HM Alma Beach - Adults Only

“Extremely good”

This is the fourth Spanish four star I have stayed in since I became severely disabled. It is the only one I'll be going back to. This hotel is extremely good if you are in a manual wheelchair, have difficulty walking big distances or or are on sticks. This review is written entirely from a disa… more

This is the fourth Spanish four star I have stayed in since I became severely disabled. It is the only one I'll be going back to. This hotel is extremely good if you are in a manual wheelchair, have difficulty walking big distances or or are on sticks. This review is written entirely from a disabled person's perspective - there are plenty of other reviews dealing with all the other aspects of the hotel. APPROACH There is no dropped kerb directly outside the hotel. Happily my (female) taxi driver saw this and pushed my wheelchair up the kerb. There are dropped kerbs at either end of the street and a semi one about 15 yards past the hotel entrance (heading to the sea) which I could go down by myself - I wasn't brave enough to try to go up it on my own as it wasn't a proper dropped kerb. RAMP There is a "hind leg" shaped ramp into the hotel. The first few metres of it are uncomfortably steep then the gradient becomes easier to manage on your own. The ramp has a good handrail on both sides. HOTEL INTERIOR After the ramp up the front door, everywhere in the hotel - access to the bar/ restaurant/ ground floor pool and reception is entirely flat. There is a self propelled lift to assist disabled people to get into and out of the pool. After reception, it is flat into the lift and then flat to all the disabled rooms. There are a few sunbeds up a fairly easy ramp on the roof of the block containing all the disabled room. If you use the other lift, there are 8 floors in this block. On that roof, there is access to many more sunbeds although the rooftop pool itself is not accessible. The sky bar is accessible although it is down a long "tunnel" of sunbeds. ROOM A strong spring on the door hinge makes entering or leaving the room tricky. Not insurmountable. Quite small for a disabled room but there is a turning circle at the end of the bed. Anyone in a wheelchair will be unable to use the wardrobe as it is too high - I didn't have a lot with me so this wasn't a problem. The bed is a good height (it was perfect for me to slide across from my wheelchair). However I can only haul my legs into bed if I get in the RHS of a bed as you face it. The space down this side of the bed was only a few feet wide. I got completely fed up catching my elbow/ the tyre or the wheel spokes in the blackout curtain which is alongside this side of the bed. Next time, I will ask the hotel to move the (2 single pushed together) beds to make this space slightly wider. (They can't be moved much as this would encroach on your ability to open the corridor door and get through it!) I don't think an electric wheelchair could be used down the RHS side of the bed and I also don't think 2 people who were both in wheelchairs could manage in this room. BATHROOM Overall excellent and a good size. Loo - the toilet is raised - which is essential for me - and it has a fixed grab rail on the left (as you face the loo) and a drop down one on the RHS. Unfortunately this was broken (I was in room 214) and would not stay in the "up" position. This was very awkward as I transferred sideways backwards and forwards on and off the loo from my wheelchair. I did report it and a maintenance chap came and said he'd fixed it - it was no different. I suspect something had been lost in the translation. Basin - once I moved a low table (containing spare towels and the hairdryer), the height and design of the wash hand basin allowed me to get my legs completely underneath it - very handy when I was cleaning my teeth or whatever. Shower - the shower was a proper roll in one - completely flat and easy to use. It had a short glass screen and then a glass door which was easy to open. It also had a flip down shower stool. Unfortunately this was too low for me to safely use but it was sturdy and slatted and I found I could lean forward holding onto it from my w/chair and wash my hair and lower legs and arms in the shower with the shower jet in my other hand. The power shower was easy to control and the shower head itself was very directional which was very helpful. BALCONY Completely flat out onto it which was great. However, a major disappointment to me was that all the disabled rooms in the hotel are on the side that not only does not have any kind of sea view but also gets no sun at all at any point during the day. RESTAURANT Extremely well run but probably an inadequate size for the number of rooms in the hotel. I was only bed and breakfast and never tried dinner in the hotel restaurant. At breakfast-time, most of the items were easy accessible to someone in a wheelchair but there was a bottleneck in the middle of the restaurant where the breads, juice and both coffee machine are located. The staff were extremely fast at keeping all supplies topped up but queues often built up here and I really felt in people's way in a wheelchair. There is also a supporting pillar right in front of the fresh fruit so they were a little awkward to get at. I could just about turn around the bread "island" - I don't think anyone in an electric w/chair could. In addition, most of the tables in the main indoor part of the restaurant did not have sufficient room around them to make them easily accessible to someone in a wheelchair - people had to squash their chairs in to let me past. Because of this, I always went down to breakfast late so that the rush would be easing and I had a better chance of getting one of the tables on the left as you enter the dining room. As soon as they saw me coming, a member of staff would instantly whisk a chair away from one of these tables (if available) and offer it to me. This is the best place to sit if you are in a w/chair. I think I tried 3 different tables in the dining room during my stay. I could easily get my knees under all three - although my w/chair frame and the table supports meant the tables on the left as you came in were the easiest for me to get a comfortable distance from my meal. (With the other two I was a little far away). RECEPTION No low level counter but it was never a problem - as soon as I arrived at reception, a receptionist always instantly saw me, stopped what they were doing and attended to me. LOCATION Perfect - a 2 minute push one way to the square on the main street in the heart of C'an Pastilla or a one minute push the other to the promenade, beach and sea along with buckets of bars, restaurants, boat hire places etc. If you go from the hotel to the main street and you want to go right when you get there, I urge you to cross the road and go down the far side of the street, this is because the dropped kerbs on the RHS of the street as you go down towards the sea are VERY uneven and tricky - I could not do a few of them on my own - I needed a passing kind pedestrian (or motorist!) to help. RESORT C'an Pastilla is a relaxed quiet resort with no nightclubs and most of the bars and restaurants have closed by midnight. Some of these are up steps but many more have a flat or ramped entrance from the pavement. With dropped kerbs in the resort, it is either a feast or a famine. Going along the part of the promenade which skirts the main town, the paving changes but the whole way is a permanent dropped kerb from one side of the road to the other. But beyond that, once you have passed the dropped kerb near where the tourist train sets off, there is no dropped kerb to get off the promenade for I would estimate at least half a mile! In fact, the whole way along the Arenal promenade, dropped kerbs are few and far between. In addition a lot of the promenade along the sea front has a drainage camber which looks flat but is actually unnecessarily steep. This means you have to use one arm much more than the other - which is very tiring.

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