Delphin Be Grand Resort: Is This Antalya All-Inclusive Worth It?

Welcome to the Delphin Be Grand Resort here in Lara Beach, Antalya, Turkey. My name is Ben, I’m going to take you on a quick video tour of this resort. We’ve got these beautiful horse statues here on the front, galloping down the driveway towards the entrance and exit security gates. On this tour I’m going to take you through and show you some of the key bits and bobs in the resort. In the distance you can see the Delphin Imperial.

Coming into the lobby, we have reception and check-in just over here, lots of bar and seating space. We have this great lobby, looks beautiful at night, big diamonds — two big diamonds, got a diamond there.

There aren’t many things that are bad about this resort, but this is the à la carte reservation system, which is really bad. I went half an hour and managed to get a reservation half an hour early and sat there on a chair. I was second in line and managed to get something, but there’s people shouting, it’s not good. Spoke to one of the guest relations team about it and he indicated that no one had ever mentioned it to him, which surprised me, which probably means it’s a long-standing issue that no one’s going to do anything about.

So we’re at the back of the property now, this is one of the entertainment areas. It’s used for light acoustic style singing and music late in an evening. The pool you can see right in front of me now is the adult-only pool, which generally speaking is adult only. Some people do ignore that, which is a shame, because suddenly you can see some kids right there. So you can see behind me how big this building is, it is a huge resort. The facilities are what really make it large, and I’m going to show you around some of the rest of the pools right now.

So first up we have this nice zero-access pool, which the kids love — it’s a beach. Adjacent to it we have our Aqua Pool Bar, which serves food, ice cream from earlier on in the day and drinks from much earlier on. There’s help-yourself drinks as well as bar service, which services most of this side of the pools. That’s the main point to get to as well. Throughout the day you’ve got roller skaters going along giving drinks to people. Hello! You’re on video.

There were lots and lots of sports facilities here, big tennis courts but no one uses them, which is understandable, it’s very hot. I’m very hot. It’s not even 10 a.m. and it’s wham. So you sometimes see people running, they’ve got a running track around here. Worth mentioning the toilets, very clean. I’ve never seen any issues with any of the toilets at all, really nice and clean, well looked after, they’ve got a good cleaning team. The grounds are very nice all together, nice view of the hotel up that way.

This pool here is where most of the fun happens. If you’re into activities, this is where you want to be during the day. You have the DJ booth up here, all the entertainment here, which is both for adults here on the left and kids here, so generally there’s a lot of fun. So this is where you’ll hear noise emanating from this area, which is all the fun that they’re having.

This pool features a lovely water cascade off the main restaurant. There’s this nice covered area, and what is a lap pool which doesn’t get used for swimming lengths, but it does cause this really nice undercover area which is much cooler. The movement of the water cools the air here as well, so sitting under here if you want to stay cool is lovely. You can see one of the disabled access points there. A number of the pools have them which is good to see.

Guest relations here is one of several guest relation points. You’ve got one by the à la carte reservation thing, this one, there’s one towards the beach. They’re the ones I’ve seen.

Back by the adult-only pool here, still some children going in. These resorts are good at doing this kind of stuff, these kind of Instagram points. They’ve even got a sign here, “Instagram point” with these swings, so you can take your picture. I love Delphin.

So we’re heading now to the main water park, which is just open being 10 a.m. There are three access points to this park. There’s the sports facilities that we saw earlier, three major ways to get into this water park, two of them bridges, and one of them is a longer walk around the back which I’ll take you through in a bit. These two bridges are because of the lazy river, which is lovely. You can see here that this gate’s locked. There are three access points to the lazy river as well, two of which have been constantly locked, and you have to use the back one. They’ve clearly changed some of the safety procedures, which I’ll tell you a bit more when we get there.

