2 days ago
Inside the Nickelodeon Hotel that children love and parents hate
If five-year-olds made hotels, they would look like the Nickelodeon Land of Legends in Antalya, Turkey. And if five-year-olds — let's say for argument's sake, mine — designed their best holiday ever, I'd bet my last lira it would look something like the three days we spent at this sugary plastic cathedral on the south coast of Turkey this summer.
The Land of Legends, operated by the hotel group Rixos, is Turkey's biggest theme and water park, half an hour east of Antalya. It's split into different zones — Adventure Land, Masha and the Bear Land of Laughter, Nickelodeon Land, Aqualand and naturally lots of luxury shops — and crowned by a Disneyland-esque castle. It's also big holiday business: nearly five million visited its 160 acres last year, and there's a giant copycat version being built in Qatar that's due to open in 2028.
Until this spring, the place to stay in the park was the wedding cake-like Kingdom Hotel, which looks like Rome's Vittoriano monument, topped with horses and Roman gods thrusting tridents (although all Rixos hotels across Antalya confer access to the park via handy wristbands). In March Land of Legends opened the 238-room Nickelodeon Hotel, which is so close to the park you can hear the screams from the Typhoon Coaster and the Hyper Coaster from your room. It also opened the Nickelodeon Land zone, including areas dedicated to Paw Patrol, Star Trek and Spongebob Squarepants' Bikini Bottom, squarely targeted at the under-eights and their gullible parents. All of which is to say: they saw us coming.
We're a Paw Patrol family. My son, Samuel, can hum the theme tune, knows the characters (and their backstories) and our house is full of plastic dog guff. I could pick out Marshall and Chase from a line-up; I know my Mayor Goodaway from my Cap'n Turbot.
• Discover our full guide to family holidays
A relief, then, that we're checking into a Paw Patrol-themed room — the hotel also has Spongebob and Ninja Turtle versions on different floors — where sober-framed portraits of two of the 'pups', Chase and Skye, hang on the wall in the way those of earls might in a country house. My red bedside table is illustrated with a picture of Marshall's face and there's a giant paw print above the bed. The primary-colour decor feels like sleeping inside a bingo hall. Naturally the TV has the full Nickelodeon package — mostly dubbed into Russian to satisfy the majority of guests — although we do land on a German version of Paw Patrol, where my shaky GCSE language skills are put to the test. Each night we fall asleep on paw-print cushions to whoops and cheers from the Land of Legends outside the window. I'm not sure whether I can actually hear the polyphonic tones of Paw Patrol or whether I'm dreaming it.
Downstairs in the lobby the colour scheme is cartoonish, with Nickelodeon orange and turtle-green pop-artish splodges on the wall, and huge sofas the colour of pumpkins. Chairs have green turtle shells or are garishly yolk-yellow. Cartoons play on a loop on big screens and there is unlimited pick'n'mix. Entertainers and mimes roam the lobby so when we wait for a lift, a magician with a white powdered face and stencilled eyes pulls out red balls from behind my son's ears, much to his amazement. The theme park is so close you can hear the screams before you know where it is. My son looks like he's died and gone to kid heaven; I've gone somewhere south of that.
Thankfully Le Spatula restaurant — a callback to Spongebob — has surprisingly decent buffet food, with delicious Turkish and Levantine dishes, lovely salads and the requisite chicken nuggets, so you can forgive it looking like the bottom of a kid's packet of crayons (staff are also unfailing lovely and helpful). Also important for the adults is that the kids' club is giant, with a Playstation room, a twisty slide and a cosy screening room, but most importantly does a neat line in Paw Patrol face paint. Helpfully there's a café right next to it for good coffee and fresh juice, which I escape to when my brain feels particularly spangled.
It doesn't take long to find our favourite rides: in Nickelodeon Land Samuel likes Cap'n Turbot's boat, which swings from side to side and then, sickeningly, round and round; I come to dread it. My favourite is the jollier Beach Bouncers, with cars that rise up and down (more thrilling than it sounds). I lose an hour standing by the side of Rubble & Crew's car circuit, communicating with the Kyrgyzstani ride operator via Google Translate; same goes for the Zippy Zappy Coaster in Masha and the Bear Land of Laughter, a Goldilocks ride that both of us are brave enough to go on again and again. The one ride we both love each time is Spongebob's Crazy Carnival ride, which takes us round in a little cart where we use zappers to smash plates and toss onion rings on big VR screens. It's good clean fun and we both howl with laughter at the silliness of it all.
• 21 of the best family hotels in Turkey
In Nickelodeon Land and in the hotel, we constantly bump into characters. Samuel dances with Skye from Paw Patrol, spars with Mr Krabs from Spongebob and awkwardly hugs a giant squirrel with a blue bra (another Spongebob character).
Of course, for adults the whole thing is a giant headache. The wheely-bin colours, the music, the constant chirping from entertainers. After the first day I need a teatime Aperol spritz to blunt the senses, which I drink slumped on a purple Chesterfield sofa in Snick Bar while a mime makes balloon animals and swords (cocktails from £12). By the end of the third I want to reach for the lorazepam. But even my cold, anaesthetised heart could appreciate the wide-eyed joy in Samuel, who for 72 hours looks like he has unlocked the secret of the universe.
We barely make it to the 280,000 sq m Aqualand waterpark, which has one of the longest waterslides in the world, the 457m-long rainbow-coloured Turtle Coaster that spirals over our heads when we walk around it. And we fail to make the free shuttle to the nearby adult-friendly resort Rixos Premium Belek to use the beach — every time I suggest leaving this e-numbered wonderland my son looks so sad that I crumble under mum guilt and find myself on that bloody Cap'n Turbot boat again.
• 14 of the best theme parks in the world
We leave Land of Legends' pearly gates 72 hours after we drove through them, having ventured no further during our stay — not something I'd usually admit. The tarmac is grey, the sky the colour of dishrag, the car seats a muted caramel. A dual carriageway has never looked so good.
This article contains affiliate links that will earn us revenue
Cathy Adams was a guest of Nickelodeon Hotels & Resorts Antalya, which has all-inclusive family rooms from £362 ( Fly to Antalya
