I’d thought I’d share our shocking experience of Danesp. I’m not normally a person to complain, But I feel I have to do this to warn fellow festival goers of this shabby (to put it mildly!) organisation. I have done my fair bit of travelling all over the world in my time, and this by far is the worst experience ever!

As a lot of people did as we did decided to pay the extra dosh and turn the festival into a holiday by choosing to stay in the home comforts of an apartment for the whole week and pay the well earnt extra dosh. We arrived at the office at about 2pm on the Thursday to pick up our keys as we were told we could check in at 3pm. Outside the office we were chatting to some Scottish girls, they had arrived the day before and had been up all night and still had not got their keys to their apartment. Danesp Dan had told them to go and sleep on the beach!! Surely if the company could not provide them with the apartment that they had paid for then they would out of courtesy provide them with some temporary accommodation until this situation has been resolved? At this point I hadn’t had the delight of meeting this Dan Spanish man!! There were rumours that Danesp had over booked the apartments. After queuing to get into the office via the ’bouncers’ we were told to come back at 5.00pm.

In the meantime we camped out in the office (as we had made it into the office, we didn’t want to go through the palaver again to get back in) We managed to sort out pre paid bus passes, also booked through Danesp. A little peeved that we could only get the bus each night at 9pm. When we booked our apartment back in March we were asked on our booking form to mark the preferred time we would like to get the bus each night…we chose 5pm and 5.30pm. From the people we spoke to, and from the hours we spent in the office and what we had witnessed, not one person was actually given the selected time they chose. Why give this option if it could not be delivered??! Or what would have been acceptable, if Danesp dropped us an email just to let us know before we arrived that they were sorry that they could not allocate the time we requested but we were on so and so bus. Surely there must have been a system in place to allocate people to the number of seats on the buses that were going at certain times?

The clock struck 5pm ok time to collect the keys. Lot’s of other people came along also to pick up the keys. We were all asked to put our names on a list, ready to collect keys….we waited, and waited, Dan kept on saying the keys were arriving soon. The agency still had the keys …. A couple hours past…not a nice situation to be in when you’re stuck in the middle of a very non touristy resort where accommodation is not easily found and thousands of people had descended on the resort for the festival meaning a lot of places were fully booked. Hey ho, you have to keep the faith. We waited, eventually Dan announced that if you want a refund, then he will give this to us. Of course we would have to queue again. This office was chaos! After about an hour of waiting patiently for our refund, Dan then presented us with our apartment keys!!!!!!!!!! Wow, amazing!!! We have somewhere to sleep (after all it was fully paid for). Off we went to find our apartment….(a small tip to make the Danesp experience better for next year - provide maps that your clients can take away, rather than having to memorise the tiny map on the wall and then trying to find the apartment). Arrived at apartment about 8pm. Time for quick shower then to the festival…..umm no electricity...no water, twisted a few things and as if by magic we had it all working, but of course as you all know the water was cold. But at this point that was the least of our worries. We can relax now!!! Sorted!

Wrong!!! We enjoyed the 1st night of the festival, even got the bus to and from the festival without too much stress.

While relaxing by the pool at about 3pm on the Friday. A member of our party came down in a panic. Danesp Dan has come into our apartment demanded to see our invoice, grabbed the only set of the apartment keys from the table and took them and left. Said we have had a refund and we were to get out immediately. He was going to call the police and have us arrested for fraud!! Umm I think that should be the other way Dan!! Ok, here we go again….

Off we trawled to the dreaded office, we spent enough time there yesterday!! We walked in the office and asked to speak to Dan and asked why we had been evicted, as you would. His response ‘You need to show me your invoice’. We explained that he has just taken that, but funny enough, he has just misplaced it!!! No problem, we went to the internet café, printed off the paid invoice. Back to the office. Spoke to Dan again,. He asked how did we get the keys. We explained that he handed them to us himself the previous day. Here is our paid invoice. His response ‘You 15 people have been causing trouble for the last 2 weeks’. No we have not, we arrived yesterday and there are only 6 of us. Dan’s reply ‘Boll8x! you are liars and thieves!. I have a list of your names here! I’m going to call the police! In a very polite manner we asked if he could spare 5 minuets of his time to show us the lists of names and if he could explain why he had evicted us. (We were sure that he had mixed us up, after all, from what we had experienced so far, the organisation of this company was appalling!) Dan replied ‘NO! he was busy’ We then explained that he has just stolen over £1000 from us. At this point the not so helpful English ‘rep’ (I think his name is Jamie) asked us to leave the office as we were making Dan very angry!! Can you believe it??? Excuse me, but your manager has just stolen our money and you could not care less!! Clearly he could see how Dan has treated his customers and none of it was the customers fault. There is not one bit of customer care knowledge or common sense between the whole company. After all, customer service is all about treating others how you expected to be treated. Simple! How could the reps stand by and work for this shambolic company. Knowing that Dan just wants the customers money whether the service had been provided or not!!! So disappointing. I hope their future employers do not find their posts on this wall! Diabolical and rude!! I’m sure if they were in our situation they would not have expected to be treated like we were. I would have been embarrassed to represent this company. It certainly cannot have been an enjoyable experience from what we had witnessed.? At one point Dan was shouting at one of his reps ‘[--] off this [--] bus’ and physically pushing him!! Have some respect for yourself, you should not have been treated like this!

Anyway, we had no choice but to leave and report Dan to the police, and of course find somewhere to stay. What is laughable is that we turned up at the police station and the police assumed we had come to report Dan!! Oh yes, that’s the man!

