Meliá Sunny Beach — Hotel in Nesebar

Review||We stayed for a week in august (18-25) As 3 adults and a 15 year old. ||Reception|On arrival we got to the hotel around 1.45pm, 15 mins before check in was meant to open. The young lady on the front desk, seemed a little confused at first with our arrival (I think a language barrier somewhat impacted this) As at first she was looking for a free room for us to purchase rather then checking us in. After a bit conversation and showing her some paperwork we were sorted though. We asked to be on a lower floor as a member of our group has bad arthritis and we were given two rooms on the 2nd floor in Block A. The check in process was quick and painless, the lady then showed us the map ( I would suggest taking a picture of it on your phone) pointed out the various restaurants and locations of note. We were given our room keys which were part of our all inclusive part and were on our wrists. Very handy everyone having their own access. ||When in your rooms. There is a small handout on the table with QR code, scan it and it has most the information you need. Also has info on the flip though about dinner times, laundry etc. At the every end is also a map. If you forgot to take a picture at the reception there is one there. There is also a large version of the picture in all of the lifts too. ||||Rooms|We had two double rooms, both with twin beds, a spacious wardrobe, two side tables with lamps. A sofa, two chairs, two small coffee tables and a dressing table with TV. The Tv had ⅔ english channels, but if you have a fire stick this is a good alternative as the Wi-fi is pretty good. Then again I didn’t have a lot of time where I felt the need to watch the TV was too much to do and see. ||There was also a small mini fridge. There was a lack of drawers which was a little disappointing but not the end of the world. There is also a free safe deposit box in the room. (Remember to leave it open when leaving. The outside balcony had a drying rack, two chairs and a table. There was four lights in the room and four plug sockets in the main room not including the ones being used by the TV and mini fridge. ||The bathroom was a good size, with a bath with a shower. (Only questionable design choice for me was the bottles of shampoo, shower gel etc being outside the bath and not accessible when in it? Not quite sure how that was meant to work. Other thing to note. My room at least had no shampoo for the length of our stay and didn’t seem to get refilled at all) There was also a hairdryer in the bathroom, which worked well enough to dry our hair, there was also a small mirror which would extend out which was nice for doing make up etc. There is also a dial outside the bathroom for music was a change of pace, it was decent music. ||Overall I found the rooms comfortable and welcoming.We had issues with air conditioning the first night, which made for an uncomfortable sleep, but as soon as we mentioned it the next morning. Maintenance arrived within 15 mins and got it fixed. Which was amazing. ||Room Cleaning|The cleaners were friendly and attentive, always offered a good morning and a smile. Were quick to clean rooms once people ventured out. The room could be cleaned daily we found every other day worked for us. They will change towels if you leave them on the floor. Linen is changed once a week. |||Hotel Factilites |Every floor of the hotel seems to be equipped with a a water dispenser and a coffee/hot chocolate machine. In your rooms you will be supplied with 4 glasses and a two tea cups. They are on the smaller side. So if you have the room, bring your own.||Wi-fi is free and has good access in the main buildings from what I could see, outside at the pool it didn’t really work and some of the outside sitting areas also wouldn’t allow you to connect. Through the early evening wi-fi would be slower at times. Most likely too many people attempting to check social media before heading to dinner. ||Towels |On arrival you are given cards to take to get towels for the pool/beach. Going over towards the exit between block A and B you will find the pool services. Its open from 8.30am to 6.30pm. You can turn your towels in at any point and swap for a new one. On your last day just hand them in and ask for your cards back to take back to reception for check out. ||Arcades|There was a few areas offered for kids with air hockey tables, pool tables, small bowling alleys and other arcade options, these seemdd popular with the teenagers and older kids. There was also a small mini golf course. ||Drinks|All drinks at the outside bar are served in paper cups. Inside at the reception bars they are served in glasses or paper cups if you are taking them outside. You could purchase a plastic cup at the hotel to use if you wish. We took our own plastic cups as we had saw other reviews. We found this much better as you could get double the drink in them over the small paper cups. Also the bar