Anyway, you can see this very impressive water park here with some really good slides and rides. The most popular by far is that vertical-wall one there, which is done on a rubber ring. None of the others will have any queue at all, and that one you’ll only wait like 30 seconds to a minute as other people go in front of you. A really impressive, very very impressive water park facility. It was the reason we booked it, in fact, this alongside the kids’ water park, which I’ll show you in a few minutes.

We’re heading over this bridge now, which is towards the only open entrance of the lazy river. The lazy river itself is good. Not the best in the world, but definitely not the worst either. In fact I’d say it’s very enjoyable, more than adequate, and a very good selling point of this resort. Not many places have lazy rivers.

Now you can see they’ve spuriously tripped over this, but do walk on these mats, otherwise you’re going to slip. My dear wife Katie slipped and fell while not walking on the mats on the second day. So here you can see the entrance now. Caps are required. There’s three or four waterfalls as you go around. You need to wear a cap when going around, and you can choose to take a ring or not.

This is the tower up onto the water slides. I’m not going to take you up there because it’s a long way to go and I haven’t got my swim stuff on right now. Forgive me, but I wanted to bring you this way for two reasons. One, it’s the quickest way to get to the kids’ water park, but two, this little nice feature, which is the little cat house. You can see that little kitten up there. Often, like seriously often, you walk by here and there’ll be kids handling these cats on their own, just snuggling with the cats.

So this back way feels and kind of looks like a service entrance, but it is allowable for guests to sneak around to the kids’ area, which is just in the distance. It’s worth saying, you should be able to see it for yourselves, but we’ve never struggled to get seating. You go to some resorts by the pool and you just can’t get a chair. We’re here in mid-August and we’ve never struggled to get a chair at all. The beach and this area always has them.

So you’ve got this little splash pad here which is good for smaller kids. Even Bertie, who’s three, is up on this much bigger one, just constantly going up and down and around. You’ve got some really good slides there, really good fun, that let adults go up and down as well. Lots to see and do and play.

Just a weird thing to note: see the red flag there? That red flag indicates that you’re not allowed to swim. No lifeguard, no swimming. If we head over here now, you’ll see that there’s a recently erected red and yellow, and that means it’s okay to swim but there’s no lifeguard. They do not have full lifeguard coverage — you know, the kind of coverage that you’d get in Great Britain or Dubai or Florida. You’re not going to get that. The position is to say, “Nope, you’re swimming at your own risk, basically, but we have lifeguards there that might be able to help.”

It’s fine, there’s no problems with that. My son was unhappy at the top of a water slide and a lifeguard brought him down, so doesn’t cause any problems. But yeah, something to know and acknowledge — they don’t openly promote that they have full lifeguard coverage, and in fact that’s why I think the lazy river only has the one entrance. There’s no lifeguards around the exterior of it. I don’t know whether it’s through staffing — they can’t find people — or if it’s because of expense. It can only be one of those two things.

So where I’m walking looks like a service area. We’ve got some nice gardens here, but we’ve got a delivery wagon, delivery lorry. I’m not quite sure if it’s goods inwards or just rubbish and laundry. It’s sometimes stinky. You can see some rubbish coming towards. This is a big vehicle, some goods to be moved around, and this is the kids’ club. Yeah, not the best placement of a kids’ club for more than one reason. One, we’ve got essentially a service heavy goods entrance, all this heavy stuff everywhere, and then we’ve got the kids’ club right there. But it’s also where one of the main exits into the town is, so from a safeguarding point of view, there is literally a bridge out over there to get out.

Now inside it’s air-conditioned, there’s toys, lots of activities. You’ll see signs like this everywhere — don’t come in unless you’re dressed. There’s a good little playground out here, and as I say, inside there’s nice toys, some good activities, flow-made bracelet, and t-shirts — 15 for t-shirts, and they look pretty good. We’ve not done that. They go out on activities during the day as well. You need to be over four years old, four is the limit. Just a weird placement, and they have other land available to them, but they plopped it here next to a secured exit but it’s an exit, and by this service entrance with cars.

