We stayed at Viva Bahia for two weeks in August 2005. We discovered this place during a two week stay at the adjacent Alcudia Pins in June 2004. This review contrasts the two hotels.
Clientele: Viva reception told me that about 60% of their guests are Scandinavian, I guess the rest are 35% German and 5% British and Spanish. When we arrived and looked round, my wife and I joked that we now appeared to be amongst the “beautiful people”… never before have I seen such a concentration of tanned blondes. The hotel and grounds were much prettier, cleaner and quieter than Alcudia Pins. All instructions and announcements were in multiple languages including English, all the shows are in English. So don’t worry about language barriers. We also met some very nice people there – a big Hi to Danielle and Nicole who helped play with & entertain our kids.
By contrast, Pins clients seemed to be almost exclusively British. Pins is a great place to admire body art. In a quick survey one afternoon I saw that one out of every 5 people had a visible tattoo. Some tattoos were very artistic, others just said “England”. The Pins pool and rows of sunlounger was very crowded and loud, it’s a big pool with a popular water-slide. At the end of the afternoons the water looked murky and unpleasant.
Hotel Cleanliness: Viva was flawlessly clean. Every morning a small army of green-clad staff cleaned and tidied everything including floors and sunloungers.
Pins is also cleaned every day; the main difference is that at Viva, the clientele keep the place clean, at Pins the clientele make and leave a huge mess. We were disgusted to see the rubbish left near or under sunloungers at the end of each day at Pins; several other reviewers commented on this too, papers, wrappers, cans, left over food – even used nappies.
Hotel Layout and appearance:
Viva consists of several 3-floor apartment blocks in a roughly horseshoe shaped layout, the open end of the horseshoe opening to the circular pool-bar building beyond which lies the white sandy beach. The pool, entertainment areas and restaurant outdoor seating areas are all in the centre of the horseshoe. Dozens of trees provide shade where people can sit to talk, drink, read, play cards and so on. The main pool is spanned by a small footbridge, a segregated shallow end-section of the pool is perfect for smaller children. Sunloungers and sunshades loosely circle the pool.
I recommend you request a pool-view apartment if you want to avoid overlooking the adjacent hotels or the road. We also avoided the ground floor for security reasons. Each apartment has a balcony, the facades are cunningly indented and pastel-colour painted to give the appearance of a small village. To maintain the appearance, Viva requests that guests do not hang towels over the balconies to dry – this works and the place just looks great. Even the internal corridors are light, spacious and clean.
Pins is much larger complex – the same horseshoe design but with some additional parallel accommodation blocks. The design and colour scheme is more uniform, offset by a random multi-coloured tapestry of beach-towels draped over most balconies. There are far fewer shady open areas, the sunloungers were arranged in tightly packed rows where people (many painfully scarlet) lay elbow to elbow devoted to sun-worship. Amazingly there were no sunshades at all in June 2004 – although this year I saw that some had now been installed.. maybe in response to customer complaints?
Getting a Sunlounger: The stereotype of the Germans getting up early to place towels on sunloungers needs an update. At Pins we were amused to see most sunloungers reserved by 6am – and that’s with a British clientele! It’s just how things worked there – if you didn’t reserve a sunlounger very early on, you didn’t get to use one at all.
Things are far more civilised at Viva: there’s a hotel rule that no sunloungers may be reserved before 9:15. This rule was obeyed by most people – and the miscreants determined to challenge the system fell foul of Plan B: “Juan”. Juan was one of the hotel maintenance team who had an additional morning duty to harvest up orphaned towels. Watching his significant frame striding purposefully and grimly along the sunloungers gathering up towels gave me much pleasure. Vacant sunloungers can be found in the afternoons and there’s a sunshade to roughly every 3 or 4 sunloungers.
Entertainment & activities for kids:
A team of mainly Swedish entertainers handle all daytime and evening events (but they are supplemented by the “Viva Flying Team” or external performers for some shows). They are an eclectic bunch. Just a mention a few: Emma, classic pretty Swedish looks with high cheekbones and blonde hair bunched up and the most fascinating range of facial expressions. Johan, a tall blonde Swede, reminds me of a young David Bowie and has a great talent for face painting. Andreas, Swedish again, has a zany sense of humour that has us laughing every night; Kelly, a native Majorcan brunette was our daughter’s favourite.
The evenings start with a “mini-disco” on and in front of the stage, a chance for the kids to dance and play. This introduces the hotel’s narcoleptic superhero dog mascot called BUFO, whose role is to wait for the kids for scream for him to appear.. then to fall asleep and wait for the kids to scream loud enough to wake him again. Banal, but the younger kids love it!
Following that there’s a stage show for kids like Cinderalla then later a show for the adults.. anything from Abba to Queen. The singing and dancing was good enough for my appreciation – but I think the Pins team may be slightly more “professional”.
Audience participation games take place at both hotels. For example drinking through straws, dancing, or collecting items of clothing from the audience. The Pins ones were slightly more risqué, ones I remember include the “coin in the bum game” and reciting tongue twisters like “Old Mrs Hunt had a rough cut punt….” If you don’t fancy taking part, simply don’t volunteer.
Viva has a daily kids club with a range of activities, though we think the oganisation and running of these activities could have been improved. There are ping pong and pool tables, minigolf, various arcade games, a sandy playground section with slides, swings etc and even a (free) bouncy castle. But there are no crèche or babysitting options at all.
Pins has many on-site shops and additional facilities such as the hire of battery driven kiddie-cars (you can exploit those even if you stay in Viva Bahia)
Eating out: Viva has a main restaurant and a pool bar serving a wide range of meals, There are other beach restaurants withini strolling distance or you can take a bus (or even a water-bus from the pier on the beach) to other places.
Eating in: With a two and a five year old, we decided to go self-catering. This is where the otherwise outstanding Viva facilities proved surprising modest. The apartment kitchenettes are equipped with just 2 hot rings, a fridge with small freezer section plus a sink and crockery. There was no toaster, kettle, microwave, grill or oven. This is a minor inconvenience and with a little imagination you can get by just fine (I toasted bread on a hot ring and fried a ready-made pizza J) I still find it strange that Viva lets you rent a bicycle, a roomsafe, a cot, lets you borrow towels for the pool but does not even offer the rent of more kitchen appliances. Perhaps they want to encourage people to use their restaurants. Both hotels have mini-supermarkets onsite and nearby for grocery shopping – but you pay for the convenience. The Pins one has a wider range of products, the Viva one has some Swedish and German specialities. Full-size and cheaper supermarkets are a few minutes drive away in C’an Picafort or Alcudia.
Summary: we chose to stay at Alcudia Pins in 2004 for two reasons: its location right by a great beach and the advertised child entertainment, crèche with some evening baby-sitting facilities. We had a good time despite the crowds, the mess and the somewhat shambolic running of the creche. Pins has developed a reputation as “Butlins in the Sun”. If you want to be surrounded by fellow Brits in a very large and busy hotel, do battle for the tightly packed sunloungers and step through the mess at the end of the day – then this is indeed the place for you.
But after one evenings visit to Viva Bahia we were determined to stay at Viva Bahia next time. Viva Bahia is a fantastic hotel, far superior to Alcudia Pins in most respects. I would happily return to Viva Bahia. It’s smaller, cleaner, calmer, prettier and altogether more civilised that Pins. Would you fly economy if you were offered business class?
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