We stayed at Wakaya for 11 days for our honeymoon in May. We'd just had a fabulous if hectic wedding and were looking for a piece of paradise to relax, with good food and activitities.
After having done a great amount of research Wakaya seemed the place. How I regret that decision.
Myself and my husband have stayed in some fabulous 5/6star resorts all over the world. This place does not come close to any of the inclusive island resorts that we are used too.
Ok so for a few days the weather was dreadfull (cold, wet and windy) which I know the club had no control over, but they did nothing to make the ruined honeymoon more pleasurable for us.
The rooms (rustic chic they are not) are stale with 10yr old wicker furniture, which combined with the damp weather, frankly stank. The bath (god somedays I needed a hot bath!) took half an hour to fill up (this was timed) the outdoor shower more of a gimmick than the wow factor.
Food was by our standards awfull. Only 2 choices of starters and main course for lunch and dinner. It tasted like it was made by a cook not a 5star gormet chef..........evidently it was one of the islanders who was 'head chef' with a couple of local girls helping him out. Some examples, linguine with shrimp came out as short noodles with a type of green curry packet sauce, we also went out fishing one day and caught a 30lb tuna which was on the menu (I kid you not) in many shapes and forms (mostly raw sashimi) for 6 days!!!! It was a running joke with us and some other guests 'Oh its our tuna again......' Mostly the food was cold getting to the table which was shocking considering it was only us plus 3 other couples most of the time.
The staff whilst pleasant and smiling, seemed to have no training, we left the restauant area many times to go to bed without any staff being around to say goodnight, they all seemed to hang around in the kitchen instead of keeping an eye on the guests. For this we blame bad managment. The manager here was one of the worst I've met, arrogant, patronising and not in the least bit helpfull. Frankly there was a bad atmosphere at the club and we got the impression the staff disliked him (this was later verified by one of the waitresses), He was also never around, like a good manager should be, checking guests were happy, things were getting done or kept up to a 5star rate, we often wondered where he went and what he was doing.
Other things, the beach picnic was ok.........more flies and mossies on the beach than anywhere else, plus not good swimming/snorkling. We were going to do our padi course but felt that by day 3 we didn't want to give them any more of our money (we even tried to get off the island and go to one of our favourite resorts in Oz but it was full and the Wakaya would not even contemplate giving us any kind of refund for the remaining 9 days)
So all in all we felt like we'd wasted a great amount of money and the perfect honeymoon at this place, our final leg of our honeymoon was in SanFransico at a PROPER 5star hotel. We couldn't wait to get off the island and once we got to SanFran, it only magnified the service/food faults at Wakaya.
PS The only champagne they had was Tattinger.......great if you like Tattinger but it just shows lack of choice and verve.
Stop living on the past 'celebrity' guests Wakaya and take notice of all of your paying guests, they are just as important.