staff were more then willing to put your drink in them. (Would highly suggest taking some) ||At the pool bar,as well as all the receptions there is a self service beer, self service soft drinks ( Cola, Orangeage, Lemonade, Lemon Bitter, Orange Juice, Water (Still and Sparkling) |There is a few which also offer pineapple juice and multi juice, which is a mixed juice which I found quite nice. There is also self service hot drinks, coffee, hot chocolate, cappuccino etc, ||At the bar you can get your usual variety of local brand mixed spirits, we found these alright but nothing to write home about. There is also wine, white, red and rose. We found them lacking, the rose was winner of the bunch. If you ask for Champange at the bar they do offer some very nice Cava though. Each day there was a cocktail of the day which they cycle through, but you can ask for the other cocktails from a set list also. There is also some mocktails on offer for the kids too ( We mainly saw this at the reception bars) ||There was also a cart near the mini golf area which has a few seats making mojitos. There was also some evenings singers with guitars etc. |||Food ||Blocks, A, B and C all have main restaurants which were all open whilst we were there, which offer a buffet type of food. Each Block was themed. |Block A - Bulgarian Food|Block B - Italian Food|Block C - Spanish Food ||Block A’s restaurant was clean and very comfortable, it could get busy at times, but staff were very quick to clean off tables and set them again. |Block B was clean and tidy, a little more quieter then A at least when we ventured there. |Block C seemed a little outdated compared to the other two. It was very busy and crowded, also seemed like a lot more children there. The majority of the seating also seemed to be outside for this block, the seats were also pretty uncomfortable. ||For the rest of this review. I will be using my experience in the Block A restaurant. There may be some variety in the other blocks. ||Breakfast ( Served 7.30am-10am)||Drinks - Self Service - Hot Drinks, Soft Drinks, Water and Fruit Juices. There was also a selection of smoothies on offer, some of them were lovely and were worth trying. ||Food- There was a lot selection of fruit on offer, yogurts,cereals, pastries such as croissants, donuts etc. There was bacon both english and not. Fried egg, scrambled egg, beans, tomatoes,sausage. There was a enough variety for sure. There was also bread in variety of types with a toasting machine with butter and jams. |||Lunch (12.30pm- 2pm)||Drinks - Self service - Hot Drinks, Soft Drinks, Water, Fruit Juices, Wine and Beer||Food - Varied day to day, there was always a selection of meat on offer as well as vegetables. There was always a pasta dish on offer as well as chips. So even the pickest of eaters could find something. There was buns and bread cooked freshly. There were also a variety of cheeses and meats offered. ||Desserts were also lovely and a nice variety, trifles, mousse and cakes. Only small downside to the cakes was the majority had cream which if you are unable to have that it limits your choices a lot. ||There was also ice creams in a freezer which were lovely, strawberry and vanilla, Bubblegum and vanilla and chocolate and vanilla. ||Dinner (6pm-9pm)||Drinks - Hot Drinks, Soft Drinks, Water, Fruit Juices, Wine and Beer ||Food - As with lunch, variety of meats and vegetables. There was usually one fish dish also as well as one soup. There was usually two pastas offered. Meats and cheese were also available. They had some nice options, one night there was mussels, roast chicken, pork, paell etc. Every evening was something different. ||Desserts - Same as lunch, as well as fruit etc. ||Snacks - | ( This was during August - Unsure if they are offered all year)||Pizzeria - (12.30- 5pm) and then (6pm-9pm)|At the end by Block C is a small pizzeria booth which has slices of pizza, usually marghertia and pepperoni. The kids seemed to love these. So if you do have picky eaters you can always grab them some pizza. ||German Cafe - (12pm - 4Pm)| At the other side of the restaurant by the childrens park is a small german cafe which offered german sausage and some other food. There was also self service drinks here, there was also Beck beer on tap here. ||Snack Bar by the pool ( 12pm-4pm)|They offered hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, chicken wings and club sandwiches at the pool bar. We had the sandwiches and fries both were good, can’t comment on the other options but as with the pizzeria the kids seemed to enjoy them. ||Ice Cream (10.30am - 4.30pm)|Offered near one of the self service areas, there is soft serve cones, vanilla or a mixed chocolate and vanilla in cones. These were very popular and at times there was delays as the machines seemed to not be working or ran out of ice cream and they had to make more. However the ice cream was lovely and could understand why it was in demand. ||Pools||There