TUI MAGIC LIFE Jacaranda — Hotel in Manavgat

First and foremost, this is not a five-star hotel; the level of services provided simply does not correspond to that standard. Additionally, the price-to-quality ratio is worse than at other hotels near Antalya - you're likely to find better options for a similar or lower price.||It is neither "ultra all-inclusive" nor "all-inclusive"; I would describe it as "almost all-inclusive."||Here are the issues:|| There was no welcome drink upon arrival - a minor detail, but even in the last four-star hotel I stayed at in Turkey, this was handled properly.| The hotel is extremely overcrowded during the high season. From early morning, all sunbeds are either occupied or reserved with towels. The restaurant resembles a bustling marketplace during peak hours. On "Italian night" there was a queue of nearly 40 people waiting for pasta! They were unable to provide enough pizza for the guests. A staple food that is typically abundant in hotels was scarce, leaving people queuing for the next batch to be baked.| Wine and soft drinks at dinner are served by the glass. While this wouldn’t be an issue in itself (at the last four-star hotel I visited in Turkey, they served a bottle of wine of your choice along with an ice bucket at the table), the sheer number of people to serve means you have to wait a long time for even the first glass - and you never know if you'll be able to get a second one. The waitstaff are too busy cleaning plates and setting tables.| If you arrive at the restaurant 30 minutes before closing, you would still expect to be served properly; however, the staff, instead of attending to guests, are preoccupied with preparing empty tables for breakfast. I believe they should have different priorities.| The majority of drinks are of very low quality. In a five-star hotel, you would expect fresh juices to be served at least during some meals. Here, they don’t even serve juices from concentrate; only cheap nectars or drinks with excessive water and sugar are available.| The food is acceptable at best, but it certainly does not meet five-star standards. Only once a week, on "Star Night," were there proper appetizers served on small plates. Apart from that, nothing special. There’s no live or show cooking, and no gourmet meals are prepared. Desserts are mostly of low quality, typically based on pudding with various add-ons. They look nice on display, but that's about it. The sushi prepared once a week was a far cry from authentic Japanese cuisine. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not expecting restaurant-level sushi, but it can certainly be prepared decently in a hotel. Here, it was simply inedible. While you won't go hungry, you would expect a lot more from a five-star hotel.| Once, I tried to reserve a table in the main restaurant. You can do this through an app by purchasing a bottle of wine. I made the reservation 10 hours in advance, but when we arrived, the restaurant staff looked surprised. The table they found for us was for four people instead of five. After 50 minutes of waiting, we were told they didn’t have the bottle we wanted - in the whole five-star hotel, they couldn’t find a single bottle of prosecco. During that time, no one offered us any alternative drinks. They realised this only after we were done and ready to leave. "Magic moments" indeed.| The drinks offered as part of the all-inclusive package are very limited in variety, and only a few are genuinely enjoyable.| There are quite a few basic amenities for which you must pay extra. They have a "premium drinks card," "extra paid à la carte restaurants," and smoothies/shakes in the vitamin bar that also incur additional charges. The drink of the day costs 10 euros. Most of these extras are included in the price at other resorts.| I attempted to order premium drinks twice. The first was an Aperol spritz - quite basic. They didn’t have original Aperol at all. The second drink contained around six ingredients. The bartender looked around the bar for a few minutes, then told me he couldn’t prepare it because he lacked one of the ingredients. This drink was listed on their premium card, not something I invented. Following that experience, I decided not to waste any more money on extras at the hotel - it simply wasn’t worth the irritation.| The rooms are not well insulated, so if you have noisy neighbors, you may have trouble sleeping. Additionally, they allow people to smoke on the terraces in front of family rooms with pool access.| In the bathroom, you only receive liquid soap and shampoo - no lotion, no hair conditioner, and no bathrobes. Again, this does not meet a five-star level.| Personally, I found the beds and pillows to be uncomfortable.||That said, there were some positives:|| If you have children, the MyMo club is a great option. The staff there do a wonderful job and genuinely enjoy working with kids; I appreciate their efforts.| The beach is nice and sandy, quite clean, and you can usually find some free sunbeds.| The water slides offer good entertainment for both kids and adults.| I can commend the cleaning staff - the hotel grounds and rooms were kept clean and well-maintained.| Our family room with direct pool access was in good condition and spacious enough.| There was a good selection of sports activities available daily.||If it were a four-star hotel, I would rate it higher, but for five stars, it is simply not good enough, especially considering how much TUI charges for it.||Lastly, during our stay, a guest service representative approached us to ask if we could spare five minutes to review the hotel on TripAdvisor right then and there with her. I’m certain they noticed an increase in negative reviews in recent months and are trying to address it. I wonder how many of the five-star reviews from the last few days are the result of guest service persuasion. I suggest focusing more on improving the...

