Laguna Beach Resort Hotel Review

Good Points
The food, staff, gorgeous beaches

Bad Points
A dirty/stained chair in our room and the fixings in the bathroom

General Comments
My partner and I spent a week at Laguna from 10-18 February 2008, we booked through Kuoni.

We discovered that the island is due for a refurbishment this May-Dec when we looked on Kuoni's website.

The transfer was 25 minutes by speedboat from Male.

On arrival at the island, we were greeted with a non-alcoholic cocktail and cool towels, the check-in was easy and our bags were delivered to our room.

We had room 130, a deluxe bungalow. The room was fine and was as shown on Kuoni's website. Unfortunately, one of the chairs in our room was dirty and stained and the fixings in the outdoor bathroom were a little shoddy but these did not ruin the holiday for us - very minor, etc. Our room was cared for twice daily, in the morning they cleaned and delivered fresh towels, in the evening they turned down the bed. The mini-bar is not free. If you wish it to be re-stocked, you must sign and date the sheet showing which items you have taken.

Outside our bungalow was a little opening to the beach where we found our sunbeds, with our room numbers on them. However, a few people were disrespectful and took it upon themselves to take our sunbeds. This was nothing to do with the island, just rude people.

The beach was lovely, it was not littered or dirty. The snorkelling was great but the House Reef trip is definitely worth it. We had a free excursion with our holiday and we chose night fishing - it was ok, we didn't catch anything and I am glad because they didn't throw any of the fish back. I've never done fishing before and I wouldn't do it again.

We were on all-inclusive - there is a separate menu at the main bar which lists all the drinks that are included, of which there were many! Obviously, there is a larger list of drinks if you wish to pay - a cocktail was around $10. The bar staff were very polite and friendly. Each day, you are allowed two bottles of water (large), two beers and two soft drinks that you can take back to your room.

All meals are taken in the Summerfields restaurant. We had the same table and the same waiter. Our waiter was a little shy but we had no complaints about him. The food was delicious, lots of variety with cold salads, meats, hot food, potatoes, pasta, bread and lots of desserts. For breakfast, again a wide selection of foods including some things you would find with an English cooked breakfast. The restaurant has a waiter service for a couple of nights each week, you get a buffet starter were you serve yourself and then you choose a main from two choices which your waiter then serves you with. Dessert is buffet style. You can take your all-inclusive drinks at this restaurant.

There are different restaurants you can eat at and on one night we chose to eat in the Palm Grill, I think it was between 50-65 dollars each for the meal which is a little expensive but we did not mind, this was a once in a lifetime holiday. It was basically a BBQ of all sorts of meats/fish and again, you serve yourself as many times as you wish. You cannot have your all-inclusive quota of drinks here, you have to pay. It was a lovely dinner and we had a table in the sand.

If you are an all-inclusive guest, you can ask your waiter from Summerfields for a discount voucher to take to another restaurant, it is worth about $8 each.

On our last night, we ate at the Chinese restaurant as they had a 20% off your bill offer which is handy as the prices are high. The meal was nice but we were glad of the 20% off as I do not think it would have been worth the full amount.

There is a shop by the reception which sells trinkets, bikinis, t-shirts, nibbles and cigarettes. You can also buy cigarettes at the main bar.

After a few days of beach sunbathing, we made our way to the pool - an excellent place to sunbathe as you get served drinks throughout the day! The pool is good although the pool bar was not open.

We had some treatments at the Serena Spa - the price of the treatments are very reasonable. The ladies in the spa are very polite and our treatments were excellent.

There is a small gym, which is actually well equipped.

The Sunset Bar by the water suites is open until the sun sets but if you are not a water suite guest, you have to pay for your drinks.

We hired a canoe (free for all inclusive guests) and went around the island a few times, no complaints there.

There were some big machines doing some work on the other side of the island, but we did not see them unless we walked that way. I can imagine this will have spoiled some peoples view. Obviously, some works are being done in preparation for the refurb in May but we did not really see them, being on the other side of the island.

All in all, we had a fantastic holiday, we have no complaints. Before we went, we read a number of reviews so we were prepared for the worst but we didn't really have any problems at all. This is a lovely island but if you do not want to see refurbishment works going on, you would be best to choose another island. If you can handle the odd thing or two that needs some work and you can get a good deal on the price, then this island is just fine.