Discovery Samal

100/10 for our 2-night stay at Discovery Samal! The staff were friendly and accommodating, the place was stunning, and the food was absolutely delicious. My baby loved the kids’ play area, and the gym was way beyond what I expected — fully equipped and spacious. The beach was crystal clear and so relaxing. Definitely lives up to its 5-star rating. Highly recommended!

Facilities are good. Bed is nice. Snacks that can be purchased inside the room are just Pringles and Pilipit. Outside food is not allowed in the resort. If this is the case, they have to ensure that they can feed everyone and provide us with a lot of choices. Unfortunately, they only have 3 restaurants which cannot accommodate all the people they let inside the resort. Food is hit or miss. Due to the so many people, quality of food suffers. Aside from having fully booked rooms, there are people who also got in for day tours.The pool for the suites at the uppermost level turned GRAY last Thursday. Good thing we had another room in the executive suite so we used the other pool. Although I must say that there are notable people like the concierge who helped my mom when she got stuck outside her room and opened her room for her. There’s also the waiter named AL from Haribar who made sure my sister’s pizza got to her and asked people from Bistro if we can eat it at the executive pool because we couldn’t stay in the other pool anymore because it was so murky. He also reserved us a table for dinner and had our food ready by the time we got there. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to eat on time on that day. There’s also the housekeeping staff who turned the bed for us and gave “towel animals” for my son. My son loved it so much, he kept the “sticker eyes” and he put it on his cellphone as a remembrance. Generally the housekeeping made a good impression on us. They clean our rooms twice a day and they give complimentary 2 pieces of puto or revel bars or maja mais. I also cannot forget the person who made sure my son’s burger and fries gets to our room in less than an hour. Average time for food is 55 minutes to an hour or worse, it doesn’t arrive at all. Imagine we stayed there for 5 days! If we didn’t have to ask some of these staff, we wouldn’t be able to eat properly. There was even a time we paid for another table’s bill. If we didn’t order additional ice cream, we would have never found out that we paid for somebody else’s bill! They fixed it and said sorry but that was it. Imagine we were eating there for 5 consecutive days 2X a day at least but they never gave us any complimentary stuff for the mess that they made. The transport service was always full that we had to assert ourselves so that other rude people who cut in line won’t get ahead of us. The staff can’t even control the people. They need to be able to have protocols in place to handle such situations. Out of frustration we didn’t want to add to the stress on the staff so we just got umbrellas and we just walked all the way to the port and we totally skipped the van from the welcome center. Even when we were about to leave, the staff said she would just call us when it is our turn but when we looked again she left and there were other people in line already. My husband had to ask another staff to put as in line even when we already signed the boat manifest ahead of the people in line. He had to ask them again to put our luggage in line. Unfortunately, they still forgot our luggage so we had to wait for them at the port.Also, we tried calling for a buggy to help us with the luggage from our room but no one was answering so we just did it ourselves. The beach was fine too. It had a lot of fishes and starfishes. Sand is not as fine as Boracay but clean. The water sports activities had a reasonable price point. My nephew and niece had a great time with the jetski. But towels are always running out. We had to look for them all the time even in the pool area and at the beach. So what was meant to be a relaxing week for us turned out to be a bit stressful at times. But overall, it was disappointing because I expected too much since they said it is the only 5 star luxury resort in Mindanao. I booked at Discovery Samal to give it a chance but I am sorry to say that I won’t be coming back.

Had a wonderful time at discovery samal, will be back again for sure.