Fame Residence Lara

Great animation, but will not come back

I have been to Fame Residence Lara from 16th July - 27th July 2008. I have been there with my daughter (5yrs old).
We arrived quite early (charter flight benefits...) and we recieved our room at 13:10. Normally check out is at 12:00 check in at 14:00 so I was very gratefull for this. On the downside, recepcion staff speaks very bad english and none german so the initial information was wrong (they told me: just after 12). They did not explain anything (about the towel rules, for example, you have to use towel card, one card one towel). Perhaps this is normal, but not in the hotels in which I have been (where they just give you towels). During our stay, the room were cleaned every day, but always during afternoon rest (I tried to fix this with the recepcion, and eventually succeded afetr much discussion). Also, the cleaning lady forgot to leave cleand towels on 3 occasions. This was reported to the recepcion and they remedied the situation twice.
Food: There were only 6 or 7 dishes available plus grilled fish or meat (one or two), plenty of salads (10 variants) and sweets. The main two problems were that one had to wait in line for most popular dishes, as the cook decided that he has to fill in the whole bucket before he gives it away. The second problema dn a much more serious was tht the food was 'recycle' very often and kind menus almost always (kids got over burned burgers, stale macarroni, yesterday wieners and similar). The food is not to central European taste, not a lot of sea food was present, soups were tasteless and awquard. There was a guy who decorated watermellons and pumpkins and this was amasing. The snacks offered between meals were so-so (one type of ice-cream, hotdog within quarter piece of a bread, occasional fruit salad) snack bar on the beach offered more choice, but suffered from similar problems from teh restartant (queue for the grilled meat and pancakes)
Drinks: Since this was an 'all-inclusive' we got lowest quality syrups with water, Pepsi (not Coke) 7up (way better than sweet Sprite). I do not drink alcohol, but the Russians were satisfied. Usually, we do not drink this kind of syrups as they are artifical flavoured and coloured and very sweet.
Hotel beach/sea: Very good, clean, a bit far from the see to sunbeds under the curtain. The curtain was good, but go under the one which is loose as it protects better from the sun. Between 12 and 15:30 it is unbearable outside and without proper protection. There is a children playground, covered with the same curtain, very nice and convenient. THe sea was very cleand untill the last two days (the weather was a bit worse, but no rain). We have medium to large waves and wind speeds from 14-25kmph. The water entrance is with a step, not very good for small children and the waves are very strong, so on a semi-sandy entrance one could get scratches on knees and hands if he/she falls. Plenty of boats but far enough from the beach. The sand is excellent for sand castles (very important feature).
Animation/night life: Since I was alone with my kid, I tried to make her as comfortable as I could. So, there are plenty of animation opportunities for kids (a very professional team worked for them at that time) also in the evening when there was a very successful mini disco. Self-made shows have made me laugh more that anything before and I was pleasantly surprised. there were other shows as well (samba, turkish, shao-lin). Excellent. There was a disco as well, but I never visited it.

To sum it up, I would never go back there, dissapointed by food/drinks, lack of proper service, but I was very satisfied with entertainment and kid possibilities. I guess that most of the hotels on Lara beach offer similar possibilities for kids and I have asked Entertainment team to tell me if they leave Fame Residence as I would gladly go wherever they perform.

Unique Quality: Great animation team, (if that is a facility), very godd and reasonably safe for kids