The Ravenala Attitude All Suite Hotel

We are a family with 2 girls aged 13 & 11 and stayed over the Easter holidays. We stayed for 9 nights with the all in package and we booked directly through the hotel. I would recommend you book a taxi from the airport to the hotel yourself and not through the hotel saving you £££'s (it was around £40 and took about an hour) we used Taxi's Mauritius, they were on time and although there was no communication the day or hours before the bookings they were reliable but you do need cash to pay the drivers. We stayed in a family suite and after an early arrival (10:30am) we were able to get straight into our room (a perk of booking direct, as other families who arrived at the same time were not so lucky). The family suites are large enough for a family of 4 and looked just like the photos. Our king size bed was large, but very hard and uncomfortable (actually giving my partner hip problems). The kids beds were fine, there wasn't really enough storage for our clothes - but we coped! The bathroom needs an upgrade cosmetically, everything worked functionally but there were leaky showers, badly patched up tiles and messy grout almost everywhere - it needed some TLC and attention to detail. We knew about booking the restaurants so we did this ASAP (that afternoon). We had to wait a couple of days before we could get in, but then were able to book into all the al a carte restaurants as much as we wanted. Our favourite was O for both lunch and dinner, we had 2 picky eaters and a Vegetarian and we all managed to eat something nice at least once a day. On the whole the food was good in the restaurants. Mozaik wasn't great for any of the meals, but we used it as a 'top up' getting desserts and extra things for the kids after the a la carte meals. The biggest disappointment was the meal schedules. Breakfast finishes at 10:30 and there is nowhere to get anything to eat until 12-12:30. We are late risers so really struggled with this and have not experienced such restrictions in a resort before, usually there is another restaurant available where you can have a light breakfast or brunch (worth noting there are 'sometimes' pastries available at the bar). Likewise after lunch finishes (3:00) there are food carts available near the beach (same thing everyday) and a light afternoon style tea (popcorn, cakes and a choice of 3 savoury snacks) at around 5:00 at Bistrot (with we only discovered on our last day), but outside these hours there wasn't really anything available. Not sure why they don't stagger the times, we were on holiday but had to run to their food schedule? There is nowhere on site to purchase any snacks to feed tweens and teens (crisps etc). Yes there is a 'mini bar stock up' store where the drinks are good, but the snacks are poor - so make sure you bring some! Like other reviews we were always able to find a sun lounger somewhere although not always the right number of seats in the spot we wanted. The pools were cleanish, we did have a day where there were loads of dead bugs in the main pool and it was disappointing that no-one came and cleaned it. The sea isn't blue it's green (where the river meets the sea), but you can see the bottom and beach is small and crammed with sun loungers (great for young kids) - but it's hardly a Instagram worthy Mauritian image. The free activities really made the holiday for our children, paddle boarding, kayaking, volleyball, water polo - they were amused for hours which was great. Just a note if you want to play tennis - take your own tennis balls as they charge you about £11 for 1! The evening 'entertainment' could be missed - mostly just dancers, they did try but it just wasn't 'entertaining'. Not sure why they don't put on a kids disco (with music dating onwards from 2000?). We did the hotel catamaran tour and we really enjoyed it (although the weather didn't quite play ball on the day). We had a great snorkelling experience and saw some turtles up close in the sea we would recommend booking it rather than the guys on the beach that are selling day trips. Ensure you take your hotel towels with you - we forgot ours and it took a while to let the other Attitude hotel allow us to borrow theirs. I think there is an option to upgrade the BBQ lunch for Lobster, we didn't do this but another boat did and it looked amazing as the food on our boat was not great sadly. Overall I would say a different standard of all-inclusive resort, perfectly satisfactory for our 9 nights but I'm not sure we would come back. The resort is pretty small for a long stay and topped with not great weather (to get out and about to visit other beaches) we felt quite bored and ready to leave towards the end of our stay. I don't think we got full value for money for the all inclusive package; we weren't keen on the alcohol on offer, we consistently missed breakfast and we didn't sleep brilliantly. So I wonder if we could have gone to a better resort and pay as we went for the same money and have a better experience?

Lots of things to do and see in the hotel. Very helpful and welcoming staff, especially Rohan who advised us about where to eat and what to do. There are many restaurants in the hotel with different cuisines to try and choose from. Also, beautiful views of the beach and river.