Karda Garden Village

This hotel is clean, the staff are pleasant, the food is of a reasonable standard.

The All Inclusive is a joke.

The hotel provide only one variety of local beer, local brandy, local white and, red wine and, local ouzo free of charge.

All other alcoholic drinks ( including beers, vodka, white rum, whisky etc ) although produced locally underGreek manufacture and distribution labelling are only available on payment of 3 Euros per measure.

The availability of snacks / ice cream is limited to a two hour slot in the afternoon.

Despite avertising such, there was no entertainment. The pool bar attendant was so embarassed by lack of entertainment that she offered to bring in some cd's from her private collection to play in the pool area each afternoon.

The hotel manager, when challenged, shrugged off every issue regarding the aforemetioned complaints.

Although advertised as a service provided, the hotel had no provision for foreign cash exchange,

The hotel was well maintained, the guests well provided for by the excellant efforts of the staff.

However, the attitude of the hotel manager was one of indifference and rudeness to the guests. He refused point blank to address any complaints made to him.

It is not a bad hotel if you are prepared to accept what is available when you arrive there.

If however, you expect All Inclusive to include the full variety of locally produced alcoholic drinks and, on site entertainment, go elsewhwere.

This was our second visit to the Karda Garden village. Our first time being when it was the Louis Helios, so after reading all the bad reviews I was beginning to get slightly worried.

But there was no need to as we have had a truly fantastic holiday. Not much had changed other than the waterslides had been put in and the baby pool had been moved and this is for the better, as it was a little dangerous before and my sister who was with us has a 2 year old.

Mia the mini club rep was good with the kids .. and all the animation team tried their hardest to keep you amused.

The waiting on staff where great and also the bar staff, especially Victor. Had two wonderful weeks and we didn’t want to come ... and we will go back again.

Arrived at hotel and was impressed with the amount of refurbishment that had clearly been made since last year’s reviews.

The rooms were very clean and reception staff very friendly, (a good start I thought!).

However it became clear that the hotel had somehow turned itself into a halfway house for the 18-30 yr olds. Although they didn't prove to be a problem since they spent most of the day asleep, but became a little rowdy during the afternoon when they finally surfaced and take over the pool to play their games of throwing a ball as hard as they could to each other.

The beach is ok and only a little walk away, but there are no toilets down there, a bit a problem for small children! We took water down with us which were supplied by the hotel if you had your own bottles. There were sunbeds available and these were controlled by what appeared to be the odd job man.

Now for the food and drinks!

Food was ok but very repetitive and at best luke-warm, except the soup which I accidently spilled over my fingers and got scolded. After a while we were almost 'balking' at the idea of having to eat the food again. The meats were always over cooked to the extent that you could have used it for repairing the soles of your shoes. Whilst we were there the staff held a birthday party for the sticks of bread, apparently it was the breads 10th day anniversary!

Breakfast was interesting and it was my job to toast the bread which took 15 attempts to get toasted and by this time it was as dry.

Wine was forgettable! Drinks from the pool bar were served in plastic cups which you normally would see being used from a vending machine, even beer! Was this a ploy? It certainly worked for me because I couldn't be bothered to keep on queuing up and asking for the equivalent of a pint of beer. I once asked the ridiculous question of asking for a Frappe and a Metaxas! The barman stated that this was not available and said that it was too expensive, even though they made them for themselves!

Kids club was nonexistent and was supposed to be run by one of animation team. We took our eldest to it one day and all he did was played with a jigsaw and then let wonder off to do what he wanted, I certainly would not let my children attend the club again. One day she took the children to the pool and showed how to dive, which naturally left out those who could not swim or were in-experienced.

Entertainment was ok and at times funny, especially the Mr and Mrs Karda Garden, Valentino was as miserable as the pope in a brothel.

Went to Turkey on a day trip which we booked ourselves and only cost 25 Euros each and 3 Euros each for the tax, kids under 5 went free. However be prepared to wait around to get on the hydro foil. Passport control at the port was a joke all 6000 people had to queue in a fashionable orderly mess to pass through a set of double doors in a single column. However we found turkey to be great, full of bargains and excellent fake clothing.

My rule of thumb was whatever they said you halved and divided by ten and carry the decimal point 2 places, in other words, just think on how much you want to pay. The Turks liked English money but also took Euros and Turkish Lira.

Went to Kos town on the bus which was an adventure!

Overall the hotel is at best 2 star and basic. The food was ok but this the first year that I have ever had stomach trouble. As for going All inclusive, we were spoilt by the AI in Zante last year. It was apparent that the hotel needs to try and recoup some of the money that they had spent and they did this by cutting back on basics.

Would I go back again? Definitely not.