are 3 main pools outside. ||The pool outside of Block C, is all one depth and seemed to be where most the kids gravited towards as it was only 1m deep. The pool was very cold, some people mentioned it was heated but I for sure couldn’t feel it. There was a lot of ball games going on inside of it. Which was very dangerous at points, floaties etc are fine. But I saw 3 or 4 people getting hit by balls in the pools when they were just attempting to swim. Including one child who got hit in the face and cried her eyes out. Lifeguards were on sight and seemed to keep an eye on the pool. But I think they should have been trying to control the ball games to a degree considering how busy it was. ||To the side of the Block C is a smaller childrens pool, with a blue octopus with slides and jets. A lot of the younger kids seemed to enjoy it. ||Pools outside of Block A and B are identical and mirror eachother. They have a shallow side then a deeper side. They were cold too. The majority of the water activities seemed to take place in these pools, such as water polo etc. ||There was also a inside pool, we ventured in one day just to try it out. There was signs up claiming a temperature of 27oc. It was not, it was even colder then the outside pools. There was around 10 sun loungers there. ||There are also 3 water slides which operate between 10-12 and then 3-5. There were lifeguards on site, the kids were always lining up for it. They seemed like a lot of fun and the teenager in the group went on it and loved it. ||Sunbeds, there is a lot of them|However in the time we went there was not enough. The hotel was packed in the height of august and people were up from 6am to get beds. We tended not to get a bed until after breakfast was we would go down around 8am, have breakfast then head to the pool. However by this time there is no beds left. We found a sea of empty beds with towels on them. One day we went down at 7 and settled at the pool,throughout the day. There was towels each side of us and by 4pm neither family had shown their faces. It was very frustrating. There are notices not to put towels down, but no-one listens to it and there are no consequences for doing so. There are parasols and tables around the place. ||There is also seating areas offered around the pool bar, one is a non-smoking area and the other is smoking allowed. My biggest issue with this was the smoking area was varied and had both areas in the shade and not. However the non smoking area was all out in the open with no shaded areas available at all. So if you wanted to sit in the shade you had to be with smokers. ||The Beach |The beach is located towards the back of the hotel, across a road and over a bridge. You then have to work around 300 feet down to find the hotels section of sunbeds. This like the pool seemed to get packed pretty quickly, we usually went in the afternoon and would find a few beds. There was parasols on offer as well as sunbeds. In front of the hotels sunbeds were paid for loungers going for 10 lev each and 10 lev for a parasol. Having them included in the price was a nice bonus. Near the beach area is also a small bar serving drinks, most are self service like the hotel. There is also behind the bar for other drinks, they also offer ice cream here as well as panini sandwiches. The sea was clear and a lot warmer then the hotel pools. |||Entertainment||Daytime| Throughout the day there is a variety of activities on offer for kids, teens and adults. There was water polo, rifle shooting, archery, bowling, yoga, aqua gym, table tennis. To name a few. If you want to get involved there is more then enough to do so. The animation team are all very friendly and engaging. ||Evening|The animation team run a mini disco every evening for the kids with a number of club dances, the kids all seem eager to join in and fill the stage. It runs from 8.30pm till 9.00pm. |Afterwards the evening entertainment usually runs from 9.30pm until 10.30ish. The first evening was a magic show which was good, there was also traditional bulgarian folk music dancers one evening, a comedy show and a variety show. All were interesting. However my favourite of the week would have to be the animation teams rendeation of the Lion King it was well done and engaging. You can see they all work really hard and enjoy what they are doing. ||Seating|If you arrived after 8pm there was no hope of a seat at all. People were on sunloungers, sitting on stones at the side of the waterfall. It was manic to say the least. A few evenings we ended up sitting at the restaurant outside seats in block A just so we could sit down and at least listen to the music. In the height of august there is no enough seating and to some extent can be dangerous with the amount of people packed into the space. |||Outside the Hotel|Just stepping outside of the hotel you are greeted by shops in every direction. Going out the entrance towards the beach took you to a road before the