Ramada Encore By Wyndham Guangzhou Panyu

“Have low expectations”

This place apparently markets itself with another name which is Guangzhou Atlantis. My wife hated the hotel. I’ll be honest, I believe I may have spoiled her a bit too much with decent (I can’t afford the truly top end ones) international 4* standard hotels. Personally, I’m a bit more open minde… more

This place apparently markets itself with another name which is Guangzhou Atlantis. My wife hated the hotel. I’ll be honest, I believe I may have spoiled her a bit too much with decent (I can’t afford the truly top end ones) international 4* standard hotels. Personally, I’m a bit more open minded. First of all, ignore anything that indicates “5 stars” for this hotel. This is only 5 star in China. Think instead of a 2-3 star motel with extremely large rooms. That way you won’t be disappointed… however I still can’t bring myself to dislike this place. Let’s start with the less impressive motel qualities. Tiny check in counter? Check! Holes in sheets? Check! Stained carpets? Check! Stains on the walls? Check! Were they terrible? Well… depends on your expectations. Keep in mind where you are and what you’re paying. It’s also surrounded by literally nothing, and don’t expect a view. Overall however, I found it acceptable albeit far from optimal, but I wasn’t there for myself or for my wife. I was there for my children, and THEY loved it. I should mention that the service for check in and check out were extremely slow, but it’s cute… you’re in the mouth of some cartoon whale, and there is a giant screen above where the kids entertain themselves with the Kinect-like device while you go through the long and arduous check in process. The room was PINK. The pictures do not lie. This is over the top pink for girls or blue for boys. This place is designed for a specific clientele (the below 4 foot tall crowd) and I frankly feel they far surpassed even my wildest hopes in that regard. But more on that later. The breakfast buffet was okay, nothing too exciting but pretty standard as breakfast buffets in Asian hotels go. The room had all the standard “amenities” that you would expect from a decent hotel, a large variety of hotel branded toiletries, adult and children’s slippers, and robes. The main restaurant also serves lunch a la carte. Mainly Chinese fare but you can also order from the “Western” menu from the café downstairs. Do that, or just go to the café. It’s unexpectedly much better. I ordered a sandwich and a pizza from that menu and my oldest child and I both agreed that they were decent, even though the pizza had hot dogs on it. However, my wife ordered Chinese dishes for herself and the baby, and they were terrible. You would think the Chinese food would be better in a Chinese hotel, but wow… order western here! Scared yet? Now for the good parts. As I said, the café was pretty decent overall. The entire place is completely and utterly geared for kids. There is an indoor playspace here and this is where it truly shines and really should be your main reason to visit this hotel. You still have to pay extra to get in, and it will seem a bit pricey but it’s WELL worth it. By the way, the playspace is open to the public even if you’re staying at a different hotel, and your entrance fee is for unlimited visits for the entire business day (they close pretty early). If you’re staying at the hotel, it’s for two consecutive days. The pictures you see truly don’t make sense or don’t do this place justice. When we first walked in, I thought it was just a large indoor playspace with jungle gym, ball pit, slides, nerf cannon area, etc. There’s a stage around the corner where they put on a little music and dance show and sometimes magic. Big but I expected that to be about it. Never have I been happier to be so wrong. Past the stage is another location with several carnival rides. A merry go round, bumper cars, pirate ship, and tea cups and maybe a few more. This area is on a schedule however, so you need to make sure you go during one of the operating periods throughout the day. Frankly, I was already pretty happy with the area when I found some stairs leading up from this area. It takes you to a decently sized video arcade. Of course these are coin operated games, but there’s a good number and variety of games to play here for older kids. A different staircase in another part of the playspace brought me to the Holy Grail of this hotel. An expansive area that my kids could have played in for days! It was broken down into several areas, and I don’t think we even explored more than ¼ of it, but some highlights were a gigantic “sand pit” (I believe it’s actually dry buckwheat). They even hid some dinosaur fossils in the sand that the kids could excavate. Next to the dinosaur sand pit was a space where the kids can learn to make sock puppet dinosaurs. Another room had an honest to God snow making machine. It was a very small machine mounted to the ceiling, but snow was fluttering down continuously from the little machine to a small pile on the floor, about two feet in diameter and half a foot high. Not much snow, but enough for the kids to make snowballs and build tiny snowmen. But there’s more! A massive Lego area with tons of Lego and even Duplo building stations. A 5D ride (it wasn’t that great), a karaoke room, a storybook theatre, and several “DIY” rooms. During scheduled times, the children can go to the appropriate DIY room to make chocolate (really), bake cookies, cook something, or make various toys and trinkets. There were other rooms too, such as a science room but it was all too massive to finish exploring in just one day! In addition, all of these are on a schedule, so you need to plan your time in advance to catch specific class times. They can take the projects home with them as well. This was all included in the admission price! Ultimately, I have to give them an A for effort. It’s tacky, gaudy, and over the top but it fits right into what most little girls and boys will like. Clearly a better management team that understands international standards could do this place a world of good, but if you keep your expectations on the hotel (motel!) reasonably low, you won’t be too disappointed. Even if you give the hotel a “pass”, I would highly recommend visiting their play space anyway. It’s well worth the detour, and your kids will love you for it. We went to Chimelong Safari Park and Chimelong Paradise for the next two days, and I think my kids enjoyed this play space even more! While we were there, there was also quite a lot of construction, so it looked like they were even expanding their offerings some more. We will definitely be back for the play space. My wife would want to stay in a different hotel, but the kids and I felt it was totally acceptable if you have the right expectations.

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