Luckily we found an apartment through another agency back in the UK, had to pay out again, but got the keys stress free! And we had HOT water!!!!! All in time to get to the festival before the Kings of Leon come on!! (and we all know what happened this night! on the bright side, at least we didn’t have a tent that blew away!!). Oh yes, what happened to the buses this night?? There wasn’t a rep to inform us of any change in the pick up area…and for that matter for the rest of the festival?? Thanks to the locals for wanting to make a bit more money we managed to get lifts to and from festival each night. Another note to Danesp for next year, - if the location of the pick up points change, inform your customers. Put a rep at the original point and maybe have notices at the bus stops to the festival so everyone is aware! Easy!

In May we had pre-booked a bus a week later to get us to Valencia for 8am to ensure that we caught our flight. Being that our experience of Danesp had not run as smoothly as we had expected. We had found an English taxi driver and had arranged for him to take us. Obviously this cost a lot more money, but it was piece of mind that we were going to get there. We were very surprised when we had a call at 8pm the night before from the Danesp team. Unfortunately they we not going to be able to take us to Valencia tomorrow (no [--] Sherlock!). They had not received our booking and would like to give us a refund…we nearly fainted!!! But I was a little confused as to how they had not received our booking, as they had taken our payment and had called my friends mobile so they had our details?? Off we went to the office (again), collected our money, but of course there was no apology, or offer to help get us to the airport in the morning, as you know, there was not much public transport in Marina d’or and especially that time of the morning!

Apart from the terrible experience of Danesp, and the little bit of extra stress we had, the festival was brilliant and I definitely want to return, but I will never EVER have anything to do with Danesp again. And I will make sure I can do everything I can to make as many people as possible aware of this disastrous organisation! So please fellow festival goers keep the experiences coming, I know there are a lot more people out there that still need to share their story…..Next Watch Dog….

Hotel is large and impersonal. Swimming pool is very small. Buffet for breakfast is superb and one of the best I have ever seen.

The complex swarms with thousands of tiny chioldren who in the Spanish fashion are kept up until after midnight.

The resort complex is huge with both a 5 star and a 3 star hotel next door. Many bars and restaurants close by but very difficult to find a good one. Service in these and hotel "cafeteria Oporto" is apalling.

The best restaurant I found was "El Piccat",

It is not easy to reach Valencia by public transport. The buses and trains required are infrequent and the last train returns about 8pm.

Taxis require a long wait for them to arrive. In one instance some 75mins.

This hotel is marketed as a 5*, but my husband & I were very disappointed with it after our week long stay in July 2007.

The most significant problem for us was the way that hotel guests were not allowed to take towels, books etc around the outdoor pool to relax and sunbathe as is usual when in Spain, due to the spa facilities being open to paying members of the public as well as hotel guests. Although the pool was lovely, it was a case of literally going down, having a swim and having to go straight back up to our room. We also felt that the service in the hotel was lacking, with no information in english and few staff who spoke english, even though it is marketed to British tourists.

We had other issues with the resort generally. Marina D'Or is a huge purpose built resort in Orpesa Del Mar, but signposts and roads from the town to the resort were in short supply, and consequently on the night we arrived we spent over an hour trying to get from the N340 to the resort, with no luck (even though we could see the hotels it was very difficult to get to them!). The resort itself is very spanish, with few bars/restaurants having menu's in english or english speaking staff. Finally, being purpose built, we felt the resort was rather soul-less.

For the price we paid, we were extremely disappointed with this hotel. We were expecting to be pampered, but instead just felt irritated!

I have just returned from a week at Marina D'or with my sister. We stayed in an apartment on the outskirts of the development and we flew into Valencia Airport. No problems at the airport and got our hire car easily. When you drive to Marina D'or the signs can be confusing but as you arrive you are faced with this vast development that looks like a city that has been made from nowhere. Firstly there are rows and rows of high rise apartments which are quite close together, the apartments themselves are very nice and well equipped inside but on the outside they are quite bland, each block has a pool but unfortunately all the locals come in the side gate and turn it into a communal pool with tons of children running around, no chance of a peaceful snooze in the sun! The complex is very spread out and unless you are right in the centre where the hotels are it is quite a march to get to the restaurants and bars and shops. The centre of the resort is very pretty with lots of landscaped gardens, ornamental lakes and gaudi influenced architecture and landscaping, there is a beautiful central road which has an archway of lights all the way along and that is very pretty, there is also an outside stage where you can sit and watch various bands and singers during the week. It all sounds nice and it is but the one big problem is that no one speaks english, at least 95% of the people at the resort where spanish and it seems that this is where older spanish families and their children tend to go on holiday, even in the tourist shops you will be hard pressed to find anyone who speaks english. Unfortunately the guy we rented the apartment from failed to mention this so this made it very hard to order food, drinks etc and by the end of the week we ended up just eating in the apartment to ease the stress. If we had been told about the language situation we could have taken a phrase book and been prepared so if your going there make sure you can speak spanish or you have your phrase book handy. The beach itself was also very clean but got very busy during the day up until siesta time when everyone spanish vanished and as they made up the majority of holidaymakers the beach was nearly empty in the afternoon which was great! As you can see this is a very difficult review to write because on the one hand the centre resort itself was very nice, but there was just something about the place that wasnt quite right. I think it was just such a vast development that it was souless and had no history or character to it. The backdrop of the mountains is lovely and the coastline is attractive but with this endless view of high rise concrete blocks cutting the view in two, it completely spoilt it. I guess it is just the norm in spain to overdevelop. Personally i would not go there again but if you speak spanish or want to practice it if you are learning it it could well be an ideal place to go. The weather is certainly excellent so you can guarantee the sun.