Have just returned from a fantastic 12 days in Bali with extended family. We flew Air Asia, and no problems with flights or our arrivals/departures. We stayed at Febris Hotel in Tuban. We have stayed there many times when we are just looking for a reasonably priced family room that is clean and has all the necessities without the frills!
We ate at many different places, most mentioned many times here in the forum, and all were great. Favourites would be Queen of India, Potato Head, Biku, Café Batu and Rumours. Everything was great!
My sister and family stayed across at the Dynasty Hotel. We joined them by the pool a few times and enjoyed ourselves there - happy hour at lunchtime was very enjoyable with halfprice cocktails etc. My parents stayed at the Santika, across the road from the Febris, and they were quite happy there too. They stayed at the Santika as they thought that the Dynasty would be overrun with children and that the Febris would be too budget, but they were pleasantly surprised and said they would have been happy to stay at either of our two hotels.
Having been to Bali many times, we didn't do too much shopping or travelling about. The only new experience we had this time was the Taro Elephant Park. This was great, we had a lovely time. I am glad of the experience of riding the elephant (about 20 minute ride), however it wasn't the most comfortable experience - glad to tick it off my bucket list though!! We all got to handfeed the elephants and enjoy photos with some of the younger ones. There was an elephant show that was okay, not too long. Elephants all seemed to be well cared for and looked after. The buffet lunch (which was included with our booking) was very delicious with a fantastic range of food and beautiful presentation. We all really enjoyed our lunch. You would definitely only need a maximum of half a day here. Worst part is the hour and a half drive there and back to Tuban!!
We also decided to try the new Circus Water Park in Kuta. We were a large family group of 15 and we arrived just after opening time and we had the entire park to ourselves until lunchtime, when a young couple arrived! We felt like a very rich celebrity family who had booked an entire park just for us to enjoy!! The park is more suited to younger children than what Waterbom Park is, and is also a lot smaller, but was really enjoyable. It had a big lazy river, a couple of big tube type rides - probably needed a bit more water thru them as some of the little kids on the tubes stopped before the end of the ride. There was a boomerang type ride and also a 4 person speed slide. Only bad thing to the day was my 13 year old was coming down one of the speed slides, got the speed wobbles and hit the side and cut the back of her heel. Not exactly sure what she hit on the slide to cause the cut, but it put everybody else off using the speed slides. The pool attendants were very helpful and rushed her off to first aid where she was cleaned up and bandaged. There was a big kids pool area with a few ships/boats with little slides into the pool and a big bucket playground. There was a small train that you could buy a ticket for to go for a trip around the park. Also, it was very reasonable, I think from memory it was 70,000 for adults and 45,000 for children.
Nothing else much to report, just really enjoyed the wonderful weather we had there and relaxing while someone else cooked, washed and cleaned!
Now to book the next one!