Oasis Golf Resort, Tenerife

...Choice and stayed at the Oasis Golf Resort in Playa de las Americas. Please note that though this review is about the Oasis Golf, I will also give info on the First Choice Kids Club and the First Choice Swim Kids, as these are both services you can use whilst staying at the Oasis Golf, no matter who you flew with.

The Oasis Golf Resort
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The Oasis Golf is a 4* Hotel situated roughly ...
...Americas. The hotel is like most spanish resorts, made up of lots of indevidual appartments in blocks. The resort is a completely no cash zone, which means you have to go to reception and put money on your card (the card that unlocks the door to your apartment) which is then swiped every time you purchase something from the bar or the on site shop.
There are 3 swimming pools within the resort, the baby pool, a small deep pool with a jacuzzi ... more

I have just returned from my 2 week holiday in Tenerife. I flew with First Choice and stayed at the Oasis Golf Resort in Playa de las Americas. Please note that though this review is about the Oasis Golf, I will also give info on the First Choice Kids Club and the First Choice Swim Kids, as these are both services you can use whilst staying at the Oasis Golf, no matter who you flew with.

The Oasis Golf Resort
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The Oasis Golf is a 4* Hotel situated roughly 30 minutes from the resort centre of Playa de las Americas. The hotel is like most spanish resorts, made up of lots of indevidual appartments in blocks. The resort is a completely no cash zone, which means you have to go to reception and put money on your card (the card that unlocks the door to your apartment) which is then swiped every time you purchase something from the bar or the on site shop.
There are 3 swimming pools within the resort, the baby pool, a small deep pool with a jacuzzi next to it, and the main pool with a jacuzzi in the middle (more about those later).
There is an on site shop which stocks most of the items you would expect to find in a supermarket though it is pricy with a pint of milk costing 1 euro (about 70p at the current exchange rate).
There are two bars, one is between the reception desk and the entrance to the restaurant, the other is up a flight of steps from the main pool.
As mentioned earlier, there is a restaurant for the all inclusive and half board guests, though self catering guests are welcome to eat there at the cost of 18 euros per adult and 9 euros per child.
The hotel has its own secure underground parking which is accessable only through the roller door down the side of the hotel, that can be opened only with your trusty room key. The parking spaces are quite large, but the interesting arrangement of support posts makes manuvering a hefty task.

The Room
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We were a self catering holiday, so I can only comment on the room that we were given, I have no idea if the rooms for half board//all inclusive were different, anyway.

Using our trusty swipe card in the lock we open the door to 3 steps upwards, and a flight of steps leading downwards. Turning on the electricity to the room, via our all important swipe card in the wall reader, we are off to look around.
The first thing to note is that (as my son put it so aptly) this is an upside down house, as in the kitchen and living room is upstairs, the bathroom and bedroom is downstairs.
The kitchen is actually very well equiped, you have a microwave, an oven with hob, a fridge freezer, sink and an array of pots pans any utensils as well as all your crockery and cutlery.
The living room is well furnished with a 2 seater sofa, 2 chairs and a table and 4 chairs for eating at. There is a large unit with a TV on top (this is a payable item, the only channel that is free is Eurosport! prices vary per channel, check at reception before use!) The large unit actually holds a surprise, thats where the roll out childs bed is hidden!
At the end of the living room is a set of patio doors which lead out to your own private balcony which is roughly 4 ft long by 7 ft wide. There is a small round stone table with 4 chairs for you to sit at and enjoy the view (which for us was the tiles on the roof of the apartments infront and the mountain to the side).
Downstairs and to the left is a small windowless bathroom, this contains a sink with underunit storage, a bath with shower attachment, a toilet and what my son calls the "bum washer".
To the right of the stairs is the only bedroom with has two single beds pushed together, each with its own side table, built in wardrobes with ample hanging space, a couple of drawers and a safety deposit box that doesn't work (in our room or the rooms of others we spoke to) and a long 2 door unit. There are french doors leading from this room aswell onto a second balcony which has 2 sun loungers (the balcony is in the shade for 23 hours of the day) and a small clothes dryer screwed to the wall.
Another thing I should mention before we move on is the front door has a lock so you can double lock it at night, unfortunately as soon as you pull down the handle, the double lock flicks off and the door opens, so yes your children can actually leave the apartment whilst you sleep!

The maid service
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The maids clean your room 5 times a week (days off are wednesday and sunday) sheet change seemed to be tuesday thursday and sunday, but it really depended on the maids mood.
Now if you thought that 4* meant carefully cleaned rooms with washing up done etc then you will be badly disappointed, now I personally don't expect someone to wash up my breakfast items, I am perfectly capable of doing that myself, I do expect and washing up that has been done and left on the drainer to be moved or put away so that the drainer can be cleaned, I also expect work surfaces to be wiped, no this was not the case. It also seemed that the tiling around the bath was not in the cleaning manifest. What is in your daily clean is . . Beds made/linen changed (the child bed only gets made/linenchanged if you leave it out!),bins emptied, fresh towels put in bathroom and floor upstairs mopped. Thats it.
The maid also does not speak a word of english so be fully expectant that she will walk in on you half dressed (as happened to me on our 3rd day whilst I was getting ready to go to the pool and she ignored my partners shouts of wait).

