had something even the pickiest of eaters would [... read more] like. Topped off with a vast array of fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, cheeses, bread stick, pate, not to mention the dessert bar. Oh and Sushi Bar every other night at the buffet was a draw for my husband. He enjoyed it at least 4 times over the 2 weeks. Delish, apparently, and made to order at the bar. The beach was amazing. I am not a water person, but so enjoyed this beach. The water was beautiful and you could go quite a way out before it got deep. I likely spent more time in the water this trip than all others combined. The 24 hour makes a mean fried chicken and fries, should the mood hit. These were the only places we actually went to and we never went hungry. I saw a few people with their own salad dressing but in fact, there was a good number of choices. But a good idea if you have a favourite, just in case. Make sure you have lots of sun screen as it is quite pricey to buy in the store. We had exceptionally good weather bordering on too hot a couple of days so we used quite a bit. But no complaints there either after a cold winter. All in all, I would recommend this resort for families and couples alike. We traveled as a couple alone and met some of the nicest people. And Lucy and Raul from the management team, among others, check in on guests periodically to see how their stay is going. I always enjoy Cuba as the people are so friendly and such hard workers. A great vacation and we will go back. Even if only for Gustoffa's (sp) Choc Martini.

Memories Caribe Beach Resort: Good Vacation

Stayed at Memories Caribe with family (three couples) from April 7th to the 21st Sunwing – We booked and flew through Sunwing as everyone does and to start off I’ll tell you I’m not a fan of sunwing but unfortunately they seem to be the only ones who fly to a lot of places we want to go. It has nothing to do with the cabin crew as they are always very nice, but it’s the constant changing of flights, being late and reps that leave a lot to be desired once you get down there. But this tim [... read more]e it was a refreshing change, their rep on site Betty was absolutely amazing. No matter what the issue was she was always there to help us and make sure everything was fixed. It was so nice to have a rep that was more worried about our vacation being memorable than selling us excursions. Her assistant Toni was great too! Food – This is one area that we’re surprised at, for the most part the food was very good. No matter what, you could always find something good to eat. My son really like the stir fry’s and they make a roasted chicken that would rival anything here. There is a pancake station and they are very nicely done. One cook even makes hearts and flower shapes for the kids and friends he makes. He is very friendly. Pool area – The pool area is very nice with lots of chairs, we found we didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to get a chair for the day. The guy at the churros bar (sorry I can remember his name) with the deep voice (he should do voice commercials for Dodge Ram lol) was quite the guy, always smiling and walking around to ensure your drink was still full. Beach – Not going to say too much on this as everyone else has summed it up pretty good, TOTALLY AWESOME. Only drawback is the towel game is alive and well here, you have to get up at an ungodly hour just to get a chair and shade. They need to make more palapa as they have enough chairs just not enough shaded areas. Also when you walk down to the beach there is often this funky smell that I think is coming from the lagoon, but it is gross. So you need to choose the further ends of the beach to get away from it. Their is a pizza hut and a hamburger, hotdog and ham and cheese pannini hut which is pretty good along with the bar at the entrance to the beach. So you can just stay there for lunch if you want to eat at your beach chair or their are a few tables set up to eat by the cooking area too. People – One word INCREDABLE, always smiling and friendly, they all work so hard yet they treat you just like a friend. Here are some of our favourite: • Lobby Bar – Yissel, Maryland and Luis, the best service and smiles, and jokers • Wine Bar – O’Neil, super nice guy, so happy to please you • Special Coffees – this is a little cart outside the buffet at night, O’Nay was so friendly and master of coffee concoctions, yummy! • Buffet – the short order guy who does the eggs in the morning (again sorry can’t remember his name) He’s a big guy with a big heart and always willing to talk. BTW – he loves baseball, talk about baseball and you’re friends for life. Also during supper one of our favorite waitress was Dianna, as soon as she saw you her big smile would light up and you were welcomed to dinner Rooms – This is the one area we had our problems and needed Betty, despite the fact they were well cleaned ( a little tried looking though, but it’s a room) we had to change our room 3 times due to lack of air conditioning. Apparently they had a problem throughout the resort and had some technicians from Havana brought in to work on it. Hopefully they get it fixed. Our son and his wife had their air working fine. Our friends had mediocre air like us. So if air is a must for you, then you will have to decide as it might be a game of Russian roulette. Otherwise good value for the money, (or bring a couple of fans just in case). Now to be fair once this was finally done every day after this we got a call from public relations asking if everything was ok and if they could do anything else for us. Tips: Wine bar: This is a must and we’ll never understand why Memories nor Sun wing does not advertise this little gem. The only reason we knew about it was from a review on this website by another guest. It’s an extra cost of 10 peso pp but well worth it. O’Neil takes you through all their wines, Spanish, French, Chilean and others, he explains what you can expect from each bottle and then you can try them. You can stay as long as you want and try as many bottles as you want, he also has deli meats with cheese and crackers. You basically have the whole room to yourself, your private wine room. There is a tv too if there’s a game on and you want to sip on your wine and enjoy . This was one of our favourite parts of the trip. Gardeners: Ask a gardener for a coconut and he’ll climb a tree and get you one, then mix the milk with rum, excellent. Don’t forget to give him a tip for his troubles. Snack shack pool : When you go there you’ll think they only serve hot dogs and hamburgers, but they serve so much more, make sure you ask for a menu, we only found out about this when we left. Also apparently can fill up your water bottles yourself there with purified water, another tip we didn't find out till leaving. Beach: Ask the snack guy on the beach for old bread and then walk out into the ocean where you can feed 100’s of cool looking fish. The room thing was annoying but a vacation is what you make of it, we could have complained the whole time we were there and been absolutely miserable but we didn’t pay for that. You bare with the issues, go to your rep (the amazing Betty) and get it fixed and move on. All in all it was a very good vacation. Stayed April 2015, travelled with friends

Muthu Colonial Hotel: A pleasant resort.

