All inclusive holiday irritations....

[CupoTeap]

On holiday and in the restaurant......there is a huge block of butter put out each session with a knife to help yourself with.

I am getting more and more irritated by the people who insist on scraping a bit of butter off with this knife and then back to the butter to repeat before putting the knife down.

JUST PUT SOME ON YOUR PLATE.

Anything else I should be looking out for to annoy me

(I'm actually having a fab time and am very relaxed 😎)

Haven't done all inclusive but I once did full board in Tunisia in a huge restaurant where the chefs didn't really understand European cooking but tried to do it. Tunisian food cooked well would have been much nicer. What I remember is getting the same dishes twice a day (lunch and dinner) for a fortnight. You very quickly found which things you liked, so you ended up eating them every day. Never again.

Expensive AI sounds lovely. The AI places I could afford I don't think I'd enjoy much. And we are a weird family to cater for anyway, dh is vegan, I'm vegetarian, ds2 is ridiculously picky.

I'm having a fantasy about winning the lotto and having a 5* AI holiday now though.

My main irritation with AI is that it kills the local economy. One town we visited had so many local family owned restaurants that had closed down because a big hotel became AI

Astonished to read some of this. Where do you go for your AI, butlins? I've never had these experiences and I am vegetarian so 'difficult'.

God it sounds horrific. People do realise that it's not free don't they? However much you stuff and drink and eat ice cream after ice cream, you've still probably paid twice for it!
And you have to be stuck in the same place to eat every night, queueing with the other riff raff at the feeding troughs.
I totally agree with another post on here that luxury self catering, fridge full of food and eating out at different local places is a holiday and a lot kinder on your purse.

Of course it's not a free holiday, but you pay for the privilege so far in advance it feels like it's free by the time you actually get to sit on the broken sun lounger with your ' locally produced wine and ice cream' combo!
I did enjoy my AI holiday years ago be fair but it was still nice to come home.

To be fair many of the horrors described here are common to any buffet, not just an AI deal.

I have seen the plate piling, spoon licking, finger poking, booze guzzling behaviour at posh weddings too.

This would be my idea of hell.

@shieldmaidenofrohan that resort is amazing. Best I've been to and only place I would go back to. Plenty of Al la Cartes too.

If you book a cheap holiday, you'll get a cheap holiday, AI or not is irrelevant.

How can multiple restaurants, delicious food, wine, drinks, activities for DC's and yourself and insurance, flights, transfer etc etc be bad and a 'horror'? It can be utter luxury.

People are being ridiculous taking the worst of the worst situations and applying to ALL AI.

You pay for what you get.

For everyone who is berating AI, the idea of self catering is my idea of hell - I spend 51 weeks of the year doing that, stuff that for a game of soldiers on my week off! And no, for those years there was no partner to be doing his share

Cant believe the term riff-raff has been used in a serious manner.

This is such a painful read!

The AIs we go to don’t even have an evening buffet but 6-7 a la carte restaurants instead. Having said that I personally wouldn’t do that in Europe as there are so many good local places, but in tropical chilling out holidays we do go AI.

People not using the hand gel going into the buffet (not exclusive to all inclusive). Vegetarian option is usually vegetables with cheese melted over it.

People who see all you can eat and drink as some sort of challenge to get your moneys worth.

But generally it’s v convenient, itsusually the all inclusive which have the best facilities too.

Similarly I don’t want to wash up as much as a teaspoon on holiday so SC completely out of the question. Yes it’s lazy, it’s a holiday!

I've never been to this kind of thing but the tales of the lack of hygiene around these buffets are (not envy).

Don't people get sick all the time?!

I'm sure that there is an element of risk around the buffet on an AI holiday as people are not always careful or considerate but I've had a dodgy tummy self catering in this country ( the different water was blamed there!) so it's a case of being careful and making sure the food is cooked properly and trying to avoid the birds landing on the croissant ( see a few pages back)
Even eating out you are still taking a punt that the people handling the food wash their hands and are following the rules of good hygiene at all times. If you thought about it all too carefully you'd never eat anything that you hadn't cooked yourself ever!
Sometimes overthinking things can be a bit soul destroying.

I don’t mind an AI. They’re good when the kids are small and you just can’t be arsed with a week of constantly feeding and cleaning up after them. Plus mini clubs are great in the evening.

I’ve always found the food pretty good. But the ice cream situation is always shit. I’ve paid a lot of money for this holiday, I want a damned Magnum, not some frozen solid little tub of vanilla with a plastic spoon! Don’t make me walk to the local Carrefour in the heat to get a decent ice cream.

This is how they make their money ; cheap drinks and ices. The branded goods would go in seconds and the hotels would go under.
It's the same in chain restaurants; charge loads for desserts that are nothing more than catering packs dished up with a sprinkle of icing sugar and a sprig of basil on the top to look posh on a small plate. They get around 20 servings or more from one pack of ice cream or whatever and the mark up is huge! ( used to work in one and seen this in action) it's all smoke and mirrors.
AI that are a lot of money might do drinks and ices that you've heard of but the normal cheapy ones don't. ' locally produced ' covers most of it in the small print!

I hate having my days organised for me around mealtimes. Also hate having to eat in the same place every single time you want food.

Currently on a self catering holiday in Bulgaria and loving taking our pick from all the different restaurants. Plus we have meats, cheese, HUGE watermelon slices and cheap booze in the fridge. Self catering wins for me every time.

So this thread has made it into the New Zealand Herald! Nearly spat my dinner out when I saw:

www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=12252205

Apart from the whole people acting like they havent eaten for years thing. Theres a popular buffet style restaurant near us where we avoid the chocolate fountain in the desert area due to people putting their fingers in. The sweets to be used in said fountain on skewers having chocolate finger marks on them in the bowls!!

www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=12252205

Does this work?

I don't mind AI, it's served us well whilst the dc have been small. Now they are older the general consensus is that a week is plenty! We did a mixture this time - 4 nights AI then on to self catering for a week and that was perfect. By the time the noise, hectic dining room, too many smoking guests, and general overload of people started to grate, we moved on

But agree with some of the minor irritations like greedy people at meal times, especially of a certain nationality. Once my small dd who was 6 was waiting patiently for her pancake to be made by one of the chefs, a female guest pushed past her and held her plate out first! Luckily the chef was not impressed by her rudeness and gave the first pancakes to dd with a big wink!!

Pushing and shoving for food is cringy and it is the mentality of ' Ive paid for it so I'm having it' that can prevail.

My parents were teens in the war years and couldn't abide food waste. They would have hated seeing so much being taken then not eaten. It is greedy.