We booked this hotel for a 2 week family holiday. We are still at the resort as I am writing this, unfortunate for us we have a little less than a week remaining and we can’t wait to leave. ||The day we arrived was my husband’s birthday and we were told the hotel would organize something to mark the occasion. When we arrived there was nothing in the room. We also arrived at the hotel around 1am in the morning, and after a long trip, there was no baby cot set up in the room. So we had to call for someone to bring and set one up for us. We informed the Tui rep about the lack of birthday surprise and she said she would mention it to guests services, 3 days later a hotel staff member turned up at the door and basically threw a small box at me and left. I shouted after him ‘what is this’ and he shouted back ‘gift’….shocking! ||We are travelling with our 2 year old son who still drinks milk in the morning and evening. At first we were able to get a carton of milk for the room from one of the bars every couple of days without any issues. However, a week in we asked at the lobby bar for a carton of milk for my son and we were told that we would have to pay for it. This is an all inclusive resort and being asked to pay for milk for a child who only has milk and water is absolutely disgusting…we were not asking for a bottle of vodka! When challenged and asked to speak to the supervisor the staff were rude, shouting at us in front of the other guests. The supervisor came and told us it was hotel policy that we should pay. Not accepting this we asked reception to speak with the hotel manager on shift only to be told that it would be virtually impossible as it was almost 11pm at night and it was better to come in the morning. However, after demanding to speak to someone senior a miracle happened and the guest services manager was called and appeared within a few minutes. When speaking with the guest services manager, she told us that it was perfectly fine for us to have milk as they understand babies still need milk. They like to look after pregnant women and babies. We were then given the milk. ||The service at this hotel is non-existent. You are better off getting whatever you want yourselves unless you are prepared to sit and wait a long time. Staff walking around aimlessly, talking and joking amongst themselves, not serving and not clearing tables. Even when you try to get their attention as they pass they are in a world of their own, pretend they did not hear you/ignore you. ||Staff are rude and miserable. They huff and puff when you give your order. They do not listen and become even ruder when you have to ask or correct the order. ||One large buffet restaurant that is open for breakfast and dinner…but its like a cattle market. No organisation, people rushing and pushing, people fighting in the queue for food, like its going run out. The food is of poor quality. Restaurant is noisy and coupled with the terrible service makes for an unpleasant visit. ||There are a number of a la carte restaurants, some are free (Italian, Turkish, Indian/asian, international) and some you have to pay (steakhouse, Japanese). We have tried the free a la carte restaurants the service and food is slightly better; however would not pay to try the others as we can imagine the quality would be similar and not worth it in our opinion. You are allowed to visit each of the free restaurants once per stay and if you want to visit again you have to pay. There is a Tui magic life app where you are encouraged to make your a la carte reservations, but we have not been able to make a single reservation via the app…it does not work. So we have had to go to guest services on multiple occasions to make the reservations. You can only make reservations no more than 2 days in advance. When told the app doesn’t work, they don’t care, they tell you to try after 7pm and it still doesn’t work. So don’t waste your time. ||Few different options for lunch, not great quality but at least its a bit more civilised compared to the breakfast and dinner buffet. ||We have complained twice, once about the milk and once about the poor service, no-one cares its like wasting your breath. You are told that this is the first time they have heard this. However if you look at the reviews on trip advisor many are saying the same thing. When we complained all they were concerned about is if we were going to change hotels and then asked us what we would like them to do about it?! Absolutely ridiculous! ||We paid for a room with the swim up pool, the rooms are cleaned daily but very quickly, so not to a great standard, the floors are filthy, rooms are quite dated, towels are about 40 years old, bed is uncomfortable and very squeaky. Pool/beach towels also about 40 years old, paper thin and many have holes in them. Beach is very crowded and loungers are practically on top of each other. ||Many different pools around the hotel, if you want a lounger around the main pools you do have to get up and get them early as they get taken up quickly. If you are not fussed on where you sit there are still free loungers but a bit further away from the activities/bars/restaurants. ||The hotel grounds are pretty and well maintained, this is about the only good thing going for this hotel. ||First and last time we will stay here. We would not recommend this hotel to anyone and would| strongly recommend to avoid this hotel and go somewhere else. You can get a lot better...

