We are looking at hols to Royal Wings or Royal dragon, we can't decide, but I think when the bairn comes in from cricket, when I show him Dragon, with the fair and water park, he'll be bowled over
Just waiting for price from TA, internet just keeps freezing when I go to get a quote. I've added everything up from brochures and it's comin in aroung £2600 for three of us AI.

I was looking at both of those, they look amazing!!! Unfortunately we ar e a family of 5 and it is coming in at over £5k which is just too much

Have taken the plunge and booked Club Asteria, hope it will be good.

went to book and it's gone up to nearly three grand, too much to strtch too, Titanic for us!

Well, booked up for Titanic, two weeks end of may/beginnign of June with Hayes Travel, going with first choice, £1899, this includes free child place, pre booked seats, meals on plane, 20kg luggage and a discount for booking in school holidays, too good a price to miss as other quotes varied from £2009 to £2410. Amazing

We've returned from the Royal Wings just yesterday. Like Mehmeh we've also stayed at Lykia World. I have to say I thought that the Royal Wings was equal to Lykia, and have now decided against returning to Lykia as planned for 2010.

The main reason for this is the lack of AI concept, not becuase of the alcohol, but with 4 kids, the amount of soft drinks we all got through would have cost us a fortune. I know you can go into the restaurants for drinks, but who needs the bother when you can amble to the nearest bar.

We also liked being able to have snacks at lunchtime around the pool without having to go into the restaurant and thought the food here 4xcellent. The a la carte restaurants, especially the Italian and Chinese were fabulous with first class waiter service and without charge, unlike Lykia and we found the staff friendlier too.

Waterslides are about equal at both properties, and the kids really enjoyed the kids' clubs and put on the Lion King show, again like Lykia. Watersports are cheaper at RW. Yes Lykia does have the wow location factor and is huge, but we really don't feel, on reflection that it actually offered very much more than what we had at RW. Hubby and I were discussing these points last night and from a personal point of view Lykia was the first Turkish hotel we stayed in and we wonder, compared to the European hotels we have stayed in before, if this was why we had held it so dear to us, as it was such a contrast at the time.

I am not knocking LW in any way, but after the stay at the RW, am now happy to explore other 5* AI hotels in Turkey, without hankering after LW as we had done previously.

Papplemouse good to hear your report. We are looking at Lykia & Titanic for June next year and the AI at Titanic is swaying it for me. Im not a big drinker (but a parky drink) I dont drink larger but love a nice cold cider round the pool which I know wont be available in either hotel but at least in AI hotel they wont mind me drinking a few of my own. There will be five of us and I think even over just one week the drinks bill will mount up. We are thinking about going around 27th June next year for my 40th birthday so will have to keep the kids off school (12 & 15) was there many other English children there when you were there. Thanks

I was talking to a couple of reps about the other hotels on 'the strip' and many came highly recommended - Titanic, Concorde, Limak Lara, Barut Lara, Delphin, etc amongst others. Walking along the beach looking at them I don't see that you can go wrong with any of them - they're all very competitive along there!!

I didn't drink during the day but loved the slushy ices they did and got through so many of those and along with the kids' soft drinks, water and afew cocktails in the evenings it really would have cost us alot more. The house wine is fine, and on another post, one of the problems with Lykia is that as the drinks are only included at meal times, guests would congregate at the tables drinking which can cause a backlog at meal times, with the AI we could sip a cocktail after dinner in a bar, far nicer. Also there was an ice-cream kiosk open between 1-3pm each day near the pool so you could get an ice cream and sit on your sunbed which was nice and as I said before the food kiosks were great if you wanted informality at lunchtime without taking a chunk out of your day getting dressed and going to the main restaurant. I'm certainly not knocking Lykia at all, I just think that there are other comparable hotels out there and the AI concept has swung it for us. Don't worry about the 'Brits abroad' concept here at these hotels either, the price of these hotels just doesn't attract them and I didn't see one guest who looked as if they had even so much as had a drink the entire fortnight.

The Royal Wings has a ratio of about 1/10 Brits so the rep said and our children met up with 3 other English children that they played with, although there are a few more there. Several of the other Nationalities though put us to shame as some of their children spoke good English so I'm sure your children will be fine. The kids clubs were very good and the Animation team spoke excellent English and made sure all children were included. We really enjoyed the lack of Brits and felt this hotel offered a perfect mix of Nationalities - Romainian, Russian, Serbian, European, Turks, the lot but no one Nationality dominated and everyone was friendly and poilte to each other - you couldn't ask for better.

The reason why people from other countries speak good english is the factor nearly all pop, rock music is in english and very big factor to take into account.

Lykia's hotel olu or antalya off my list of hotels because they are only FB+ and not A/I. Why do people recommend a lykia hotel saying its A/I.

