Catty Cats Garden Hotel

The entertainment was good most nights, though I think it stopped on either Saturday or Sunday. The nearby mosque's call to prayer was loud, and shops were about a 10-15 minute walk away. The food was okay but plain. My daughter got stuck in the bathroom, so the lifeguard had to climb over to get her out. The kids' club made cookies, but only two children were there, since they had two sessions and cookies were only made in the morning one.

The room had several problems: the TV never got fixed after I reported it, the shower leaked, the sink wobbled, the window wouldn't close, and the balcony door wouldn't lock. The mattress was too hard. We were put on the top floor despite requesting a lower one, across from the pool, and the mosque woke us at 5am every morning. Other guests argued and fought below us, and eventually got kicked out. The bar and entertainment stopped at 10:30pm, which isn't much of a holiday, and there was no drinks menu. The hotel felt like a budget place with no frills, and the service from most staff was poor, as if they couldn't be bothered. I even heard them speaking badly about guests. Alex was friendly, though. It didn't feel like a hotel, and I wouldn't come back.

The pools were generally good, and we especially liked the flume and slide. Still, kids were running up the flume with no one stopping them. The lifeguard seemed to be hanging around on his phone instead of watching, so we alerted staff because an accident could easily have happened. Our late arrival, after 1am, started with a porter asking us for money. We were first shown to a top-floor apartment with bunk beds and a single bed in the kitchen, although there were only two of us. My partner has trouble with her legs, so the next morning she showed her disability badge at reception and asked for a ground-floor apartment. They arranged one, which was good of them, though we lost a decent view. The room was better, sort of clean, but many doors, including ours, needed painting. The shower mostly worked but leaked during our last week. The beds were very hard and we didn't feel rested. The air conditioning was good and quiet enough on sleep mode. We found the toilets by the pool below standard. My partner said the women's toilets often had no paper, and neither set of toilets was kept as clean as it should've been. The all-inclusive drinks choice was only beer, white rum, vodka, gin, and wine. There was no brandy or whiskey, unlike other all-inclusive stays we've had in Turkey. We're very sure the white spirits were watered down: neat rum seemed that way too. Only the white wine had any effect on us. The food was samey and often not hot; desserts looked nice but tasted bland and not very sweet. You had to eat, though. We had to go early to get a table in the main area, even with upstairs seating. We once left two glasses of orange on a table to save it, but when we returned with food, the drinks were gone and another family had taken the table. The main barman rarely smiled, was abrupt, and measured sparingly despite the watered-down drinks. Other bar staff were generally nice. The bar and entertainment closed at 10:30pm, when most people felt they could carry on for another hour. Entertainment was poor. The first week's pop quiz mostly played what we'd call Euro trash, with no mix of tastes. The disco never really got going, and the DJ spent the evening chatting up two young Belgian girls. His assistant tried to entertain the kids, but without much energy. Euro trash also thumped around the main pool all day. Wednesday's so-called bingo was one game stretched over an hour, with 3-5 minutes between numbers. The prizes seemed quite generous, I think, but it was painfully slow. We eventually got one number away from a full house. Two cards for six games cost us 1400 lira. Catty Cats really does have cats wandering around. Most looked starved, and other guests fed them. That was enjoyable, but mostly self-generated. It wasn't all bad, and there were some good parts.

We had a pretty good time at Pizza Point, the restaurant outside the hotel. The owners were lovely, the food was really nice, and it was the only place where we didn't feel ripped off when eating out. The mosque isn't next door, but its speaker system is powerful. It started at 4am and scared the life out of us on the first night. The rooms were clean, with nothing wrong with them, and staff were friendly. Don't let the miserable-looking older barman put you off, you'll know who I mean. He's actually a great guy, though that first impression isn't the best. The pools were good and the kids loved the slides, but they're open for just two hours at a time. They should run all day. The buffet was okay, but it was a bit of a lottery choosing food because most dishes had no labels. There was breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with no snacks between meals and no ice cream for kids. The bar ran from 10:30am to 10:30pm, which was fine. Not bad overall, I suppose you get what you pay for.