Almond Beach Village, St Peter, Barbados

What was good about the place:

Free rum cocktails.

The nursery and mini club provided a 'time out' place for my 3 yo and 9 mo when they got hot and bothered by too much excitement.

Free rum cocktails.

The beach is nice - not the best I've ever been to, but not the worst by a long way. Would be better if they picked the rubbish up off it a bit more often.

Did I mention the free rum cocktails?

What was bad about it:

The first room we had was so far away from anything that it was practically on a different island. If you had to pop back for anything it was a 20min round trip in the heat, up a lift that was erratic at best, when it was working.

The same room had a loo that refilled it's cistern noisily all night, and a large and dangerous spring sticking up from the mattress. It was also a lot smaller than the brochure led us to believe, in a very poor condition (mouldy bathroom, dirty paintwork, chipped furniture, etc.) and the beach view we had paid extra for overlooked an area of public beach used by locals to park their cars and rusty old boat trailers, and to have a quick smoke, drink and a wee. Nice. The rest of the block was more or less empty because they were doing maintenance on it. We could hear drilling at most times through the day.

The staff claimed that there were no other rooms they could move us to when we asked for a room change. I was prepared to accept a downgraded room provided it would take the four of us in my family and was closer to the main part of the resort (and didn't have a bed that inflicted injury on us!) It was getting exhausting hauling a chunky baby round in the heat, and due to the bumpy pathways and erratic lift, using the buggy was not practical. I eventually persuaded them to give us a family suite a grade above ours that was being vacated by another family - I heard about the room becoming available from them on the beach as they were being vocally unhappy about the amount they had paid for what they thought was a shocking room. It was still better than our first room. Getting the hotel staff to agree to the room change was slightly more tricky than getting blood out of a stone.

Public areas were tired, dirty, poorly maintained. If the halls of residence I lived in as a student was so poor I would have asked for my money back - this place charges per week what uni halls charge for a year! To give an example, in the flower bed outside our second room, there was a broken wine glass. It was there when we arrived, and was still there when we left, even though we were assured the area had been swept by both cleaners and gardening staff and neither had found anything.

There were cockroaches in the buffet areas, but you didn't need to worry about them hanging around for too long as the feral cats would chase them under your table and eat them there.

You could order room service, but then no one took the dirty dishes away, just leaving them to attract vermin.

During the 10 days we were there, the ice cream machine broke down, there were electricity cuts to some buildings (not a power cut - just parts of the resort suffered,) drinking water fountains were often removed - and you can't live just on rum, especially in 32 degree heat and when you have small children!

However, the free rum cocktails contained very generous measures of good quality brand-named spirits, and this meant that if we had enough of them we were able to have a fairly merry time, in spite of the place. We found ourselves often in the kids pool where a frequent topic of conversation was 'have you managed to get your room sorted out yet?' and a shared sense of camaderie was experienced all round.

My 3 yo daughter loved it, my husband and I had a week in the sun with a lot of rum, and we won't be going back.

Really disappointed with our stay. The resort had no atmosphere to it and the staff were very variable in their willingness to help guests - some superb but others verging on downright rude. Poor choice of food, the menus never change and service is just slow or you queue, queue and queue, often for silly things like waiting for some plates to come. The BBQ buffet night felt promising until we discovered the whole hotel there and nowhere left to sit and a queue that literally took over 30minutes to get to the food. Had to request a cot for our baby four times after arrival before one was given to us. Accommodation was ok, could do with some repairs here and there but we were happy with our rooms overall.

Further to all the above which was frustrating enough we then had a hurricane hit the Island and an Island wide crisis occurred at which point the guests in the hotel were just forgotten by the staff. If it had not been for the willingness of other guests to take over the kitchen and run the bar we would have been left with nothing. We totally understand that difficult circumstances lead to different provision but abandonment was unacceptable. I would not recommend anyone to go to this resort, though as a whole the Island of Barbados in my previous experience (without kids) has been wonderful and I can certainly recommend the Island.

very disappointing. Room itself was an okay size but bathroom was tiny. Blackout lining on one curtain but not on the other - not a major thing but that rather epitomizes the whole place.

Kids club was poor in comparision to what we have had the last two years at Lykia World. Golf was advertised, from 10am to 11 am. DS went along with the group but they were all back 20 minutes later. Apparently they'd been given two balls each, allowed to hit each ball three times and then all returned to the club!! In the mini club, TV watching was the preferred activity for the ladies and DD or I had to request other activities. There was just one younger lady who was more proactive and once i saw her actually on here hands and knees playing lego with the children but the rest of the time that ladies were purely there to chat to each other.

The food was okay, we actually had one meal in the Italian adults restaurant that was fantastic! They didn't change the menu often enough that so we had chicken wraps for lunch in the International restaurant more times than i care to remember (and we didn't go there every day!).

The adult pool - what a joke! Children can sit around the edge, children can lay on the sun beds, they just can't actually get in the water.

Water sports - the queue starts at 7.30am and the booking office opens at 8.30am! We never queued before 8.30 am and that said we did usually manage to get a water skiing slot the next day, just not at our desired time slot. The ski boat took out 4 people at a time and you got max 10 mins each. If you an ski this is probably long enough but if you are learning like my DS and need instruction and help, 10 mins is not enough time. And some of the guys were obviously not that interested in helping children to learn (apart from Jason who was great).

The table tennis tables and pool tables were shabby beyond belief. The CV equipment in the gym was ok for a holiday resort but the free weights only went up to 5 kg!

Some of the staff were lovely (particularly in Enid's restaurant for breakfast and our room cleaner) and I do appreciate that things work differently in Barbados and most of the Caribbean but if you want to be an international holiday resort and appeal to international guests then you need to make some adjustments. We weren't the only ones dissatisfied by the way - in fact happy guests were the exception not the rule and people were demanding to be moved every day, either to different rooms or to a different resort.

Such a shame as the sea was divine!

Apart from the service from the restaurant staff I thought the resort was great. My wee boy just loved it and it was wonderful how they did early meal sittings so we could all dine together!