Report Abuse

“I stayed at the Pafian Park holiday Village in mid...”

written by on 01/10/2010

I stayed at the Pafian Park holiday Village in mid September, for 10 nights. This is my review, based solely on my experiences, and given the time of year, may be extremely different to hight of season periods. This is a long and in depth review, so I hope you find it helpful.



Location wise, it is just about 23km/14 miles from the airport, which takes about 25 minutes or so in a taxi. No noise pollution from airplanes or other hotels whatsoever. The main town centre is a few km inland, and the harbor is a few km south. There is a 'main road' about 200 meters up the road, which again, you cannot hear at all. The village almost appears to be slightly secluded, with only 1 other apartment type hotel next to it, and a few villas behind. It is right on the beach, facing west out into the Mediterranean sea.



Rooms are nothing special, but are more than acceptable. There are facilities for self catering (fridge, toaster, cooker, kettle etc), t.v, hairdryer and so on. If you are not all inclusive, the air conditioning is at an extra cost, of '4.50 a night, which would get expensive. It is not good air conditioning. It basically acts as a cold fan... When it's blowing on you it's lovely and cooling, but the temperature settings don't work well, and it does not cool down the whole room, so you always find yourself having to turn it off and on once you get either too hot or too cold. Double beds, as usual, are two singles put together, which i don't really mind, but they don't have rubber feet or anything so they keep sliding apart, especially if you sit upright against the wall head board, and of course the bed starts sliding away. That gets very annoying. Garden/sea view rooms are available, pool view, no view, or pool/sea view rooms also. I stayed in a pool/sea view, which had a beautiful view over the pool, and out into the sea. The apartments are only two floors and 4 rooms across, and have thick walls, so noise is at a minimum. However, the 3 apartment blocks that are raised up over the restaurant, game room or entertainment stage, have a shared balcony on the lower level. There is a small wall dividing them, but the floor extends outwards and reduces privacy a lot. Also, don't let my saying of the blocks over the restaurant etc make you think that they will be noisy, because they're not, at all. But I will get into that a bit later on.



Facilities are good. Gym, indoor pool (not that you'd ever need to use it!), hairstylist and manicure treatment. A claimed 3 bars I think, however there are only really 2. One is in the gardens down at the beach front, which is only open at season peak times, and the other, is 1 bar, in an L shape, with one front on the outside and the other square on, on the inside, which they count as 2 separate bars.



Drinks are very good. Local spirits and beers available on all inclusive, including coke, diet coke, carlsberg and sprite I think it was. Food was good, but does get a bit boring after while. Nights are themed; Italian, Barbeque, Oriental, International, Greek, Cyprian and Carvery. There is also a kids section, which always has chips, chicken nuggets, sausages and some other stuff which comes in handy if you don't like any of the food that night (which in my case never happened), and that food also acts as the snacks available pretty much all day, along with ice cream. Breakfast is a gold old fry up, lunch was often very similar to dinner time... Beef stroganoff, pasta, chicken, pork etc.



One thing about the pool everyone particularly liked (and the whole hotel in fact), was that it was extremely clean. Very very hard to find even small areas of dirt, which makes it look even prettier. The pool isn't huge, but big enough, and goes from 1.1 meters to 1.3 meters deep I think. Sun beds weren't amazing, but weren't bad at all. They are a woven fabric, as opposed to ridged plain plastic ones I have often experienced, so they are quite comfortable. The hotel management also leave a few inflatables and balls around the pool, so people can use them at their own will if they don't have their own.



Staff are very very friendly. Animation team go out of their way to make your time there that bit better. Bar staff are very efficient, are very friendly, and certainly aren't stingy when it comes to strength of drinks! Receptionists are very helpful and of course, friendly. It is not hard to have a conversation with any of the staff, as they all speak good English (and German). The waiters/waitresses for lunch and dinner however seem a little bit less bothered about pleasing you. They're not by any means a mood ruiner, but it could be better. Sometimes, once you've chosen your table and sat down, they'd take ages to approach you to take drinks orders, and sometimes didn't come at all, but usually they are efficient. Also they didn't always do things very practically, for example I experienced several times that they'd lean over the table to try to pick up an empty glass or sometimes plate, so you end up passing it to them, which just takes away part of the 'being waited on' feeling. Also they can be very quick to snatch your plate off you once you're finished. One other thing that the staff could do in the day time is to go around the pool waiting on you, bringing you drinks. Nothing major but might have been a nice addition.