Here’s the Luna Park. I’ll edit in the nighttime footage here.

There’s a handful of à la cartes. Two of them are located outside, of Fish and the Sultan. I would say the other à la cartes aren’t as especially themed. This is the Turkish-themed one. You tell me if that feels Turkish. So far we’ve been to the Italian, we’ve got the Mexican, and as I say, not specially themed.

Towel stands — you’ve got three or four of these towel stands around. Usually there’s someone there and they’re going to need a card off you to get your towel, which you then get back. You get a card per person. You can see this air gun here as well, all of them hands for blowing up your collectibles.

D stands, these do like Lebanese breads. They don’t call them Lebanese breads here, but they’re, yeah, gözleme, things like that. There’s lots of these smaller food outlets, especially on this strip as we’re heading down towards the beach. So you’ve got sandwich one here, got guest relations in the way, and then a whole host down there, which I’ll show you in a moment.

But before we get there, take you into this, which is the amphitheatre. So this is where the major evening entertainment’s going to happen. The kids’ club show is going to be up on that stage, and then following that we have the adult one. They’ve been very good and enjoyable. The kids have enjoyed the kids’ one, we’ve enjoyed the evening — usually dancing, acrobatics. We’ve not heard any singing, but yeah, dancing, it’s been good.

This is also one of the larger food outlets during the day, in fact I’d say it’s the second largest during the daytime outside of the main restaurant. In the evenings you can see, just over in the corner, I’ve never seen the pizza ovens be used, but there’s a popcorn stand there which offers popcorn and cotton candy / candy floss, which the kids have very much enjoyed. Top tip on candy floss: it’s not going to last long in this humidity. It’s almost like going in your mouth, because of how hot and humid it is.

The spa — you have people walking around all day like these two gentlemen, selling massages and various other treatments for the spa that we’ve not been able to enjoy. Fast food house — so if you want chicken nuggets from 11 a.m., this is your place. Fruit over here. The ice cream house, 10 till 6 — they also do waffles in there, but a smaller time window. We’ve enjoyed the ice cream from there many times. And coffee.

Heading further down towards the beach now. There is occasion where some entertainment happens in here as well, we’ve not been able to see, but there has been special carnival-style events in there, which we’re sorry to have missed out.

So onto the beach now. We have another food outlet here on our left, and then some showers, but no toilets. Importantly, there are no toilets here. The toilets you have to go way back that way to get to.

This bar here has a smaller selection of what the amphitheatre food has. The far end is the steak house restaurant, which again is one of the other à la cartes that you have to book. Now there’s three or four — the steak, the teppanyaki, and somewhere else — you have to pay extra for, not included in your all-inclusive.

This nice little sandy section, very few people use it, it’s for that bar. So here we are on the beach. Hello. We’ve got this lovely beach here. The sand is relatively coarse, you know, it’s pebbly the further you get down, but it’s not uncomfortable. You can see people walking with bare feet. The most uncomfortable bit is the heat — this hot.

Those cabanas in the distance are part of the Titanic Resort there, which is a competitor of this one. So there’s a pier lit up, lovely at nighttime, and again there’s a pier bar out there. One fun thing you may have noticed, those of you who are watching keenly, is the temperature difference between out here on the pier and just on the shore there. So you can see 32° there, and when the clock changes, 30.9, only 75 metres that way.

You heard that gentleman earlier just offering me various water sports — there’s lots of water sports available at extra charge, just from this site here. The far end of our bit of the beach also has a playground, a small playground for kids, which again our kids have enjoyed.

In the distance there you can see the water park, which opens at 10 — two parts to the water park, the larger slide section and then a kids’ section as well. So out in this bar there’s no food here other than crisps. You can get some crisps, but there’s both help-yourself drinks. Most of the bars have this kind of fridge option, which I’m going to try and grab a Pepsi Max. You can see some of the selection of beers — so you’ve got Bud, Visor, Miller. So nothing too offensive or too aggressively local.

