Yes, you read right. I'd been curious about doing an all-inclusive in Spain for quite some time, as there's a lot of them and they're pretty popular with Germans and Brits. I am normally a very active, very independent traveler so it sounded like a crazy idea, but I also love just relaxing on the beach, so I thought under the right circumstances, maybe I'd find the experience relaxing. So when a friend of mine decided to have her bachelorette party as a getaway weekend at an all-inclusive I figured, "Sure, why not?"
I say this only to say that I went into it with an open mind, and have now pretty much realized that I am not an all-inclusive person but I'll try to be objective as possible in my review.
We were 2 Americans, 1 Brit, and 1 German ages 33-41. We stayed at the Condesa de la Bahia resort on the bay of Alcudia, on the northeast side of the island. The beach is the longest in Mallorca and considered one of the best, which is why we chose this particular resort, although it also was highly rated and the pricing was fair. I paid 272 for 3 nights sharing a room with a partial ocean view with one other person. We shared a private transfer from the Palma airport, which worked out to 40 per person r/t, pretty reasonable for a 45 minute drive, I thought.
We were able to check in upon our arrival around 18:00 on Friday, and were given a welcome drink while that band was snapped onto our wrists. The bride made reservations for the "a la carte" restaurant for dinner at 20:00.
For starters, people who frequent all-inclusives may have different standards (or there's some real stinkers of resorts out there) because the reviews are quite positive but I found the resort a little outdated. The rooms were fine, pretty standard (although large-ish for Europe), nice shower in bathroom, but the doors are frosted glass that don't fully touch at the top or bottom, which didn't provide a ton of privacy. The balcony was nice with a view over some sunbeds and grass, and mostly the beach. There are 3 elevators that are very sensitive and can only handle 4-6 people at a time, and are small. There's also only near the lobby and the hotel is quite large, so it was a long walk back and forth to our rooms.
It's good we were in a good mood on our first night, because service at the restaurant was atrocious. There was one couple that we sat next to that was clearly furious, and we had to repeatedly flag down waitstaff for water, bread, then butter to go with the bread, then more bread because they'd brought 3 rolls for 4 people, etc. We were able to chose from 3 starters and 4 mains, and one of the mains was out. I got duck carpaccio for a starter, and it appeared to be topped with cubes of actual orange Jell-O. Very strange and not very tasty. My friends got pasta as a starter and it simply appeared to be penne with a bland marinara sauce. We all got steak for our main, and it was tasty but poorly cooked.
Things started to get confusing when we asked for a couple of bottles of wine to take up to the bride's suite. She'd booked the fanciest room in the hotel, which has a rooftop terrace with a "hot tub" (a 2 person bathtub, really), sunbeds, loungers, and a beautiful view. The waiter seemed annoyed but gave us the bottles, probably because we were a little loud and giggly by that point and he wanted to not deal with us. We didn't realize, at the time, that it wasn't allowed, which seems ridiculous. Why would you pay for a giant-ass suite with a terrace at an all-inclusive if you can't get beverages up there? We were later told we could just bring individual drinks up to rooms, and of course the glasses are quite small and no one wants to slosh a tiny glass of wine especially considering how far the rooms are from the elevators/stairs. We even asked if we could buy bottles or if there was room service we could pay for and were told they don't do that.