Arenal Manoa & Hot Springs — Hotel in La Fortuna

My husband and I spent 4 nights here and enjoyed our time.

Room: my only availability was a junior suite plus room with 2 queen beds. The beds and linens were fine, but nothing particularly special. The AC worked great! The view was amazing. We never had a 100% clear day but always saw a part of the volcano with a cloudy cap. There were no drawers or shelves to place our clothing, just a hanging closet with a handful of hangers. That meant we had to live out of our suitcases a fair amount. The bathroom was spacious. The hot/cold water for the shower was a little temperamental. Like many places in Costa Rica, you cannot flush your toilet paper, so a foot-pedal trash can is provided. Bathroom amenities were nice including shampoo, conditioner, body wash, hand soap and hand lotion. You could hear some carry-over noise from the neighboring room through the bathroom but that was about it.

Restaurants: The main restaurant provides a breakfast buffet every morning. This honestly was the best part - less for the food itself, which was perfectly fine, but for the view. The open-air dining room overlooks a pond and the bird watching is incredible! You also can see reptiles like iguanas and caiman. We actually saw a 3-toed sloth and her baby near the reception area one day! The pizza restaurant was fine - the pizza dough is very thin, almost cracker-like, but tasty! Mixed drinks were all very good. We did not try the sushi bar.

Amenities: we only partook of the hot springs and pool during our stay. The small hot springs near the central pool are very nice! The pools are all kept clean and skimmed constantly.

Tours: I booked my tours ahead of time via email, and the process was very straightforward. The companies used were all great including Canoa Aventura, and Don Juan Coffee and Cacao.

General notes: The grounds are relatively spread out, so it can potentially be a good walk from your room to various services. You can make a call to to the operator and they will send a van or cart to help you get around if needed. The staff is generally very friendly. Some do not speak great English, so learning and speaking Spanish is not only respectful, but also very helpful! Take an umbrella or poncho with you! We got doused a few times when it started to rain halfway through a meal. The resort is a bit of a hike from "downtown" La Fortuna, so a taxi or uber is needed if you don't have a vehicle. They are very easy to get. Definitely spend some time in the town to experience local food, markets, and the lovely...

This hotel is about 20 minutes away from arenal volcano park. There are views of the volcano from everywhere. They have their own hot springs. One big pool in the front and small ones with the swimming pool. That area is very cute. Can be private or family activity. The one in the front is very warm with a sushi and drink swim up bar. This hotels location is big, like a little neighborhood of its own. Pizza next to the swimming pool was very good so was the breakfast. The staff has a weird attitude. Fernanda the hostess tried to sit us away from the balcony and the view, both days we were there even though it was open and did not seemed reserved. Not sure what the logic was behind it. First day I asked her to be seated on the table next to the view and she said “oh at this hour there are no spots” I literally looked at her flabbergasted and was like it 9:00! Breakfast is about to end, there is literally no one here! We were eventually seated where we wanted, but the next day it was the same story again. We didn’t object to it and were seated at a very inconvenient spot walkway for people. The ac in our room was not working. We were so hot it was extremely uncomfortable. The guys tried to fix it by pouring hot water into the ac. The water was everywhere under the unit. They spend good 30 min/1 hour on it and than said they can’t make it work. They offered to shift us to another room but we were gonna have to shift back in the morning as “it was not the room we payed for” as we didn’t want to move our family at 10/10:30 to another room and than move back, we opted to stay and asked for 2 fans to point to each bed. We were provided with “one” after 1 hour. The ac worked better and made the room somewhat comfortable next day but kept dripping water all through our stay. We were given a plate of fruit and bottle of wine as an apology which I also though was in bad taste as the manager Maria said herself she was not sure if we drank wine which we don’t. We left it unopened on the counter. Overall our stay was pleasant. We especially enjoyed the hot springs. Didn’t care for the attitude of the staff. Will we be...

Stayed for 3 nights on our tour of Costa Rica, this is well and truly a resort, seemingly designed for Americans to visit for a week and say they've 'done' Costa Rica. It's huge, with roads between the rooms/lodges and cars used too travel between them by a lot of people - including car park at the restaurant! The rooms were clean and very big, 2 double beds in there and a fridge plus coffee facilities (no kettle just a percolator), bathroom quite big too, however the shower was pretty useless and sometimes the water for either hot it cold (sometimes both) just stopped mid shower even with the tap on full! Breakfast buffet was a bit range of food, as well as a very busy egg station for omelettes etc., the bar next to the pool did good pizzas and really enjoyed the Yukka sticks they had too. However the main restaurant was very expensive and the menu seemed a bit unimaginative, nothing really jumped out as sounding really good, what we did choose was good but nothing special. We only had time to try the 'hot springs' pool, which is really just a regular pool with the hot water, rather than anything you'd consider a natural hot spring type setup, it's a nice area but the bar there doesn't open till the afternoon so there's nowhere to get any drink (or even water) without having to walk miles back to your room. The pool itself was warm, not too hot but just nice, there's also a jacuzzi type pool but nobody could work out how to turn it on. There are so many excursions to do in the area, the main reason we were there - ours were already booked through someone else but the hotel offers a lot too. Unfortunately we didn't get a view of the volcano on any of the 3 days as they was cloud covering most of it the whole time, but the view from the breakfast/restaurant looked like it would have been...