It’s a small shower out on this pier because you can go swimming off this pier. We have swum across here three times with the kids. You’re not supposed to dive. Generally speaking, the lifeguards don’t stop you. You get a good view further down — you can see all the various Delphin properties going all the way down. I think all five that you can see are Delphin properties, I think. This one or another might be a Debedge Rick House, but not quite sure. But I think it is — something tells me it is. We’ve seen some marketing somewhere that would indicate that.

So that’s the beach. Let’s head further in, head back inside now. Show you downstairs, just behind that water wall in that pool that you saw earlier, and I’m now in the Irish Bar. You can tell me what’s Irish in here in the comments section. This is the food and drink outlet that’s open very late at night, so I think it starts at like 11 or something and stays open all the way till 6. So this is where you’re going to want to be if you’re arriving super early in the morning, or you just want to stay up all night.

Now there’s two entrances to it. I’m going to go out one of them, which is into the arcade. Now you can see that it’s very loud in here, but the arcade is paid for, not included. There is a plethora of games and even two lanes of bowling, which we’ve seen some people play while we’ve been here. Well done. Some Xboxes, PlayStations here.

So on the rest of this is, strictly speaking, the ground floor. We have the gym, which people use. I’m not going to go any further in, but you can see people running around down there. This is madness, but hey, they enjoy it. As I say, this is the ground floor. You remember the driveway coming up a hill, and then when you come out the back to go to the pools you walk down some steps. So this is the real ground floor, but we pretend it’s underground. It has both that gym, the Irish Bar, the arcade, and then a number of shops. These shops are operated by third parties, and you’ll see some reviews. There’s the doctor’s office, the photographers, where you can get photo shoots done. You’ll see some reviews of this resort speaking poorly of some of these shops, one in particular where they call the gentleman aggressive and grumpy.

Sorry, but yeah, you can pick up various bits. It’s going to be cheaper by walking out that gate by the kids’ club and walking a little bit into town.

And here we are back in the lobby. So properly underground now we have conference and banqueting. We’ve got three large rooms that I’ve been able to find. This one in the middle, that far room goes as far back as the one that you just saw, so plenty of space for larger conventions — sorry, larger meetings, get-togethers, weddings, events.

Just as we walk around to the main à la carte area, just some general advice on Turkey. If you put into Google the Uber operator in Turkey, it’ll tell you yes in some areas, which includes Antalya, but the local taxi drivers just use it as a messaging app to acquire more expensive business. You can’t get an Uber ride, it’s just not going to happen. Instead you need to use an app called GetTransfer.

And here we have the Italian, lightly themed. You can see some kind of marble pictures. We’ve dined in there, it was alright. One kitchen services this — all three of these. So Jaipo. Yeah, quite nicely done. We’re in here this evening, I’ll include some footage of that now for you.

I don’t quite know why the Mexican’s called Jaipo. Given this, I wonder if it was Japanese and they just repurposed it to be Mexican because it was easier to service. Don’t know. But yeah, you’ve got these — these are all the main à la cartes, which are nicely appointed, lightly themed as mentioned, but yeah, hard to book, not easy to book at all.

As well as those huts on the way to the beach, there are a number of other smaller food outlets. This is a patisserie, and later on it’ll be filled with cakes and goodies. They do that quite a lot, and they stagger so that’s open almost all day. That patisserie 11 till 9. But you see some of them are only open for a few hours, and I think it’s so they can cycle the staff cover for them, which is a really smart way of doing it, giving really good coverage for some great food outlets.

So this one’s 3 till 6, so you can see, you know, the waffles were similar time, but another one — if it closes at 3, they can move a member of staff here. And here has some amazing chocolates, really good chocolates. Yeah, lovely chocolates here. I’ll take a seat here.