Glad you enjoyed Royal Wings, pamplemousse. Obviously the AI is more important to some. The drinks available at LW were fine for us. They didn't do a kids show while we were at RW, maybe it is fortnightly? There are far more facilities at Lykia, but if you just want to lay around the pool, that wouldn't matter. Also the waterslides may be similar in number, but the setting of the slides at LW, among the trees at the foot of the mountain, with the people jumping off above your heads (!), cannot be compared to lying on a sunbed round the RW waterslides with the ugly street behind! The beautiful setting is very important to me. The Lara beach hotels all feel very cramped and squashed together. Our room was next to the Kervanseray and we were right on top of them. Lykia has space galore. We would not return to Lara Beach. However we did like Side on a previous AI holiday and would be happy to go back there and to the same hotel, the Magic Life Seven Seas.

(Can't think - People who recommend Lykia World even though it is not AI, do so because for them FB plus is sufficient! Nobody said it was AI. Though the Antalya one is actually AI these days.)

As I said I am not knocking Lykia at all mehmeh and we dearly loved it but we also enjoyed the Royal Wings. The AI wasn't as important to us a few years back but as the children have grown, and we are a large family, we have found that purely on soft drinks alone it was big bonus, and also not having extras charges to visit the a la carte restaurants was better too. I totally agree that Lykia's setting is far superb, but the activities for children were rather similar actually. You are right that the Lion King show was fortnightly but it was certainly as good as that of Lykia. Two of my children were Simba and Nala and they reheared twice a day for 5 days and being into musical theatre they loved it. They also took part in a comedy sketch show on another night which they loved.

We certainly didn't lie around the pool all day but took part in archery, air rifle shooting, belly dancing, Turkish lessons, water polo, parasailing, canoing, pedalos, scuba diving, etc. we would visit the waterpark to go on the slides with the children so looking behind us at the road wasn't an option. They also enjoyed the fairground and trampolines which Lykia doesn't have. The animation team were very good with them and they did archery, banana boats, bowling, cinema, pool games, boccia, table tennis tournaments, etc and whilst we we there they were incorparting an animal farm with ducks, chickens and rabbits which the children loved stroking, and fetching back the ducks that would stray towards the pool, lol.

We also had a fabulous room, well actually it was suite, with huge round jaccuzzi bath in the centre of one of the bedrooms and two balconies. We weren't charged for this upgrade and the rooms were far superior than those we had at Lykia, although obviously this would not be true for everyone and I can only speak based on the rooms we had. We were on the 10th floor and had fabulous views overlooking the pool and sea on the side of Sherwood Breezes, so were obviously much more fortunate with this.

I am certainly not meaning to demean Lykia in any way, and as said thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it, but also the Royal Wings, which had similar facilities for us and the children and equally good food and am merely being objective with the pluses and minuses. Incidently, the children, when asked,voted Royal Wings as their favourite of the two by a small amount.

I will certainly take a look at your Magic Life recommendation, can you remember which operator does this one please?

And I agree with Mehmeh, Lykia is recommended when posters ask for advice on AI if the drink option outside the restaurants isn't important, and full board plus is an unusual concept, who asks for recommednations of a full board plus hotel?

I actually think that other Countires are far better at educating their children at languages that here, not the music industry.

Well, pamplemousse, you got off to a good start with your room upgrade! We were the opposite, as we had paid for a seaview and didn't get it, just a rubbish view of the next door hotel and its dustbins! So obviously that put a blight on things from the beginning! The rep said they do this all the time.

I believe Magic Life hotels are only available through Thomson, as they are part of Tui. We have stayed at the one in Side and also one in Tunisia, both of which were excellent.

The hotels in Side are set in much more attractive areas than Lara Beach, including the Sorgun Forest, with lots of pine trees. Lara Beach's dual carriageway and tower blocks of flats didn't do a lot for me! The Royal Dragon is in this nicer area, I think, and seems to offer the same facilities as Royal Wings, plus dodgems!

I have not been to Belek. Can someone who has tell us what that is like, scenically?

Yes mehmeh I think we were very lucky with the upgrade, and obviously having such a wonderful room and view put the hotel in a good light at the start. Unfortunately if things aren't right at the beginning it really does put a negative view on your holiday from the start, especially when you have paid a supplement, so I understand totally your annoyance with them.

I have just been looking at the Royal Dragon and really quite fancy it for next year. Unfortunately Direct Hols have taken it off the booking list at the moment though for some reason as I rung to get a price from them.

I will have a look at Magic Life, I think I looked at them before and was pretty impressed.

Have you any thoughts on where to go for next year?

pamplemousse

The royal dragon will back on sale soon, they have a pricing issue at the moment with the hotel charging them more than they contracted for.

royal dragon for me