The room was beautiful, the beds very comfortable, the beach is awesome. The staff very helpful, the drinks were very good, the bus ride to and from resort was short and pleasant and informative by our bus guide.

Hotel Playa Paraiso: Great time at resort

We stayed at the Penstana April 27 to May 4, 2015. Our ten year old daughter and our two young adult sons and their partners accompanied us. The beach is absolutely beautiful. It is sand were as the resort next door has a rocky beach that is hard on the feet. The lovely tile pool had a broken tile that my daughter stepped on and cut her toe. The employees and visitor were so helpful with gathering first aid material. In a timely manner, the employees located the broken tile a fixed it. All of  [... read more]us found the bed to get to be quite uncomfortable. The rooms were clean. Several days our adult children did not get water bottles in their rooms which was important since you can not drink the tap water. We were informed by the cleaners that they could not give us water and that we had to asked for water at the front desk. Interestly, we were told by the front desk that they did not have any, to ask the cleaners. Overall great time had by all!

Melia Cayo Coco: Fabulous two weeks April 11-26.

Small but great resort. Clean, fantastic beach, endless choices of food in the buffet, entertainment in the lobby every night and staff catering to all your needs. Thank you Carlos the gardener, Joel and Hector at the smoothie bar, Jorge at buffett, Alex the entertainer and many more for making us feel at home.

Hotel Playa Paraiso: New but nothing else

Clean, new but good things stop there. Buffet very plain, staff not interested to make any money, beach nice but no space in shade. Long wait in bars. Cuban restaurant is recommended. Pilar beach is worth all day trip.

Memories Flamenco Beach Resort: Disappointing

The following outlines our experience at this resort. We did not receive a paper showing our pre-booked speciality restaurants. We didn't realize we were supposed to have received this until 3 or 4 days into our trip. When we asked the Sunwing rep about this he was dismissive and just told us to go book them but when we tried everything was booked up. We did manage to get into the Asian restaurant which we found to be very good but we never got to use the other 3 restaurants. We stayed at this  [... read more]resort for 2 weeks and we should have been able to get into each of the restaurants twice but because of Sunwings neglect we feel that we were short changed. We found that the resort was not vegetarian friendly. The foods at the buffet were not usually labeled and it was always a guessing game trying to figure out what the individual dishes contained. A lot of the salads and cooked rice contained meat items (bacon with brussell sprouts? Ham with chickpeas?) There was usually 3 or 4 pasta dishes in the buffett but whether they contained meat or not was always a mystery. The resort was big...too big. There was not enough seating or room in the common areas. When it was raining people crowded into the lobby and lobby bar...finding a seat was impossible. At times we had no choice but to return to our room. The pools were large but not enough shade was provided. All the shaded spots were “reserved” with towels by 7am. The resort catered to children and as a result there were a large number of kids. The resort was really meant for families and not couples. This was not stressed in the online broucher or by our travel agent. There were 2 (I think) children's pools but there were large numbers of children in the main pool. The nightly entertainment was good but finding a seat was a nightmare. You had to arrive 1 1/2 hours early to find a seat. Many people had to stand up or sit on a concrete wall. A resort this size needs a much larger theater. After the kids nightly entertainment a notice went up on the screen saying that the kids events were now finished for the day but the children (and their strollers) remained taking up valuable seating. The beach in front of the resort had a great deal of coral for the first 30 feet upon entering the water making it very difficult to enter. We often had to go to the resort next door (Pestana) to get into the water. On two days we went to Pilar Beach (a one hour bus ride). Pilar Beach is a beautiful beach with fine almost powder like sand. The bus ride is 5 pesos each return. The bus schedule is posted in the lobby. . You can rent a lounge chair with shade for 2 pesos each. There is a bar and small restaurant on site. The first day at the beach we had lunch in the restaurant. On our 2nd day at Pilar beach we were dismayed to find the restaurant closed to us for a large group of travel agents. Tourists (who pay the way of these travel agents) were locked out. A little advance notice of this closure would have been greatly appreciated. The staff at the resort were very friendly and we found the resort and rooms to be very clean. All the indoor common areas were posted “No Smoking” and seemed to be respected by everyone. We feel that this resort is not suitable for vegetarians or couples and because of the reasons outlined above we feel this resort does not justify a 4.5 star rating as is advertised.

Hotel Playa Paraiso: What a surprise !!

This resort turned out to be much better than I anticipated!! Having been to Cuba in the past, I was not inpressed with the accomadations and food. This resort had both beautiful and clean rooms and grounds, and the food was very good. The A la carte restaurant surpased anything I have had in Cuba. But it was the people at the resort that made my vacation. They were so accomadating and really went out of their way to make sure you had a great vacation. I would go back to this resort.

Iberostar Origin Daiquiri: Very nice resort

Great area. Weather wasn't great, but there is nothing to be done about that. I would go back again. Enjoyed our time there. Will go for 2 weeks next time. Rooms were comfortable and we enjoyed the pools.

Melia Cayo Coco: nice..clean..resort

I thought that the STAFF made the hotel. Definitely NOT a five star..but..a very comfortable hotel. You wanted for nothing..that's how accommodating the staff was.The beach was..of course...BEAUTIFUL. Only thing..need more shade around the pool area.

Hotel Mojito: Good get away

This was my first time to Cuba. The beach was beautiful! It got really crowded though. The hotel wasn't the greatest in my opinion. I found it below average over all. Food was ok, not great either. Room wasn't very clean, bedding was dirty and the grounds need some updating. Its an older resort and it shows, but it gets the job done. Staff were very friendly and great!