As well as the advice on transfers — tipping can be aggressive. We paid a lot of money for the airport transfer, transfer through our agent and Jet2, and the driver was very aggressive asking for tips. So much so that — and we didn’t have any cash, didn’t have any cash, couldn’t give him anything, even though I wanted to. I like to tip, and I tip generously, but I literally didn’t have anything to give him, and he was incredibly aggressive, which made me less likely, clearly, to give him something. So much so that he followed us into the hotel and was giving a hard time to the staff over it. And then which was immediately followed by the bell boy bringing our stuff up to the room, and again being overly pushy with what we should give him, even if we didn’t have cash.

So that’s something to note. The other thing is, on the flip side, on the positive point, they’re great with children. They haven’t been hit with the kind of don’t touch, don’t interact with children that we’ve been infected with in a lot of the West. They’re willing to interact, they want to play with kids and have fun with your children, and that’s fantastic to see, and they are very good on that side. So yeah, use GetTransfer, bring a little bit of cash to be able to give some tips if you want to, be aware that they may push, and your kids are going to have a great time as long as they’re used to being handled by other people and told to give high fives and fist bumps and being lifted and being touched. So yeah, cool, let’s get back to it.

The resort is generally clean and tidy and well kept, but there are a few general repair and renewal things that they should be on. This step, just as a small example, on the way to — I’ve spotted maybe three ways you could cut your toe open if you’re walking without footwear. So there’s some smaller areas where it’s just a key knight of detail that they’re just not on with.

One thing that is worth mentioning, just that has been noticeable here in Turkey, is the staff don’t give way. So in the UK, if you’re walking into a McDonald’s and a staff member was coming out, they’ll stand to the side to let you in, give the customers primacy or right of way. That doesn’t happen here. The staff, if they’re pushing a cart of drinks or food, they will run your children over. And I don’t know if it’s because we’re on a bigger resort and we’re just huge amounts of cattle that they’re just not used to, but just turning, you can see that rollerblader there. Drinks around the pool are delivered via rollerblader, which is cool. I’ll insert a bit more footage of that here. Hello!

Really cool, but yes, so staff just generally are willing to push past you, they’re not up for standing to the side to let you by. I know it must be tough because there’s so many people, and maybe they just can’t get anywhere without walking that way, but it’s disconcerting and noticeable coming from other parts of the world. Hello! But generally very friendly, hey. The staff are lovely, but as I say, just that small point that is noticeable.

Just in the main pool bar, already to start serving ice cream, grab myself another drink. One thing I noticed is they love UK garage music in this bar. There must be a barman that likes Boy Better Know, Skepta, I don’t know, but yeah, it’s good.

See, the rollerblading station here, this is staff only, this bar, but they’re going to be delivering drinks all day, and there’s great great coverage. Hey guys, fantastic coverage. You’re going to be asked several times a day, and there’s a fantastic pool porter here. In fact you can see him — zoom in on this guy, he’s called Kamal, he’s just there, you can see him. This guy is fantastic, 10 out of 10. If Delphin are watching this, that guy needs to be paid more and get a raise, and train other people, because there’s attention to detail and service friendliness, smile is fantastic.

Okay, back at the kids’ pool.

You can see from here the design into four main parts of the property. Typical hotel — well, this is a typical corridor of this property. You can see my son Bertie there. Corridors are often not fully considered with hotels. This is a nice corridor. These risers are nicely covered with these small pieces of, I don’t call them artwork, but coloured things. Carpet’s nice, kids like it. Squeeze by, and let’s have a look in the room.

So here we are featuring little Bertie waving. Bertie, into our room. This is a slightly upgraded room, so we have an extra wedge and a little bit of a view, but he’s sleeping on the couch here, which has been slightly reconfigured to allow him to sleep there. We did ask for extra pillows, because they only gave us these singles, and you can see Florence has benefited from them. We’ve got plugs either side of the bed, no USBs unfortunately. We haven’t used the TV. The mini bar is stocked every day — beers, wine, all kinds of juices and things, including some crisps, which is nice.

