Wunderland Kalkar — Hotel in Kalkar

This is quite a difficult place to review; the hotel is designed for a very specific purpose. Guests taking a vacation within the Wunderland Theme Park, or maybe guests like me attending a conference with 450 delegates on an all-inclusive deal.||||The hotel seems designed to cater for a mass market, accommodation for the masses, feeding for the masses and facilities for the masses. And it does that very well, but you do get what you pay for.||||OK, some details from top to bottom.||||Location. Well, it's situated in a never commissioned nuclear power station on the left bank of the River Rhine. That makes it easy to find as it's huge! You can't really hide a cooling tower and massive concrete edifice. Parking was straightforward enough, though I have no idea if it can cope with the busiest times.||||Check-in was a little strange. Firstly through an outer reception to check on the booking, before given directions to an inner reception to exchange credit card details for a room key.||||So off to my room, in Rosalie Block, all part of the power station buildings. The rooms are purely functional, comfortable enough but definitely no-frills. Really reflected the era in which they were constructed, and I'm pretty sure never updated. Reasonable amount of storage space, desk, chair and two beds as I was in a twin room. The lighting was pretty dull though, a bit difficult to read by. Oh, and a TV, pretty small and mounted nearly at the top of the wall! The bedding was a bit thin, again definitely functional.||||The bathroom, again functional. I'm always disappointed to discover a sink with no plugs, a real pet hate. So take a plug. And take your own soap / shower gel / shampoo. The stuff in the dispensers was so dilute (a sort of foam) it was ineffective. But the shower was hot.||||Back into the main reception area, which is the main building. A labyrinth of rooms, sitting areas, actually pretty comfortable too. Lots of coffee machines and juice dispensers too. There's lots of other rooms, conference facilities, the Kids'Club etc etc off here, it is I guess the social hub of the vacation.||||And at the far end is the restaurant. I was genuinely impressed with the ability to mass feed so many people from the buffet, without too much queuing or stuff running out. It really is quite a major operation. I ate three meals per day for the three days I was there. The menu didn't seem to change much, and much of the food obviously comes from mass catering companies; I can just picture the huge tins of vegetables or fruit in syrup that must arrive on a daily purpose. But I guess it works! There's soda on tap, coffee from the machine and beer from the bar. You can't complain; it's exactly what it purports to be and is actually very good value, though it did remind me of my school dinners. Now I did see an A La Carte restaurant, but it wasn't open so can't really comment.||||I wouldn't stay here again through choice; I don't see myself taking a theme park vacation. But I probably will stay here again through work, and it will do just fine. If you know what you're...

The amusement park was so much fun! Limitless coffee and sparkling water was great (and pommes and ice cream, though one serving each was enough for myself) my wife (celiac) had no gluten problems with the pommes.

We stayed the night at the hotel and had meals included as well. The food was quite good. My wife was limited in her gluten free options, which were further limited by the cross-contamination inherent in serve-yourself style dining, though she made do and enjoyed her food.

The room, however wasn't so fantastic: The hotel wasn't brimming full and I kind of had my hopes set on waking up to the sounds of birds chirping, the faint smell of the nearby farms and the sight of the gorgeous German countryside in the early morning. In reality, our room was deep in the bowels of the hotel and I ended up falling asleep to the drone of air conditioner fans and waking up to the drab view of an employee access area and the heavy smell of kitchen exhaust. Also, our bathroom smelled strongly of urine, and the toilet brush was filthy.

I also wish there was a tea kettle in the room - I like having a cup or two of tea before bed. There was a coffee/hot water machine down the hall from us and that was OK, though I'd rather not have to get fully dressed to get another cup of tea. Also, carrying hot tea through several heavy fire doors proved to be a scald hazard.

All in all, it was an OK experience, just keep your expectations low on where you...

Nie wieder!! The price of the ticket is too high for what is offered at Wunderland Kalkar. Pommes and drinks - It is true that the french fries are free but after you have waited on the line for 40 minutes. And this happened both times - at 11 and at 15 o'clock. Of course as goping on Sunday we expected more people to be there, but there were only 2 or 3 pommes booths working. Drinks were also free, ok and enough. Personnel - There is obviously not enough personnel as one could see how they were moving from one attraction to the other closing of course the previous one. However, the personnel was always polite and trying to be of help. The cleanliness of the park was good. Price - if a family wants to sped the time together, there are usually two adults and one kid. As such, if you calculate we have paid actually 80 Euros (76 Euros + parking) for one kid to go on rides (since the rides are of course for kids not for adults). We do not need to go on rides, but then why the price? Benches - The main season for such attraction parks is in the summer, but this means it is hot and sunny and thus there is a need of umbrellas. There waere no sun umbrellas and too less benches on a shadow. As an overall the benches were not enough. Conclusion - there were too many people for the number of personnel and space. I do not think that we would go there again in the...