bridge you could go in both directions and find a variety of shops. Going towards the left it lead along towards Flower Street and the Pier, In this direction you will also find the amusements and fun fair. There is all sorts on offer, along your way there is restaurants and pubs offering a variety of food as well as a number of live acts in the evening. Going out the main entrance of Block A reception and heading onto the main road and away from the beach you will also find a lot of shops and a few supermarkets. We found these were a lot cheaper, especially if you want to pick up a floatie for the kids, they were nearly half the price if you ventured in that direction, so definitely worth the wander.Also when picking up some crisps etc for the airport they were a lot cheaper in the supermarkets towards the back away from the beach. The drinks vary from place to place, those on Flower Street and beach front more expensive then the back street and side venues but even compared to english prices are pretty good. ||Nessebar|We visited Nessebar and throught it was worth the day trip, If you head out of the Main Reception of block A and head onto the main run and walk away from the hotel and keep walking until you get to traffic lights, Heading to the right and across the lights there is a bus stop which will take you to Nessebar, It is opposite the Great Western Hotel. It is 2 Lev each on the bus, we also found if you around the bus stop you will get approached by Taxi drivers who will offer to take you to Nessebar for around 20 Lev. We got a Taxi to Nessebar then a bus back. The bus was a little packed but overall was fine, if you want a little more comfort the Taxi is worth the cost. (Just make sure you agree on a cost before getting inside). ||Nessebar itself has a square and winding cobblestreets lined with stores, a lot are like the ones in Sunny Beach, however there are also a lot of hand crafted and hand made products for sale. It overall seemed a lot cheaper then Sunny Beach in the shops. There is an abundance of Fish restaurants around as well as a few pizza and burger places the drinks and food hoever seem to be a little pricer here then Sunny Beach. There is also a water fountain in the main square if you want to refill your water bottles.||Currency Exchange|We choose to wait until we arrived to change most of our money. There are exchange places everywhere, look for the Crown sign or use the Hotels exchange place. There is a small booth by Reception in Block A. The rate I got at the time was 2.21 Leva per pound. We would exchange 50 pound at a time and it worked well for us. ||Check Out|We checked out around 10.30am as we were getting picked up for our flight. We exchanged our towels for cards and handed these in as well as let the reception know. If you are staying late for pick up then they will allow you to keep your wristband until you are getting picked up. As we were leaving they cut the bands off. It was quick and easy. |||Staff|The Staff at the hotel were amazing, very friendly, polite and professional. The hotel was lovely clean and tidy and you could see the cleaners working throughout the day to keep the whole hotel sparkling. The room cleaners were friendly and quick to clean rooms to a great standard. The reception staff were knowledgable and welcoming,if unsure they are a great foundation of local knowledge. The chefs prepared some amazing food and always aimed to keep all the dishes full and warm. The waiting staff in the restaurant were quick and engaging, quickly cleaning off the tables and setting them up for more diners. Bar staff both at the reception bars and outside bar were quick and knowledge, they managed to keep up conversation whilst also mixing drinks. Overall an amazing team. ||Special Mentions|I have to leave a special mention for a member of staff who was amazing. There was young lady working on Reception A bar through most of our staff. ( I didn’t manage to get her name. Her badge was a little damaged) But she was so amazingly kind and friendly. She always greeted us with a smile and engaged in conversation. We would often settle inside to have a drink later in the evening just to chat to her when she wasn’t overly busy. She really made a difference and is a asset to the hotel. ||Conclusion|Lovely Hotel, with great staff. However it was too busy to fully enjoy it and all it had to offer the biggest fault overall was the amount of people crammed into the space. It needs more outside space to really be able to cater to the masses it has lured into the hotel. Thought the day there isn’t enough sunbeds and in the evening there isn’t enough seating areas for the amount of people in the hotel. ||Would I return? Perhaps is the answer for the right price and maybe when its a little less crowded I would. I would recommend it to most people just with the knowledge that it is going to be crammed full of people and overly busy. If you go with that knowledge you...

