Hotel Cactus Royal

Hotel is about 45 mins drive from the airport Heraklion.

Hotel is 2 minutes from the beach, in front of the hotel there is a busy road during the day, but not diffucult for crossing. Can get quite noisy if you have rooms on the side of the road (which we had) during the day, at night it was quiet.

Lots of shops, taverns, supermarkets and bars everywhere. Pharmacy about 20 minutes, very nice staff there.

We went on two trips, one boat trip to Spinalonga, that was nice.
Other one to Aquaworld Aquarium, which was also nice, just put more clothes on, because you will spend there abour 1 hour and its freezing inside, the rest of the trip was in WaterCity - aquapark, not that nice, old, hygine terrible, good fun for kids, boring for adults.

Staff speaking german and english.
Room cleaning - very nice ladies, towels changing every 3 days, but cleaning room every day.

We used the gym few times, have to say it looks much nicer on the pictures than it is in real. We had a problem with the staff regarding the watter in bottles they have at the spa reception. One day they gave it for free, another day they asked 60 cents for it. Not sure what happened there. Spa in inside pool very nice, we used it a lot.

Pictures/Videos to hotel review (Click picture to enlarge!)

Food was delicious, but after a week we had enough of it, there was always something different and always something that was there every day (pizza, spaghetti, etc. They put dill in almost everything, didnt like that at all.
3 nights there was special theme of the dinner, spanish, japan, italian.
A la carte dinner was very nice in the restaurant on the roof.

Beach very nice, clean, water is clean and not very deep. You have to pay 6 Euros for 2 sunbeds and umbrella. We only used it twice. Its no difference if you come in the morning or afternoon, its always 6 Euros.

Main pool area nice, pool bar OK, sunbeds never free (everyone put towels on them early morning), hotel was trying to stop that, not sure it worked. The smaller pool was emptier, only few sunbeds, and sun only in the morning on right side, in the afternoon in shade.

Airconditioning broke once, they fixed it in few hours. Bed nice, but would prefer proper double bed, not two twin beds joined together. Every morning we woke up with 50 cm hole between us. Otherwise very nice, big room, paid for using the safe 35 EUR, could have been for free.

Do not recommend the trips with travel agencies, they are not worth the money.