Hotel Arenas en Punta Leona — Hotel in Tárcoles

The building looks good in pictures. The rooms were clean, but the beds are NOT comfy unless you like a hard bed. The sheets on my bed were stained with something (don’t really want to venture a guess, but it was a orangey-pinkish stain near the middle of the bed). Also, the pillows were small, lumpy, and overall not comfy. I always take a pillow with me, so that wasn't much of an issue for me. Some reviews mention the AC not working unless you put your room key in a slot...I used a card they give as a towel voucher and it worked just fine thus freeing up my room key.

The NOISE is the biggest problem. The pool has LOUD music playing ALL. DAY. NON-STOP. I don't understand why people need to have loud music blaring all day. Maybe its a ploy to drive people away from the hotel grounds. Most people i encountered were Tico and maybe they like to "relax" with loud dance/salsa style music, but its not relaxing for me. The pool looks nice, but the loud speaker spewing salsa music kept me from it. My daughter did go and hang out down there and had a good time. Someone got on a mic and started shouting in the middle of the afternoon for at least an hour (several people left the pool...you'd think the hotel staff would get the hint, but no.) After she got off the mic, there was just the sound of children playing for about 7 minutes. Then the music started back up. This time it was much quieter, but not enough to not be an annoyance. You literally cannot get away from it unless you bring headphones. I visited on a Saturday, and the catholic church right next to the hotel has Mass at 5 on Saturday night. The hotel did turn off the music for that. It was glorious.

The AC started leaking inside the room. And it was right over one of the beds. The headboard of the bed was attached to the wall, so it couldn't be pulled away. When the drips hit the headboard they splashed all over the bed. Maybe thats what I get for trying to keep my room at a decent temp (75). I gave the AC a break for an hour and the temp crept back up to over 80.

The room phone did not work. Not that the front desk ever answered the phone when we tried to call for information.

There is literally only one entrance/exit to the hotel...through the front office/lobby area. I feel like this presents a safety issue, but since the structure is primarily built of concrete, i can't imagine fire is a super huge threat. At least there are some anti-skid strips and/or rough concrete surfaces in various places on the tile floors (which are like ice when wet)

The food wasn't bad. In fact, it was better than i had actually planned for based on the rest of the experience there. It was pricey, but not absurdly so. Manta beach had a swim event happening while I was there, so that kinda made the beach not enjoyable...that and my daughter stepped on a sea urchin, which required us to make a trip to Jaco (about eight miles away) for medical attention. Upon return to the hotel, we were informed four other individuals had run-ins with sea urchins which required at least one hospitalization.

The hotel did have a wheelchair they let us borrow to get my daughter back to the room that night. And the hotel/restaurant staff was very friendly. But this is the only thing good about the stay for me.

I live in rural Costa Rica and don't go to the beaches very often, but this is the first place I've not enjoyed.

I would not recommend this place to anyone, but your mileage may vary.

It will not be on my...

This place is a s*hole. Apologies for being direct. You drive for 20min from the gate to arrive at a run down hotel that appears to be a party spot for american tourists. The only good things about this place is the air condition (which works semi well, as it has to fight against the gaps under and in the doors) and the welcome cocktail.

The rooms are difficult to find at first as the entire hotel is laid out as a triangle but has barely any signs. The room numbers are found on top of the door but not all doors are labelled. There are multiple connecting rooms so our room had a locked connection door to a room with kids that kept on banging on the door.

The room itself is large but sterile. The windows are clean, the doors have holes and get stuck, the balcony is towards the pool which has loud music and announcers all afternoon. The wardrobe doors were also stuck.

The bathroom doesn’t have air conditioning, the shower does not allow temperature adjustments and at first we didn’t even have any water. One of the glass panels of our bathroom was missing, but the cockroaches that we discovered in the sink would probably have come in under the crack anyways. As the shower screen does not close, we had quick, semi warm showers in fear of getting cornered in there by bugs.

The food is abysmal. You can’t visit any other restaurants, so you can only go to the restaurant or the pizza place, as it takes 20min to leave this place of doom again. The restaurant does buffet for $26 per person but only offers unidentifiable meat, sad salad, rice and what looks like pureed refried beans. The a la carte menu is short and as it didn’t seem like a hygienic place we decided to avoid it. The pizza place is on the second floor and did not appear clean. The women working didn’t even pay any attention to us so we went for a yogurt and some crisps from the supermarket. There is a Pops Ice cream out front which saved us for lunch.

Due to lack of options we had breakfast at the hotel. The buffet does gallo pinto but nowhere near as good as anywhere else, eggs, tiny pancakes and fruit. The fruit is comparatively colour and flavourless. But no matter what you do, stay away from the ham. It had a funny taste to it and the rest of the day we were at the mercy of stomach ache and diarrhoea medicine.

It is also worth noting that the pool is not secured and has bad lighting at night so kids should be monitored at all times.

We did go to the beach and it was rather packed and noisy, with multiple people playing loud music.

The only way you can enjoy this place is if you get drunk, because that way you will probably disinfect the food you consume, sleep through the noise and don’t see the cockroaches. Mind you, this place is also used for events, which can mean that the main bar is unavailable for hotel guests and the pool bar is closed in the evening.

For Europeans it’s important to note that the rooms come with two small double beds, so great if you don’t want to share a bed, but lonely if you actually like your travel partner.

On our second night, the family next door changed and a family with a crying baby moved in. It was so loud and continuous, that we went to Reception and requested a room change. This was reluctantly done. Our new room only had one double bed and the bathroom had a...

Don't ever go to this place, don't waste your time and a your money going to a place where no one cares about service. The place looks nice in pictures but once inside tells a different story, very kind staff, the main drawbacks were food, drinks, worst customer service, and minor structural improvements for example stained ceilings that looked like mildew, some cracks at certain elevated floors, we asked the front desk to fix our room safe because it had low battery and we couldn't use it, no one came up to fix it. First night we had dinner a la carte, my family of four had two very salty entrées and two pastas that were salty and very spicy to the point they could not eat them my main plate was warm, that same day earlier we ordered some snacks at the pool, most of them were delicious, but warm and simple, then we ordered buffalo wings but instead they brought us fried, oilily and unflavored chicken which we did not eat. Went to the bar at night after dinner, ordered a lemonade, blackberry milkshake and a mojito, lemonade was charged with lots of sugar, the shake tasted like water and milk no sugar, and the mojito was not flavoured at all. Because of all these inconvenients and lack of service we decided to leave after one day when we booked for two days. On day two we escalated all this complains to the managers, they offered us to stay for free our second day but we refused since problems weren't solved inmediatly since day one, they ended up giving us the money back. It is a shame because the place itself is gorgeous, surrounded by beautiful nature, lots of birds, the Manta beach is beautiful too, not so far from the resort, but these inconvenient food and service issues made our experience a bittersweet holiday, funny how owner replies the good comments but doesn't care to improve the experience and customer service. I can tell that by reading more recent bad reviews. In sum don't waste your money and time this was A complete disappointment, not really what we expected. Not...