Hotel Aurora Plava Laguna — Hotel in Grad Umag

Location- excellent. This is old (socialistic) design - spacy! Hotel is tucked in pine forest. Other hotels are far apart, and hard to see from thick forest. very rare "commodity" these days.|Beach is not from "dream beach "pictures , since in entire Istria there is no natural beaches, so , long time ago, someone just made a - concrete block. Sing level, looks more like dock, than beach . But it works. As long as you want to be roasted. If not, there is little crowded pool area, with mix of natural and sunbrella shade, or , natural, pine shade huge area. actually an entire park !|Amenities : whatever you want . From bike to almost all water toys |Hotel : built long time ago, but properly. Hotel is refurbished, (estimation) in the begging of 2000's but, partially. For example: door-wing is new, door-frame just painted ! |Cleanness : excellent . Even walls are fresh painted ( no foot marks, splashed bugs..) |Rooms: correct. Furniture is new , simple but sufficient. Bed quality- average.|Balcony : big enough . |But! Not even a piece of cord, rope to dry swimsuit! I was forced to improvse with car tow-rope!|It is so often in Croatia, that look like some (insane ) EU recommendation ! |Bathroom. Spacy, correct, clean, with tub (!) . |But , some extra shelf and few hooks more will be nice . |Staff: Excellent !|Most of the staff is young, season-workers and/or school students on summer practice . But , they work hard. In dining room you do not need for clean table more than 30 seconds. They speak languages, basically. |On both bars (cocktail and beach) staff are pro , and multilingual .|Food: average. If you looking for a la carte dine , with sommeliers, and flying waitress-forget it .This is vacation, family hotel , with average food, an d self service. But it is All-Inclusive. sodas and beverages from drink-o-mate are fake . But kids do not care anyway. On the other hand, beer (Ožujsko) is great , white vine is fine, red- not so good. |Food quality : can be better. Too much ready-made industrial products. But, if you are not typical western tourist ( looking just for pizza, pasta, grill, pancakes and filter coffee ) with some imagination, you can make your mix. |visiting almost all Istrian hotels for decade, my reference for kitchen is -fish. And fish is correct , even good. Cakes- nice, with reduced sugar !|Fruit- fresh and of good quality ( I never try cherries so sweet!)|AI: comparing with some ( Turkey, Tunisia) "AI" where you need to pay for drink, Aurora is real AI. Not of higher class ( sodas are not original, cocktails are made by cocktail-o-mate ), but coffee on beech is excellent ( real espresso machine) . And service starts at 7a.m. and have one short break of only 1 hour (10-11 a.m) . At 11 a.m. beach bar is open, and around noon they bring some light lunch , if you do not want to go to main dinning room. end of service is at 23.00 when cocktail bar close.|Entertainment: during day, there is some pool -fun, but not too pushy . In the evening, there is always some fun: kid-disco, and some show. OK, it is not spectacular, but it is different every night .|If you like, few minutes walking are some night clubs. if you want to go in Umag ( serious walking distance ) you can go by car ( enough parking) or by tourist train ( quite expensive 4EUR adults/ 2EUR kids, in one direction) -but experience is great. Also, hotel offers own fleet of bikes, free of charge. |Summary:|Pros: | -location, | -complete service (wallet-less vacation), | -staff, | -spacy | -clean |Cons: |- food should be slightly better |- partially refurbished, so " year of production" is visible |- lack of something (anything!) to dry swimsuit||Special note: during my stay, with temperatures seriously over 33 degrees, central A/C broke down! Luckily , you need room just to sleep over, but hotel was full of small kids, babies, seniors too . For that categories, sleeping in hot room, without possibility to make some air circulation ( all hotels rooms are single side oriented) could be unhealthy . Hotel staff do they best , concentrating remaining "power" to dining room. Eventually, they could help us opening fire-escape staircase , allowing air to circulate .|But, this note is not addressed on Aurora, but on Plava laguna and their maintenance staff. Probably...

Hotel is built in beautifall place, full of green. Main area of lobby and reception is nice, modern, wellcoming. It is contract to quite retro furnished room. However, we dont mind, room was big enought and clean. We got room with terrace on groundfloor. There was retro fridge and little damaged bath tube but it was working. I recommed to add some holder for wet clothes and towels to balconies. ||Area of hotel is very nice, spacious and always clean. Nice pools with lifeguard, mini club with very friendly girls. Food was perfect. Dining room is little bit old fashioned but as I say food is tasty, good variety of fruits, deserts. In restaurant you can draft also drinks. What management can improve is position of main - warm tables buffet. It is on the beggining od dining room, and very quickly there is a line of people. Cold buffets were on 2 or 3 places, there was no waiting. During day from 11 to 5 there is also snack bar close pools. Some cakes, fruits, waffles... we really enjoyed nice and warm see. Sunbeds, umbrellas around pool and in garden. Nice animation for kids and evening program. I would only suggest to change bar management. In the morning bar was open only i lobby. During day poll bar was working but only to 5 pm. It was quite strange that they spend time to clean that bar and transfer everything inside. And again only lobby bar was working. People were waiting in hotel hall what i consider very strange. We have to leave earlier than we planned therefore i couldnt try thai massage and cycles which are for free. I would like to come back and i recommend hotel and area for my friend and also in travel groups. For your money you get...

We "stumbled" into this hotel by accident while moving to another destination. However, I must state that this coincidence was a good experience.

A nice hotel on the coast with its own beach met our expectations. The advantage is the possibility of parking. I also appreciate the quick check-in if you pre-check online in advance.

A clean family room with a bunk bed overlooking the park was nice, especially if the evening program by the pool makes noise.

The all inclusive service is fully sufficient, excellent breakfast, lunch and dinner - I feel sorry for clients who cannot find the right food. You can find something to eat at the beach bar throughout the day, you also won't be thirsty for sure.

The hotel, like others, suffers from the fact that you will be looking for a place on the sunbeds by the pool or maybe even on the beach, but don't be discouraged. Be sure to take advantage of the opportunity to rent bicycles or get on the tourist train towards the city.

Some people may be bothered by the fact that smokers are not tolerant, just like everywhere else in the world.

Overall, we rate our stay here above expectations and would be happy to return here for a longer stay. Do not forget that the vacation is for the most part the way you make it yourself. If any friend ask me, I will recommend...