walking distance to boardwalk, casino's, great resaurants, etc. rooms clean. great beaches. loved it all. we had a hard time finding a good lunch. dinner is great, if you dont mind spending 50-60/person each night. we had a great experience at Madam Jeanette's. rented a jeep and drove all over the island. literally. you can go four wheeling ANYWHERE. drove to a secret pool on other side of island, I dont recommend this for your first off road experience and/or practice driving straight up and down a mountain on a jeep before you go. challenging drive, but worth it! Would have posted pictures but lost them all. never backed them up. lesson learned. planing on going back to aruba again! i post them then. go to aruba and enjoy.

I have owned a timeshare at Playa Linda for many years and I have always been satisfied with my stay. My reason for writing a review is that I have noticed several comments on the construction that is currently occuring. As an owner, I recieve a monthly newsletter that contains current events at Playa Linda. The construction may be a bother for the moment, but the finished plans are beautiful and much more up to date. My room has already been renovated, and it is wonderful. Any debate over the rating of the hotel will certainly be resolved after the renovations are complete. I will be visiting Playa Linda again in a week or so and I will certainly adjust my statements if anything has changed since I have last been there. Overall, the slight annoyance of any construction is well worth the benefit of the new renovations and is certainly not anything that makes the resort any less enjoyable.

RCI says this is a 5-star equivalent, but it is at best a 3-star. They are undergoing some updates, furniture replacements, etc. Very much a timeshare location, moreso than a resort. The complex is a bit long in the tooth. Beach is fabulous, as is true for most of Aruba. One relatively small pool, compared with the large multiple pools typical of many Mexican resorts. Hard to get any peace and quiet around the pool or beach; lots of loud music, even louder during exercise classes. No poolside or beach waiters; not especially customer-oriented. No room charges for pool/beach refreshments less than $10 - inconvenient. Morning coffee free by the beach, but unsanitary reuse of stirrers. Beachside restaurant was terribly uncomfortable and crowded, hot, no fans. Guests fight over the beach shelters ("Chickees"). Staff varied widely in friendliness; generally typical of Aruba. Fitness center was o.k., but A/C was not working well. Tours: we found the DePalm island tour to be excellent. Eagle beach: sewer smell. Weather: average is 82F, but more humid than expected. The portable dehumidifier in the room (an absolute necessity) ran full time and we literally emptied gallons of water per day from the machine. Island casinos: limited by Las Vegas standards, and machine payoffs are paltry. Transportation: the buses are easy to use and cheap ($2 roundtrip) or catch one of the cruising taxis swinging by the bus stops. Restaurants: many, good places. Ribs are popular and many claim "best ribs" on the island. We especially enjoyed Chalet Suisse and Smokin'Joe's (across from Playa Linda) and Tony Roma's. Everyone on the island seems to be trilingual: English, Dutch, and the local Aruban-Spanish dialect. All-in-all, a good trip but generally prefer the Mexican resorts.

We stayed at the Playa Linda for 6 days. We rented directly from a time share owner to get a decent deal ($700 for 6 nights). The check-in went smoothly. The place is surrounded by swankier hotels and feels a little shabby by comparison. We also stayed at the La Cabana resort earlier in our stay as well as at the Quality Apartments so have a couple of reference points for comparison. Playa is a little quieter and smaller than La Cabana as well as the big neighboring resorts. The room was clean and had all the kitchen stuff we needed for cooking meals. The pool was nice but too many people were allowing their diaper- wearing kids to splash around in it. The hot tub was a bit of a disppointment since it was not very hot and had no bubbles, lots of sand in it too. I complained about it a couple of times to the front desk but didn't notice any marked improvement. Kids seem to gravitate to the hot tub for some reason, security are not too strict about kicking out the under-18 crowd. There was a second hot tub next to the pool waterfall which was practically cold. The hotel is located on Palm beach next to the Pelican Tour pier. The turquoise ocean water was calm as a swimming pool with very little wave action. The beach was much narrower than Eagle Beach so more crowded. There was a more festive atmosphere on the beach with various commercial operations like parasailing, boat-rides, sailing cruises and other shops and bars. There was a lot more vegetation (sea grass, weeds) in evidence in the water. Hotel staff could be seen periodically sweeping it off the beach in heaping piles. The weed problem was worse in front of the neighboring Marriott, Occidental and Holiday Inn. I personally liked my stay at Eagle Beach more because it seemed a little less crowded, didn't have a weed problem, had a mix of locals and tourists and had nice waves but was calm once you got past the waves. It was also less broken up with piers and what-not. The one advantage to the high-rise Palm Beach area was that there was more to do once the sun went down. A ton of restaurants, shops and stores lined the street-side of these high-rise hotels. These things are important to me because I don't spend my time in hotel rooms but outside.

Back to the hotel. The room was decent and clean but not in the same class as the Marriott and Hyatt etc. which surround it. However I am not too picky, a clean comfortable bed and clean bathroom at a good price is what I care about. The daily maid service was nice -- they even cleaned the dirty dishes. There was a water main break on our second night. We barricaded the door with towels as water flooded our corridor. The staff were a little disorganized initially but did clean up the floors and our room in a couple of hours. The for-fee internet kiosks in the lobby were out of order for a couple of days. Internet is pretty expensive in Aruba ($35/ week for wi-fi). Local phone calls cost 0.50$. None of the resorts seem to provide free internet access. In short its a good place for your Aruba vacation if you can rent directly from a timeshare owner 9see Playa's website for the rentals). If you book from the resort their rack rate is exorbitant ($250-300/nt).