Tui Magic Life Calabria - All Inclusive

“May half-term holiday with very large family.”

Large family of 17, two grandparents, for daughters and husbands and seven grandchildren aging from 3 to fourteen. We had a fantastic week and hoping to return the same week next year. So much for all the family to do. Food was excellent and we used the speciality restaurants which were a great cha… more

Large family of 17, two grandparents, for daughters and husbands and seven grandchildren aging from 3 to fourteen. We had a fantastic week and hoping to return the same week next year. So much for all the family to do. Food was excellent and we used the speciality restaurants which were a great change and loved the pizzas on the beach. The resort is spotlessly clean and the staff are polite and friendly. As grandparents we chose the adult only private section which we thoroughly enjoyed. The swimming pool was amazing. The buffet was enjoyable and relaxed with no children buzzing about. All the rooms were great especially the family rooms with two bedrooms. This is one of the best resorts we’ve visited which can be a difficult ask with such a wide range of age and personalities to make everyone happy. Well done Magic Life.

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“Eccelente!”

Gorgeous hotel (lovely flowers everywhere!), fab facilities, delicious food, and wonderful service. Can't praise it highly enough. Grazie mille!

“Huge resort with fab facilities and beautiful beach.”

A huge resort, 20 mins from the airport with great facilities and activities. You won't get bored here! Positives: Very clean everywhere, staff are very friendly (especially the lady in guest services!) lots to do, including various classes. Kids splash park is fab, beautiful beach and lots of food… more

A huge resort, 20 mins from the airport with great facilities and activities. You won't get bored here! Positives: Very clean everywhere, staff are very friendly (especially the lady in guest services!) lots to do, including various classes. Kids splash park is fab, beautiful beach and lots of food and drink. Rooms are clean, clean towels and beach towels provided every day. Only toiletries in the room are hand wash and shower gel. Hairdryer isn't the best so take your own if you want to dry your hair quickly. It's attached to the wall in the bathroom, so you've got no choice but to blow dry in the bathroom on a tiny lead. Nothing is too much trouble, so if you need extra pillows etc, just ask at guest services, they were so helpful. Food is varied, but mostly pizza, pasta, fish and meat. Puddings are ok, ice cream is only available at certain times next to the coffee house. No ice cream in the main buffet which is a shame. Drinks: cocktails, wines, one type of beer on tap. Lots of coffee tea etc. Cocktail of the day is presented outside with snacks before dinner. This was a lovely touch. Beautiful private beach, accessed through the forest. Lots of sunbeds and canoes available to use which was fun! The beach bar turns into a pizza restaurant at night. Book asap as this is a must! Lovely pizza and the best bit, the fantastic sunset. We took the most beautiful photos and had a fab meal after. Negatives: It's very remote. There is no where to walk to. Only way out is the hotel shuttle at 10 euro pp into town. Taxis not reliable and expensive as there are so few. Wifi isn't great and didn't work in our room, nor the smart tv would connect to wifi. Rooms can be quite a walk (we were in block 6) Food can be repetitive. Main pool is too deep. Tips: Take your own hair dryer Book the pizza restaurant on the beach as soon as you arrive as it gets booked up. Activities get booked quickly, so book those asap too. Watch the sunset on the beach, it's amazing. Overall a fab resort, just a shame it's so remote.

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“Facilities and Site 4* - Food and Drink 3.5* at Best - Think Most 4* Reviews relate to the Private Lodge - Adults Only!”

This was our first family holiday with our 15 month old grandson and after doing much research to try and tick the majority of boxes for all of us on the booking, some really very good reviews on here and flight and transfer times (3 hour flight time/15-20 mins transfer from the airport) not being … more