Then we do have a balcony — do you want to open, Bertie? Good boy. Then we’ve got this balcony, which we’ve not really used apart from to dry bits and bobs. And there you’ve got the view, and so that’s the Titanic next door, and there’s the water park, and then you can see down to sea there.

The bathroom is a relatively simple affair. We’ve got van and — hey, there’s me in my swimmers, you can see squelching away. It is just a shower, but we do have the rainfall as well as the handheld toilets, and Turkey do come with the — who, who — which is interesting. But yeah, that’s our slightly upgraded room. I think it’s one from the bottom. The air conditioning, you can’t control it, other than switching it on, and it successfully keeps this part of the room nice and cold. Coming out of there, not much comes out of there, so this part of the room is usually warmer.

Okay, here is the main restaurant, which is used for lunch, breakfast and dinner — the buffet dinner service. Sometimes there’s entertainment out here. There are themed nights — we’ve seen Turkish and International and the Mexican night. Top tip, if you’re with kids, head that way, because that’s going to get you to the kids’ area quickest.

So you’ve got a massive circle of all kinds of food — breads, pizzas, stuffed breads over there, some desserts here. Take you around these main stations, so there’s some chefs on station, many of them cooking here. Lots of chafing dishes with various bits. You can request certain — you know, if you wanted spaghetti with a certain type of sauce, that gent will cook it up for you. Nuggets, chips. Small point, but they don’t have a set chips standard, so the type of chips changes, which is super weird. I don’t know if that’s to bring in variation or if it’s bad purchasing. I don’t know, but yeah, different chips every night. They have both a spiced chip, which is really nice, highly recommend, and a standard kind of fry.

So let me quickly take — that’s the door I said, if you’re with a family, you should come through, and I’ll show you why. So in this section, you can see, just through there, is a little playground. So we tend to sit in here. There’s some children’s food over there, and then you’ve got this play area here, which is really good, although sometimes they leave balloons out, and some kids love popping balloons, which is less than ideal because they make a very loud noise over and over and over again.

So we’re going to walk around here. You see some stations with some delicious things — hello, sir. Always lots of fruit, lots of ice cream. Sometimes there’s special stations. Just here there was a gentleman carving up a kind of Donna ice cream thing, and I’ll insert that here now. But you can see endless amounts of pastries, lots of these kind of pre-made bought-in kind of stuff, but all delicious.

This section has some meats, and again it’s changed — often, the different types of meats and things available, carved up for you there. You can sit outside that way, so we’re above the Irish Bar here, and that’s where the waterfall is, out into that pool.

Yummy. Lots and lots and lots more spaghetti — custom spaghetti. Yeah, I mean, you’re going to struggle to not find something that you want. Drinks is table service, and they’re very good. We’ve had a guy looking after us most of the week. He doesn’t talk, but all smiles, but he’s fast and efficient and I like him. They’ve got some really fun watermelon art that they’ve been bringing out, really cool. So yep, that’s the main buffet restaurant.

As we leave the restaurant now, it’s important to know — you can’t go in swimwear into the restaurant, and you can’t take inflatables in, so you’ll often find lots of inflatables out by the entrance. You can see that patisserie through there is now stocked up with all the stuff that we showed you earlier. Just quickly show you — just delicious. I mean, you could just spend your whole time just eating these.

Entertainment-wise, on Saturdays there’s a pool party, which I’ll show you. We’re going to head there and I’ll show you that in a moment, and then in the evenings we’ll be at the amphitheatre. So yeah, let me show you that pool party, and then I’ll show you the evening entertainment.

They do a great job of lighting up the hotel at night. Funny enough, you don’t notice it in your room, and I don’t know how. Maybe if you’re in your room the lights don’t come on, don’t know.

And so, from the Delphin Be Grand here in Lara Beach, Antalya — is it a stay again or a stay away? For me, it’s a stay again. I said this would be a quick tour, I lied. Thank you for tuning in, and I’ll see you again next time. Cheerio.