We are a Belgian family (2 kids, 15 and 12) that stayed in Tui Magic Life Penelope in Djerba the last 2 weeks of August in a family room (2 connected twin rooms). The previous years we have been to ML in Turkey (Belek Imperial, 2 times Waterworld, Jaccaranda) and in Rhodos (Plimmiri) and we were always very enthusiastic about ML and became real fans. Unfortunately ML Penelope is not good and we will never go back to Penelope. Penelope is an old club. You can see the rooms were renewed, but that must have been already more than 10 years ago and it is time to renew them again. The carpets in the room were dirty and full of sand, we immediately took them away. It was also the first time ever in a ML that so many things were broken or didn’t work properly: the sink was constipated (they fixed it later), the fridge did not cool (in the end we got a new fridge), the airco leaked (we mentioned that to the reception but nothing was done), the safe did not close (got fixed) etc. The beds were extremely hard: after 2 days we had pain in back and hips (the kids too!); after putting 3 feather blankets on the mattress, we could sleep a bit better. Apart from the rooms being old and damaged, the rooms were clean. The restaurant however was not clean: the tables and chairs were very sticky and were not cleaned at all! Unlike in other ML, the waiters did not clean the tables with water when new guest arrive at the table, even not at the end of each meal period! So I mentioned this to guest relation, but nothing was done. Then we mentioned this to the restaurant manager and then only our table and some tables around us were cleaned when they saw us coming. Unlike in other ML, the food choice was very poor in Penelope: is was always the same choice and the same taste. The pasta bolognaise sauce was too spicy, the soup had no taste at all, the French fries were awful. Only the deserts were excellent. Moreover, the drinks were not cold. It was very hard to find a cold bottle of water or a cold bottle of coke/Fanta…; the red wine was too warm as well. The restaurant had only one fridge that didn’t cool enough and it was most of the time empty anyway. Only at the activity pool bar you could get a cold bottle of water, so we ended up taking one from there into the restaurant. In Penelope you can only get a big bottle of water, not small ones as in other ML. One of the things that bothered us the most was that the blue beach towels you receive, were way too small: they only cover half of the sunbeds! So we asked reception if we could get extra ones and we were willing to pay extra for this, but they said that this was not possible as there were not enough towels. However, in the towel exchange house we always saw enough available towels. The sunbeds are covered with a yellow plastic mattress: again, these sunbeds and mattresses were NEVER cleaned (in the other ML they were regularly sprayed with water). You can not believe how sticky (of sun cream, spilled drinks) and dirty (full of spots) the mattresses were. Also, as they were of plastic, they get extremely hot in the sun, so you really needed to have them covered by a towel to be able to sit on them. So we ended up taking the white bathroom towels with us to put on the sunbeds together with the blue ones. In all the other ML, we always got big beach towels covering the whole sunbed! So make sure you bring some towels of your own when going to Penelope!
When we arrived, it had rained the day before so extremely hard that the hotel was completely flooded: other guests told us that the water was everywhere: in the corridors, in the rooms, one could not see the difference anymore between the swimming pool and the terraces. The bus that took us to the hotel had to drive through high water to get to the hotel. The heavy rain is of course not Penelope’s fault, but apparently this was not an exception as we noticed later that at every outside door that gave acce