I'll start with the down sides and end on a positive note.|For me, the biggest downside was how un-eco friendly they were. Our towels were all changed every day, regardless of whether they were dirty or not. Even 5* hotels now, ask you to put your dirty ones you want changing out to be cleaned and don't wash daily. So many rooms and so many unnecessary washing cycles. The other down side was in the majority of the hotel, paper cups were used; round the pool or if you wanted to take a drink away from the bar. This hotel must get through hundreds of paper cups daily and they didn't even have recycle bins. |The other big minus for me was the thin walls. Could hear everything in the corridors, despite the beds being quite far back. We were at the end of the corridor out of the way, yet I was still woken frequently by talking in the corridor. I am a light sleeper though, so perhaps other people wouldn't have this problem.|We were delayed and arrived at 3am. The queue quickly formed at reception for check-in. There was only one member of staff on but she called for assistance and the 2 of them did get through the queue reasonably quickly. But, perhaps because she was conscious of the queue, we weren't given any proper instructions on how to find our room. It's a large hotel and we had to ask 3 people on route before we found our room. Not much fun when you're tired and pulling cases. A map of the hotel with the room circled might have been a good idea.|A plus and a minus was that there is a coffee and water machine at the end of each corridor. Plus - for obvious reasons. Minus - as our room was next to it, we got the loud whirring noise every time someone used it, which wasn't appreciated at 4am!|The majority of guests there seem to put their toilet paper in the bin instead of down the toilet. The toilets needed to be checked more frequently as when I went in to the cubicle, the smell of urine was so strong, it made me retch. I had to put my top over my nose just to go to the toilets. The toilet in between the pools was the non-smelliest, so I tried to use this one most of the time.|Pro's- 3 outside swimming pools and one indoors. One is quite deep so was cold and therefore hardly had anyone in it. Handy if you want to get in and swim lengths. There are a lot of beds and we never had a problem finding some spare. There are water slides but the main one was closed the whole time we were there. There is a smoking pool and non-smoking pool, but the signs at the non-smoking pool are small and stuck on umbrellas. The staff didn't go round much so no one policed this so people were smoking in both areas. |The food was hot, fresh and plentiful. I'm vegetarian and unless you like cheese, there wasn't a great protein choice. In a week, there were only beans twice at lunch/dinner and falafel twice (but these were too dry to eat). There were eggs at breakfast but I don't eat breakfast. If you are vegan, then the food would get very monotonous after a few days. The salads were very good, but no vegan dressings apart from olive oil. There was pasta but this was usually covered in a cheese sauce. There is a Chinese and Indian restaurant as an alternative but the Chinese was shut the whole time we were there. The Indian was good and I got to eat chickpeas for protein there. Pizza van was a nice touch. |The hotel advertises a private beach, but it was basically a bit of the beach sectioned off for their deck chairs. Anyone can walk along the beach. We only went twice as the sea was quite rough.|The gym was quite good once I had found it. No signs to direct you to it and I had to ask 3 members of staff where it was. If anyone wants to know - you go up the stairs in the inside pool and then up the stairs to the grey door that just looks like a fire exit! If you need glasses to read, then take them with you. I didn't and there are instructions on the door on how to use the key code. A member of staff helped me the first time. |The staff were mainly nice. One grumpy man on reception who got stroppy with me when our towel was stolen. Someone took one of our towels and he basically accused me of saving beds even though I had only gone back to the room for an hour. Special mention to the blond haired lady with the black spotty hairband at the pool bar. She was so lovely and had a smile for everyone, regardless of how busy she was. |Entertainment team were lovely. I only did a couple of classes. Shaved haired lad who did the step class was very good and funny. Made the class good fun. The yoga class was a good class but the lad doing it didn't speak throughout the class. Just did the class and expected you to copy - which isn't very useful when you are in downward dog, childs pose or upside down stretches as you don't know when he is changing position. So we had to continually look up to see when he changed.|Evening shows were mainly good.|Rooms were clean and large beds. The rooms were large but there was only one small wardrobe. So much space so it would have been good if they had put a chest of drawers in it as well. Good if you have small kids though as they have plenty of room to run around. Rooms were accessed by a wristband which was good. Didn't need to...

