A young family has shared how what was supposed to be an idyllic holiday at Daydream Island Resort off Queensland´s coast quickly turned into a ‘nightmare’.
Mish and Kirk Ryan-Welsh expected a sunny paradise when they headed to the Whitsundays with their baby Jiah, but they ended up leaving the resort as soon as they could.
The couple said they were shocked by the resort’s dilapidated state that looked nothing like what they’d seen online.
‘Because if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry,’ they captioned a video of the island.
’99 per cent of the time we’re showcasing wonderful places to visit + stay, but this is not one of those times.’
Their photos show bins overflowing with rubbish, filthy pools, beaches full of rock and broken furniture.
‘Our room was so mouldy and all the staff were teenagers that clearly hated being on the island too,’ the couple said.
An Adelaide family said they were shocked to find Daydream Island’s iconic beaches full of stone and broken furniture (above)
‘Everything is always closed or out of order: the pools, bars, vending machines, pool table, playground, coffee machine, watersports – nothing is ever functioning.
‘If you don’t book dinner a week in advance you won’t get a table at the restaurant and they don’t offer room service so you’ll have to eat takeaway pizza for seven nights straight while being attacked by seagulls.’
‘We ordered two glasses of champagne, the girl filled them both only halfway,’ they wrote.
‘We took them back and said `champagne is meant to be filled to the top, and she said `that´s all we have left.’
The family said the pools were ‘freezing cold’ and ‘very filthy’, while the beaches were filled with rocks and not white sand like advertised.
They also alleged a staff member told them Jiah looked ‘like a chimpanzee’.
They also took exception with Daydream billing itself as an eco-resort.
‘The resort claims to be an eco-resort but there´s plastic + rubbish EVERYWHERE , + no recycling system in place,’ they said. ‘This is just an excuse to not have to replace towels.’
The family quickly decided they needed to leave Daydream at their own cost.
‘Lesson to be learnt, never book a fancy resort you see on Instagram before reading the hundreds of negative google reviews,’ they wrote.
The Adelaide-based family are fuming they wasted $3,500 on the holiday destination they’ve now slammed as a ‘rip off’.
The couple said the resort was full of overflowing bins and had rubbish ‘everywhere’ (pictured, a bin at the Whitsundays resort)
‘We forfeited hundreds of dollars worth of accommodation as soon as we could find another available place to stay.’
The family is now holidaying on Hamilton Island, which they say has been ‘bliss’.
Daydream Island has faced an onslaught of negative reviews since management changed hands in 2015 to China Capital Investment Group (CCIG).
They said the hotel was old and dirty despite being ‘newly renovated’ following the destruction of cyclone Debbi in 2017 (pictured, a corridor in the resort)
Ratings took another hit following the destruction of cyclone Debbie in 2017 that stole the island’s pristine white beaches.
The resort was formerly managed by water-ski champion Vaughan Bullivant and was renown for its beautiful reefs, animal encounters, friendly staff and family focus.
Hundreds of commenters under the family’s video shared similar experiences of the island or said they’d taken it off their bucket lists.
‘Just cancelled and booked at Arlie Beach. Cost me $400 but worth it, thanks for the heads up!,’ one commenter wrote.
‘Daydream is well known for this. Some friends went last week and what a disappointing experience they had, they ending up leaving before planned,’ another said.
‘Well I just took that one off the holiday list,’ another person wrote.
‘This looks like the holiday form hell!,’ another said.
‘Stayed there in 2020 and we nicknamed it nightmare island, honestly couldn’t wait to be gone,’ another wrote.
Daydream was contacted for comment.
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