The Pools
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Now as previously stated, there are 3 swimming pools, an infants pool which is round and approximately 1ft deep, the middle pool which is about 15ft long by 5ft wide with a jacuzzi on the side (that worked once the whole time we were there) and the main pool accessable by walk in stairs, which is a fair size with an island in the middle that encloses another jacuzzi (again that only worked the once). There are various carved animals around the pool that spurt water (fun for the kids).
My main gripe with the pools was the lack of sun loungers, it does state that the reservation of sun loungers is strictly prohibited, but of course no-one takes a blind bit of notice and all those on all inclusive or half board who have to be up at 8am to go for breakfast are reserving their sun loungers then returning roughly 3 hours later whilst us later risers are left with nowhere to sit (we actually ended up on one of the park benches one day and we came down at 9am!!). If you do have the audacity to complain about it, you are informed that it is up to the guests to move the towels themselves.

The Pool Bar
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Up the steps from the main pool is the pool bar which serve a variety of food from toasted sandwiches to lasagne, if you are eating you will be served at the table by the single waiter they have working there. Be prepared to wait about 20 minutes from drinks being served and food arriving, as there is also only one person working behind the bar dealing with food orders and drink orders. The service is extremely slow whether you are being served at a table or buying straight from the bar, we were not sure if this was to stop the all inclusive people from getting their money's worth or if they just couldn't be bothered.

The entertainment
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Ahhh the entertainment, well . . . . they did have some sort of entertainment every night, but unfortunately it was on the balcony outside reception where there was 3 sofas and 6 chairs for the whole complex to sit and watch it. This is also where they held the mini disco so a family resort full of children had a 10 ft square area to dance in.
The entertainment itself wasn't overly bad, it was mainly singers, we did have a clown for the kids who was very good until he brought out 2 poodles and made them walk on their hind legs for 25 minutes (can't abide people using animals in this way!!!)

Kids Club
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The kids club is run by first choice and is free (cough) for any family who has booked their holiday with them, families who have booked through other tour operators can attend but it will cost you about 10 euros per session on top of any costs they may be charging.
The kids club is at the very top of the complex up 3 flights of stairs, it is in its own fenced off enclosure with a lockable gate. Inside the compound is a small sandpit and climbing frame and a little garden. The clubhouse itself is a little cabin which consists of 4 rooms and 2 toilets (boys & girls). One of the four rooms is for staff only, the two small rooms are little play areas of roughly 8ft square, and the main room is the TV / play room which is roughly 15ft x 10ft.
When you go to your first kids club session, your child is presented with a tshirt with a loony toons character on it (depending on age) a water bottle, wallet and sun hat, this is all free.
There is always 2 kids club members present for every session and they play a variety of games. The times of the club are different each day though a list is posted outside the door with the times of the up coming weeks sessions. Roughly there are 3 sessions a day, a morning one, afternoon and the movie mania at night (2100hrs - 2300hrs)
The sessions that are going to cost you money are bugs bunny birthday bash (15 euros) which is on a wednesday, the chocolate party and sweet party (5 euros) which is on a monday, and they also had a tweety party (10 euros) which I think was on a thursday. On top of this when they have movie night they may decide to have "munchies" (4 euros) which when I asked my son consisted of a handful of popcorn, a cake and a couple of lollies left over from that afternoons sweet party.
Please be aware that should your child attend kids club, you are not allowed to leave the hotel and must provide the club with your wearabouts for the whole 2 hr session.

Swim Kids
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This was the best part of the holiday for me, Swim Kids is again run by first choice and a qualified swimming instructor (Jackie) will do 5 1/2 hr swimming sessions one on one with your child for 40 euros.
The swimming lessons are in the middle pool for non and weak swimmers, and in the bottom pool for more advanced swimmers.
Jackie was a natural with children and had the ability to instill confidence into children about swimming, she does enter the water with the child and stays with them constantly whilst they are swimming unaided. She uses a variety of floats and toys to encourage swimming properly and also teaches children to put their faces in the water and breathe out and to jump in without fear.
My son would not take his armbands off when we went on holiday, after 5 lessons he can swim over 4 metres without his armbands on.
After his final lesson he was given a badge and certificate which is submitable over here. If your child swims 10 mtrs or more they will be awarded the swimming badge for the distance.

My opinion
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On a whole I would not have rated this hotel a 4*, the staff were unhelpful and slow, the maids lazy and unprofessional. The whole opinion seemed to be that you were only there for 2 weeks so it didn't matter how they treated you.
The entertainment area was disgusting, there was nowhere to sit and what made it worse was they had a perfectly good entertainment area under the middle pool but they never opened it (and this was peak season!)
The safety of the hotel room was appalling, I didn't sleep properly for 2 weeks over fears that my son would get up and open the front door.
The whole no cash policy was annoying and time consuming, every time you went to the bar or shop you would be told your card did not have enough money on it so you would have to trudge upstairs to the reception to put more money on. You could never put more that 20 euros on as so many guests had complained that they had been charged to things they hadn't purchased.
The whole sun lounger senario was rediculous, and the worse thing was that when I kicked up a real fuss, they put out 30 more loungers!! If they were there why not put them out to begin with!!
The kids club I found to be a bit of a rip off, they charged us at every turn when it was supposed to be a free service included in the cost of your holiday. Though the girls were attentive to the children, I felt that they didn't really have alot of skills where child care was concerned, I walked in early on one session where they were having a story and I had never seen so many bored faces or heard a story told with so little emotion.
The only part of this resort that I can really commend is the swim kids, Jackie was a brilliant instructor and I would not hesitate to have Jake taught by her again.
So on the whole I would not reccommend anyone take their family to this resort, it is not a 4* hotel its more like a 2*, you have to get taxi's everywhere (6 euros one way) as you are so far away, and despite what the resort name suggests, it is absolutely nothing to do with the golf course next door.

Thank you for reading and apologies for rambling on, hope this helps with your holiday decision. 

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