We had our honeymoon in this resort. Pro: Big place, a lot of stuff to do, exercise in the pool, games during evenings, concerts, aerobics in the theater area, a lot of entertainment, etc. Bars: there were a lot of bars: at the pool, wunderbar, at the beach, and others. Pools: big swimming pools at 1.4m depth (perfect depth, not too big for the little ones, not to small for adults). The pools are interconected perfectly in the resort. It is a good taste. We appreciated it very much Big rooms: we beneficiated of a room with ~30 square meters (or even more) and a big balcony (we didn't opted for the bungalows with pool exit). cleaning service was exemplary: every single day employees would come and swipe the room clean. We opted to clean once in every two days, as it was unnecessary to clean daily.

Cons: tasteless food: altough it was an immense quantity of food, nothing seemed like tasted one way or another. Both of us thought the food was lacking taste (maybe we are some uptight romanian guys with different taste). altered drinks: except the water (bottle) everything came from a tonomat machine (as seen at mcdonalds), push and juice would come out. The drinks were altered with water and the barmans would pour some ice into the glass so you'd have less drink. Also they poured drinks into f**king PAPER cups. Ok, we can understand, you can drink coffee and tea from a paper cup, but when I asked for beer and they put it in that cup I had to pass. From that moment on I specially requested BIG GLASS CUP for drinks with no ice (the machines poured cold drinks, ice was not necessary) bad communication: nobody at this resort does not speak english more than is requested not to die of hunger (romanian saying); we barely could communicate with every employee that we came in contact with; it is absolutely insane. We managed using the google translate app to get a better sense of things. German citizens are favorized. If you spoke german you'd be treated differently (for example: for every beer a german speaking citizen would benefit of a little peanuts or chips bowl - EVERY SINGLE TIME; meanwhile, a non german speaking citizen would have to ask for one and it was provided only if it was available - altough if a german speaking citizen would come afterward peanuts would have been available again). We did not appreciate that. We paid to be in this vacation, as much as everybody else that was there, we did not receive it as a gift. wi-fi is less than insuficient: it was DEPLORABLE. When we arrived at Antalya airport we had the blessing to buy a local sim card (46€ for 13GB of internet - TurkCell - which sent text messages in Turkish even though we requested English via sms. We installed the Dijital Operator app and took us two days and a turkish facebook group to put the app into English) and we thanked God every single thay of the eight for that moment. We befriended other couples at the resort and they were trying for a few good hours (at least) to communicate with their loved ones and/or bussiness via internet on the resort wifi. Absolutely incredible. I am talking about WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger messages, we are not taking photos in consideration. nobody would help you with anything: we had to learn by ourselves the breakfast, lunch and dinner schedule and locations, where are the bars; we tried going into Antalya city, or Manvagat city (hope to spell it right) to visit a bazar, but we did not know what shuttle to take, as there where plenty of them and none of the drivers spoke a word in English. we were asked by photographers at the resort (at least twice a day) to make a shooting session, which, by their words: "the shooting is free, but if you want photos you need to pay 8€/each" the resort acceptance of pets is ∅ (null - not allowed), altough we would've had dinner with a few cats around the tables every night. There were even posters that stated "please do not feed the cats, as employees are taking good care of them" (we love pets, don't get me wrong). I've reached the max amount...