To begin with a summary in short, this hotel is a great choice for holidaying in Sunny Beach and I’m glad we were here rather than other hotels we walked past.||The Room||We stayed in a room overlooking the volleyball court which just about had a sea view. The room was generous with everything you would want: good air-con, an ample bathroom, TV (don’t know what channels it had, we took firestick), and sofa bed. There’s no kettle in the room, but each floor has several coffee making stations with a standard coffee machine, The room was slightly tatty around the edges (scratched headboard, warped bathroom door, shower rainfall shower head spraying into the ceiling), but this could be forgiven given we were here in the last week, presumably some maintenance will be done over winter. The bed was two singles pushed together with narrow thin duvets, not what we are used to but not a real issue.||Food and Drink||We were pleased that so late in the season (22-29th September) most options were open at least for the first 3 days. ||The Indian offering was good but not what you might expect if you’re used to BIR cooking. The samosas and poppadoms were great. ||The beach bar was welcomed and had all the drinks options from the hotel as well as whippy ice creams and toasted sandwiches (we didn’t try these but there were options of variants of ham and salami). ||The snack bar in the centre of the hotel was great with a nice range of burgers, veggie burgers, chicken wings, hot dogs and ribs (wouldn’t describe them as spare ribs, more like pork belly). ||The main buffet restaurants had good options for breakfast with two types of bacon (one was English bacon - it was about 70% similar to what you would expect). Lunch and dinner were similar offerings mainly of meat, fish, stews, fried foods, salads and soups. There was always enough to eat, but sometimes not much variety that my partner would have (not a fan of rabbit, tripe or fish with bones). ||You were never far from a bar to get cocktails made by staff (the Bulgarian spirits are an acquired taste), self service beer, soft and hot drinks. Drinks are in paper cups outside which makes the beer very frothy. Maybe bring your own plastics if you want a full pint. Ice creams and slushies were available from a hut near the pool.||We were able to use all facilities until we left at 8pm on our last day, having left the room and 12 and put our luggage in storage (not locked but wasn’t too worried about losing our dirty pants)||Entertainment ||The animation team were great considering it was end of season. We joined in with activities including yoga, archery, darts and air pistol shooting. The staff were really friendly and not pushy like we have found elsewhere.||We only watched one evening on entertainment in the hotel. It was the typical hotel dance/ magic type of thing you get in these places. It was ok but we ended up going out most evenings.||The pools were great and I can see how they would be even better in summer. Only the large 1m deep pool was used during our stay, and this was still warm enough for the majority of it. The indoor pool was nice and deep and was hardly used with people trying to catch the last of the sun. There were 3 waster slides which looked good, but again not used by many being end of season.||There is a games hall with a mini bowling alley, pool, table tennis, table football and several kids games. The pool is 4 lev and you have to buy tokens from the machine to use it.||Issues||The only real issue we had was at check in. Our coach didn’t get in till about midnight, and only one member of staff was on hand to sort a queue of about 100. No drinks were offered and were were only offered food on getting to the front of the queue, apparently there were sandwiches somewhere, but not sure where they were, and we were past caring after a 2 hour wait. Not blaming the receptionist here, she was great, but maybe put more staff on when you know there are a lot of people arriving. Frustrating, but didn’t dampen our spirits too much.||Overall I certainly recommend this hotel. Sunny Beach was packing up while we were there, and we lost elements of the hotel whilst staying there, but compared to what we observed in surrounding hotels, I wouldn’t have wanted to stay anywhere else as the offering here remained great. It is probably the best AI hotel we have stayed in. ||The weather is very changeable this time of year which we didn’t realise on booking, in fact the hotel closed the day after we left. Don’t let it put you off if the price is right, but don’t expect a full week sunning yourself - bring jumpers and prepare to be sat in bars listening to the various tributes on offer (we saw MJ, Elton John/ George Michael and ABBA, all of questionable talent...