This was our first family holiday with our 15 month old grandson and after doing much research to try and tick the majority of boxes for all of us on the booking, some really very good reviews on here and flight and transfer times (3 hour flight time/15-20 mins transfer from the airport) not being excessive, we landed on the Magic Life Calabria. Our daughter and her partner are in their early 20s and we (grandparents), in our late 40s - we thought the mix of facilities on offer, all inclusive element and opportunity for us to get to some local towns made this a good booking. We'd also had Magic Life resorts recommended to us by others, albeit not this one. We experienced some real positives during our stay but also some things that could just be so much better and perhaps not truly what you would expect from a 4* resort - so its a bit of a mixed review from us. Check in was really smooth and organised very well, with a number of desks set up - good system for staff to be able to take your luggage to your room and a little spread of snacks and drinks to welcome you to the resort. Check in done and wristbands provided, we wandered down to the Wunderbar - self service beer taps and to be fair the beer was pretty decent...the rest of the all inclusive drinks however, were not! We knew in advance that the drinks were locally produced and had no issue with this, as we've stayed in other properties where the drinks are locally produced and they've been fine but have to say on this occasion, we started to question whether the spirits were actually watered down! They had a set cocktail menu and we tried a couple of these that were kind of ok, along with prosecco and soft drinks. The coke tasted like Rola Cola, some of the self serve machines were you could get soft drinks - the drink was often flat. What was particularly disappointing was the wine and considering you're in one of the best wine producing capitals of in the world, it was not good - draft wine and the red was cold (and not the type of red wines that you can now drink chilled!). I think we just expected a much better standard given where our holiday was and the reviews that we had read. Handily however, if you are not a fan of the all inclusive drink selection and/or quality - there is a Premium Bar where can have a selection of branded drinks but that you pay additionally for - most cocktails or G&T type drinks were averaging around 8 Euros, bottles of Corona 2.50 Euro. You could get bottles of wine also and we did try the cheapest one on the menu which turned out quite nice but that was 22 Euros. The shop on site also sold branded soft drinks - 250ml cans at 3 Euros. So the Business Model appears to be - have very bog standard included with what you pay for your holiday but bank on customers getting fed up and spending more once you are there!! That's what it felt like to us. And the few times we did get premium drinks (where you queue at a separate bar), unless the bar manager Joe was around, you were made to feel a bit of a nuisance for not wanting drinks that came out of a siphon! Oh and on the subject of the Boutique shop on site - if you need essentials you will pay over the odds. If you feel you may be running out of anything we would recommend, if you make it to Pizzo - get your stuff there. Onto the Food - the main buffet restaurant was probably what you would typically expect and there were some nice little touches with some separate stations with appetizers being prepared in front of you; there was a decent selection and aside from your standard salad bar and sides etc, didn't feel like there was too much repetition. A separate pizza and pasta station where you could see it being made in front of you was a nice touch, however the pasta on most occasions was undercooked and still raw; the pizzas were pretty good. We had a couple of occasions of some pretty pink chicken. Desserts were good. Breakfast is what you normally see in an all inclusive but as the week went on and more guests arrived, they could have probably done with a second toaster. We actually found the Beach Bar restaurant to be better at lunchtime. Another reason we booked here was because there are 3 additional restaurants on site that you can dine at once for free during your stay, and that's always a nice touch as it breaks the monotony of the buffet. The Pinseria on the beach was really nice and the food lovely here - nice little sharing starter and the pizzas were delicious with a good variety; the Trattoria was ok for me - starter better than mains and we did get to try the local specialty of Tartufo for dessert. The third dining option was the Fish and Grill...payable locally but we were happy to pay, as we thought it would be a nice place to go on the last night of our stay. Wasn't open, although no prior notification of this or update on the all singing all dancing Magic Life App! The rooms are really nice I have to say, we had a balcony room that overlooked the Private Lodge pool area - spacious, cleaned every day but there was only one plug socket for the adaptors that most brits tend to use and I have seen this mentioned in a couple of other reviews. And if you need to do your hair in front of a mirror - where the socket is, doesn't reach near the mirror!! We asked prior to arrival about irons and were informed that they don't provide irons in rooms as its considered a safety issue! They do have a laundry room where one is available - where you can take your clothing items to iron there. We just took a travel iron. There is a mini fridge provided in your room and we had 2 x water bottles provided on the first night but these are not replaced. The room definitely misses tea and coffee making facilities. We were in block 6. The site itself was spotlessly clean for our whole stay and you constantly see staff around keeping the place clean and tidy and as a few other travellers have reviewed, the grounds are beautiful. You get given towel cards so don't need to take a beach towel with you - you just exchange these at the towel station each day which we thought was handy. The main pool is a really good size but irritatingly the same depth the whole way around, no gradual incline into the pool in any area - just steps in with a depth of 1.5m. The Splash Park was really good for our grandson and handy for little ones with slides etc. If you can get out and about we would recommend you do so. There is a shuttle bus to Pizzo (about 15-20mins) 3 times a day and its 10 Euros per person return. You are however limited to the set times - we would have liked to have returned on the later bus but that was not possible - its the set time of return based on what time you leave and about 3 hours apart. We decided to go to Tropea for the day but didn't do the TUI excursion which is overpriced and gives you little time in Tropea. On the App it was priced from 39 Euros but when you go to the office its actually 49 Euros per person, with travel time etc, you only get about 1.5 hours in Tropea itself, which we didnt feel would be enough time. We organised a return taxi (50 Euros - 25 each way) from the hotel to Pizzo train station, to get on the train to Tropea, which is about a 30 minute journey and stayed there for about 4 hours. The station is quite a bit outside of Pizzo centre and taxi is the only way to get there. The return train journey to Tropea was 10.40 Euro for two people - an absolute steal compared to what we pay over here. You get your tickets from the platform via the machine and then validate them on the separate machine before getting on the train. Its really easy and was definitely worth it as Tropea is beautiful. We just googled the Italian version of Trainline for times etc and there is a train every couple of hours. We don't really get too much involved in activities but there's plenty to choose from if you do fancy - I would recommend getting the magic life App in advance of your booking here to get an idea of what's on offer and the app also tells you what entertainment is on each night - there is loads to do and some of which you can book prior to arriving in resort - we booked the restaurants before we flew out. We booked a tennis court on our last day and that was pretty good and did table tennis a couple of times. Where things really fell down was on our last day when we wanted to know about coach pick up time to take us back to the airport the following day. We hadn't had any update on the app nor could find any lists up anywhere which confirmed this; all we'd had was a letter posted under the door to remind us that if we didn't return our towel cards, we'd be charged 20 Euros per missing card! We asked at reception and spent 10 mins while the receptionist repeatedly looked through a list for the following days pick ups with passenger names and our name(s) were not on. We even looked through the list ourselves and couldn't find us. They couldn't explain why but took our number and said they'd call u. We did not receive any call. Our daughter said she'd try an hour later as she had to go and pay their room bill at reception. She just managed to get hold of a TUI rep, rather than reception, with about 5 mins to spare before the rep was due to clock off for the day, following which there was a frantic 2 hours (on our last night) as there was no record of us getting to the hotel, nevermind us on a transfer list for back to the airport! There were numerous calls to different TUI departments - they had the booking but nowhere saying we were allocated seating on a coach transfer back to the airport. It was very poorly organised, they couldn't explain how this had happened and at one point started questioning how we had even got into the country! Not what you want on your last night. It finally got sorted but it was a very poor experience. Get to the day of transfer back to the airport and it felt like absolute chaos. People were allocated to different coaches but the communication was lacking so there were people getting on coaches, being told to get off coaches and it all became a quite stressful and tense. And that was before getting to the airport and the joys of the EES debacle. Not a TUI rep in sight at the airport!! The hotel was nowhere near full capacity being so early on in the season, so I can only imagine how much worse that would have been at the height of summer, with a lot more customers around. Not TUI's responsibility or fault, we understand this but the Entry Exit System that's now in place was absolutely ridiculous. Our flight was delayed by an hour just waiting for travellers to get through. There was a massive delay getting through passport control when arriving at the airport; naively we thought that once you had your fingerprints and photo done at passport control for the first time, that was it - it would be much easier doing it on your way back home - this was sadly and very frustratingly not the case; it was exactly the same going out. Be prepared for queueing and waiting for much longer periods than what you are probably used to, if you are not an EU national. So I guess the question is - would we stay here again? No! Would we visit the area again - absolutely yes. The restrictions for us (as we're up north) is that as of right now, there is only TUI who fly from Manchester, with the one flight a week on a Saturday. We've had a quick look and there are plenty of holiday properties in this region that aren't with a British Tour Operator which we would consider. The resort does its job and it wasn't unpleasant - just some things that could have and to be fair, for a 4* resort, should have been better. This wasn't a budget holiday, it's low season and we feel on reflection that we did pay over the odds (booked almost 12 months in advance). We did wonder if the majority of very good reviews on here pertain to the Adult Only Private Lodge area as opposed to the main resort, so would advise potential bookers to perhaps bear that in mind!

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