Beautiful and quiet garden/pool surrounding, many different ambient of pool to choose, or their beach. Staff always put on a smile and greet you including the Sercurity guard that check every car boot before entering the resort with a trained dog, but always after greeting the driver and you to get permission before proceeding, breakfast is great, shuttle bus pickup hourly to Bali Collection

This is a fabulous property - it is a large resort with beautiful landscaping. It is a Balinese paradise.

The nightly Balinese dance show (10-15min in length) is a great taste of Balinese dance.

The spa is amazing - the staff lovely and services great - I loved the 4 hands massage.

All the staff are wonderful - so friendly and welcoming.

In particular, Sindu at the Coconut Bar was great, Mana is a fabulous waiter to have at Arwana (and taught us what little Balinese we know now), Purniati is a great hostess at Arwana, and Dewa (the Manager at Arwana) was so welcoming.

My husband and I stayed at The Laguna from 4th until 18th July - a stay of 2 weeks. This was our 8th time in Bali over a period of 27 years. We stayed in room 109 - a Lagoon Access Studio Room. I will try to provide a very honest opinion of our stay at this resort. You can see that I have reviewed many other 4 and 5 star hotels throughout the world. First - the aspects of The Laguna which we really liked -
* The entire resort is very beautiful. The gardens are amazing and the gardeners do a really first class job in keeping the grounds immaculate. The landscape and the layout is visually very lovely. The surroundings are very pretty and very well cared for, and the numerous pools are really lovely.
* Our room was spacious and the decor and furnishings were luxurious and tasteful.
* The king size bed was very comfortable indeed, and the bed linen was excellent.
* The housekeeping service was very good, and we were very happy with the cleaning and housekeeping staff who serviced our room every day and evening.
* The shower in our room had good water pressure and we always had hot water (although we did have to run the water for some time before it became hot).
* The air conditioning in our room was excellent. It was lovely to return to our room when we had been out in the sun and the heat, because our room was always cool and welcoming.
* The wi-fi availability and speed was really good throughout the resort.
* The staff in the Lobby and at Reception, including the Concierge, Bell Boys, Security staff and the Tour Desk provided excellent service and were always very helpful and courteous.
Now, I will outline some of the not-so-good aspects of the resort, and the reasons we were disappointed with many aspects of our stay here.
Our room -
* The lagoon access was not what we expected. We had a very small balcony with no sun loungers - just a small table and 2 chairs - and a short, steep ladder going down into a very cold, deep pool (around 1.2 metres). Our balcony and the water underneath, was always in the shade so always chilly. There were no swimming towels provided in the room - just the white towels from the bathroom. We thought that this arrangement wasn't very practical or well thought out. If we swam from our room to the sun loungers on the other side of the pool, we would not have any of our belongings or towels. If we swam back to our ladder, we had no towels to get dried when we got out of the water. We have had pool access rooms before in other resorts, which were much better designed. At The Laguna, it was not worth paying the extra to stay in a lagoon access room.
* Our room had 2 steps from the entrance door down in to the room, and 2 steps from the room up into the bathroom. We had to be very careful during the night, not to trip on these steps.
* The shower was quite difficult to control, in relation to water temperature.
* The storage / hanging space / drawers were inadequate for a 2 week stay. I'm sure it was fine for 3-4 nights, but we didn't have great facilities for hanging or storing our clothes for a 2 week stay.
* The evening turndown service was offered at around 5pm each evening - usually when we were showering or getting ready for the evening. In our opinion, turndown should be done around 8 or 9pm when guests are out of their rooms.
Restaurants -
There are just 2 restaurants at this resort - Banyubiru and Arwana. Both were equally disappointing and we had to complain several times.
* The food in the large silver containers on the buffet was often cold - sometimes stone cold.
* Generally speaking, the quality of the food was average.
* We looked forward very much to having beautiful fresh fruit in Bali, but the fruit always seemed to be unripe and tasteless - especially the pineapple and melon.
* We spent a lot of time waiting for coffee refills at breakfast time - why not just provide a pot of coffee instead of a cup?
* More than once, we were served chipped dishes - cups, tea pot, plates - not acceptable in a 5 star resort.
* I was served a made-to-order omelette in Arwana, where the white and the yolk of the egg had not been mixed together and it was more like scrambled egg.
* We thought that the food and drinks were all very expensive. Alcoholic drinks are always expensive in Bali, but £14 for a very poor cocktail? Not good.
* The quality of the cocktails and mocktails varied hugely - the same drink never tasted the same twice. Also, large amounts of ice, lemon, lime and fruit in the glass, left little room for the actual liquid.
* Our biggest complaint was the service in the two restaurants. It was dreadful. Dirty plates and glasses were left on our table for ages - one morning, we cleared our own dishes 4 times. One morning, we were turned away from Banyubiru at breakfast time and told that the restaurant was already full. However, we could see several empty tables that the staff had not got around to clearing. One morning, we asked to sit outside at Arwana and were told that there were no free tables outside and we would have to sit inside. We could count at least 5 tables outside where we could have sat if the staff had bothered to clear them. The staff seemed more interested in walking around with bits of paper in their hands (orders? bills?) than actually making sure that the guests were being looked after. We spoke to several members of staff, including Restaurant Managers about these issues on more than one occasion - Agustina; Sedana; Dewa. We were invited to attend a complimentary Brunch Buffet as an apology, which was very nice, but it would have been preferable for the service to have been good in the first place, so that we didn't have to complain.
Managers -
* Managers throughout the hotel were hard to spot, and they didn't introduce themselves or make themselves known to us. Only when we complained, did Dewa the Restaurant Manager in Arwana come forward. We expected, when we were staying in the resort for 15 nights, that this would be acknowledged by the Management Team (most guests seemed to be staying for 4 or 5 nights on average), but we were given a voucher on check-in for 2 free cocktails. Although we had many comments and complaints about the food, drinks and service, the Food & Beverage Director - Didier Guiaux - did not appraoch us or speak to us at all, during the length of our stay. We saw him around the resort (we recognised him from a photograph in a magazine in our room) but he always seemed to be talking to other guests - maybe repeat guests? His magazine article quoted him as saying he focussed on "consistency and delivering amazing dining experiences for The Laguna's guests", but this was certainly not our experience. Our overall dining experience could be summed up as expensive and very average quality with poor service.
Other dislikes -
* The hotel had been informed in advance, that we were coming to stay for 2 weeks because we were celebrating my 60th birthday on 9th July. When we arrived on 4th July, there was already cake, balloons, flowers and a card in our room. This was a really lovely touch and was much appreciated - however, it would have been better to receive it on the correct day as the flowers had wilted by my actual birthday.
* We spent a lot of time relaxing by the pool near Arwana Restaurant and close to the beach. The pool/beach attendants were very helpful with sun loungers and towels. However, the service for drinks was poor. One day, we were lying for over 4 hours before anyone asked if we would like a drink.
* The lift (elevator) outside our room was out of order for most of our stay. It worked for the first 2 days and was fixed by our last day, but for the 12 days in between, it was broken and we had to use the stairs.
* The gardeners watered all the plants and grass between 3pm and 4pm each day - often spraying us with water too, if we were relaxing too close to the grass or plants!
So, overall and in conclusion, this is a very visually beautiful resort, and some staff in some departments are doing an excellent job. Our biggest disappointments were definitely restaurant and bar service, quality of food and drink, invisible Managers, and our sadness around the lagoon access. Would we stay here again - definitely not. Would we stay in Nusa Dua again - probably not. if we ever return to Bali, we would prefer to stay in the newly refurbished Hyatt Regency Resort in Sanur.