Evening entertainment is probably the biggest and only proper let down. It's not awful, but it's not good by any means. Rather watered down, I would call it. It's only a weeks schedule, so of course it would be repetitive for 2 weeks. It goes on from 9 till 10, and then 2 rounds of bingo afterwards. I have read a review by someone who was there about the same time as I was, complaining that the entertainment goes on too late and is too loud. Rubbish. If anything it's not loud enough and doesn't go on long enough. The bar is open until 12 o'clock, but that does not mean that people stay up till then being really loud. Partly as you wouldn't hear them if you were in your room anyway. My biggest annoyance about the entertainment though was that there were nowhere near enough chairs, and this Is when the hotel is relatively quiet too! This meant that a lot of people would eat dinner as soon as it opened at 7, and got a table for entertainment straight after. So either you have to bare with sitting round the outside restaurant tables (which isn't a problem but you can't see much), or bare with racing into dinner to grab a seat after. For me, holiday is to relax. So of course I chose the latter.

Daytime entertainment/activities are good. There is a range of stuff such as archery, table tennis, water polo, water volleyball, beach volleyball, football tennis etc.

There are nearby excursions such as a water park, safari day, snorkeling etc.



The beach that the hotel is situated on is, well, it's not a beach to be honest. It's basically flat rocks, with a tiny section of a slightly sandy bit. The sea is very clear though, but if you're a beach fanatic, you will not be impressed. There is a beautiful beach a few miles up the road, which I will explain soon.



As previously stated, there is a 'main road' about 200 meters up from the hotel, along which a bus service operates along the coast, a stretch of around about 15 miles at a guess. Each time you get on, it's '1 per person (that's not a return, literally every time you get on a bus), and you can go anywhere along the bus route. One problem is none of the bus drivers speak English, despite probably 75% of the passengers are always English, so sometimes it's hard navigating where you want to get off to them as they have a habit of driving past bus stops. There is a harbor a few miles down, which also has a large area of shops around it. There is speed boat rentals (fun and good value), a small castle, beautiful restaurants with beautiful views, day cruises etc.



The beach a few miles up from the hotel is called Coral By Beach. It's fairly small, but beautifully clean water and golden sand. The problem with it though, is it's ridiculously expensive there. There are 2 sun beds to a parasol, and you have to pay of course to use a sun bed, and the parasol that you can't actually move away from. It's not much but '2.50 soon adds up, so for 2 of you it's '7.50 just for 2 sun beds under a parasol that you might not even want. Drinks are also a rip off. A can of drink is '2 a pop, and the alcohol is very over priced too. But the biggest rip off is the water sports there. I was quite up for going jet skiing, until I saw the prices. Now I'm all up for spending money for a bit of fun, but when its '40 for 20 minutes, it's sort of makes it not worth it. It's not just the jet skiing thats over priced though, it all is. Paragliding is '50 for about 10 minutes and '10 each for a banana boat ride, again for about 10 minutes, which actually seems OK, until you see some people riding one and you realise it's no fun if the water is completely calm. I don't make a point about spending a lot of money, but we didn't stay there long.



Fair enough these last two points aren't about the hotel, but to me it's all relevant about the area too. My last comment is about Cyprus in general. The Euro has obviously done it well for many reasons, but that's also ruined the country. Shops in general are not cheap. In fact, sometimes more expensive than in England. It does depend on what you want, and sometimes which shop, but imported stuff seemed to be randomly either cheap or expensive. For example I found that Smirnoff vodka was very cheap, yet Bacardi wasn't. Wine was expensive, Whisky wasn't. Some shops wanted '1 for a 500ml bottle of water, some wanted 50 cents for a litre. 99p magazines were about '2.50, but perfume and aftershave was really cheap. I couldn't get my head round it, but on the whole, if you like going on holiday, and looking round cheap shops for cheap stuff and maybe treating yourself to some cheap alcohol/cigarettes etc, then Cyprus will disappoint.



I will like to quickly mention the weather too... Outstanding! Hot, sunny, no rain and only experienced half a day of a slightly cloudy sky. There are barely any flying bugs and weird creepy insects too, which to a lot of people I know will be a relief!



As I said at the beginning, I went in mid September. These are only stories but I have heard that this summer, it was pretty bad at the hotel. They overbooked rooms, you have a set time to go to dinner, no inflatables in the pool, ran out of sun beds etc. Now don't let this put you off because as I said I only heard this. Please read other reviews before taking my word on that.



Overall I would rate my experience at the hotel 8 out of 10. I loved every minute of it. It's just some of the small things that let it down. But It's just such a shame that when you get out of the hotel it's so expensive. It is though such a beautiful country with amazing weather. Which leaves me torn with what to rate it... 8 out of 10 I think as well. I can deal with expensive alcohol and stuff. The weather, sunsets and views are not to be missed.