Forte Village Review

Overall we had an excellent holiday, we ate in the Cavelleri restaurant for buffet breakfast and dinner each day and the selection and quality were excellent if a little repetitive after 8 or so days. One thing to note is that wine is included with dinner but you need to ask for it, similarly fresh orange juice ( as opposed to just carton fruit juice) is also available but again only if you actually request it. Not sure why its not just standard in a hotel of this quality. We struggled a little as the earliest you could go for dinner was 7.30pm, which was late with a toddler ( kids food available in Marios kids restuarant 6-7pm but the selection wasn’t great and certainly adults would want to eat there). We stayed early June and as we were leaving more of the restaurants and bars were opening , all of which looked good. We ate lunch between Beachcomber , the italian pizzeria and Hells Kitchen ( excellent sushi at reasonable price). All were of a good standard, not cheap but we felt reasonably priced for the quality, location etc.
The major disappointment for us was the kids club, one of the main reasons we choose this resort. Marios village and the kids wonderland is amazing for young kids, really well laid out, easy for little kids to potter around and a mostly shaded to keep them amused outside but out of the sun for an hour or so but the actual creche we felt was poor. Our little boy went one day and refused to go back, I know kids can be fickle and unpredictable but he has been to lots of kids clubs in various hotels since he was 2 ( he is now 4) and he has always found them the highlight of the holiday- not here. Having spent some time in the creche with him in the next few days I could see why. Early season all kids seemed to be in the 0-3 area, which had mostly baby toys or colouring books etc for the older ones. The play seemed very unstructured and the staff didn’t seem to care whether the kids settled or not. They didn’t seem very enthusiastic, and spoke mostly in italian. I certainly wouldn’t have left my under 3 there, it was just too chaotic. Perhaps in high season it would be better when the 4-7 year olds are in their own area with more interesting and structured play. We have previously gone to hotels where Worldwide Kids Company run the kids club and we have found them to be excellent, super enthusiastic staff and well thought out things for the kids to do. Here it seemed that the staff were fairly complacent because the surroundings were so good it was as if they didn’t need to try.
That aside the beach is amazing, the football academy for older kids looked really well organised , the pools were good ( although the one heated pool didn’t seem very heated and again early season when they haven’t had a chance to warm up and lots of families there with little kids there should have been at least one pool of a comfortable temp where the whole family could relax), and the little train round the resort proved a big hit.
A couple of things to be aware of – bike hire looked great fun but we were told it was 50 euros per day per bike, this is ridiculous. The bowling lanes, 30 euro per person per game, again too expensive. The spa is an additional 70 euro on top of treatment prices to use thermal areas. We just avoided all of the above and generally found other things to be priced in line with 4/5 star hotels in Italy.
Overall we would go back, its hard to find the perfect family holiday but I think Forte Village comes pretty close.