Four Seasons Resort Costa Rica at Peninsula Papagayo

Magical. The best luxury family resort experience ever, and we have spent time at so many wonderful hotels. The staff was fantastic and flexible, accommodating our needs. Mario, our butler, was fantastic and on top of everything. So was the director of rooms and the director of food service. We loved ziplining (did it 2x), a boat tour that included jetskiing and swimming, a nature walk with Johnny, and hanging at the pool. It was very hot but manageable, and we were pleasantly surprised to see that bugs were not at all an issue. Only feedback I would give the hotel is that the beach service was not perfect. Very minor but no one seemed to be actively serving customers down on the beach, so you have to bring your own water and hope that they bring you a menu at some point.

Amazing place and great people. It was just enjoyable, relaxing, and easy to get around and easy to ask what we needed. We brought 3 young kids and they enjoyed every minute! Probably top hotel and top places to go. The sand was soft and the pools were so fun! We did excursions and airport transfer with nomadtourscr We booked the private boat ride, Hacienda Aromal for horseback riding, ziplining, and ATVs, and the Sloth Forest—all were amazing! We also did a night walk with Explorer, but we didn’t see many animals. With Nomad Tours, we did the Full Wildlife tour, which I highly recommend for spotting wildlife in both the dry forest and rainforest.

I didn’t stay, but dinner there quite a bit while we were in Papagayo. Best restaurants in the peninsula. We especially enjoyed the steak restaurant, sushi / tapas bar and the Italian restaurant. Great sunsets too! Property looked very nice.

This was my first solo trip so I decided to stay in a hotel where I wanted to feel safe and enjoy at the same time all the beauty that Costa Rica has to offer, and so it was. I stayed for about a week and it was very relaxing, the food was amazing and the service was unbelievable. The room was very nice and spacious at least for me, I always carry a lot stuff in my suitcase haha, I highly recommend this hotel to anyone who wants to live an unforgettable experience of feeling safe and relaxed at the same time. I enjoyed my transfer service to and from the hotel with the company Costa Rica Issys Tours, excellent guys, with a lot of experience and I had a van for myself, definitely everything was excellent.

The Four Seasons is definitely a luxurious resort. The entry way to the resort is all paved (once you turn off the main road) and winds for about 5 miles before you actually arrive at the resort; its pretty impressive. We saw lemurs drinking our of the sprinklers along the way! We arrived much earlier than our check-in time (we took a red-eye and arrived at 8am), but were greeted by a very friendly valet staff and Daniel met us in the lobby with open arms. We were served cold coconut water in a coconut shell and ice cold towels to cool off with. He extended an offer to go freshen up or change clothes in the spa area and to go enjoy breakfast while we waited for our room to be ready. The resort is stunning and beautifully landscaped. They provided us a text link that we used throughout our stay. It is a great resource to utilize and this made it much more comfortable for me to ask questions, plus they respond very quickly. You can use this link for reservations too. Once our room was ready, our luggage was loaded onto a golf cart and taken to our room. We were in building 3, first floor facing the bay side of the resort; had a very nice view of the bay and could hear the waves crashing at night. The room was beautiful, bed comfortable, bedding extremely soft. We opted for comfort pillows instead of memory foam pillows...the comfort pillows were amazing! The room amenities were perfect and very nice quality...shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, bug spray, robes, slippers, coffee & teas, handheld steamer, iron and blow dryer. Twice a day they come in to make up the room in the morning and then at night set it up for night tea, yoga channel on, nice bottles of water bedside. It's pretty bougie! We were celebrating a birthday and wedding anniversary. When we arrived to our room they had a small chocolate cake, chocolate dipped strawberries and a bottle of champagne chilling. So very unexpected but it added a special touch to our stay. There are 2 family pools and 1 adult pool. We hit up the adult pool once and never went back. It was just an infinity pool long and narrow chest high water and people were just around in little circles holding drinks...not our things. Didn't feel like you could really chat with other people. However, we did spend a lot of time at the family pools, which we enjoyed very much and met a lot of really nice people. Pool attendants were fabulous. We had no problem getting lounge chairs or found people not to be "saving" areas when they were not there. If you went much later in the day most of the chairs could be in use though. They supply sunscreen in a 30spf and 50spf and an after lotion...don't forget to apply it often! There is a water filling station so if you bring your own water bottle you can fill poolside and they will bring you ice. There are outside shower located by the pool. They handed out popsicles and pineapple chunks poolside at random times. Please note the cement area around the pools are so very, very HOT! An improvement would be to have narrow rubber runners around the pool. Take your flip flops with you when you enter the pool and leave them near so you can put them on immediately after exiting the pool otherwise you WILL burn your feet! We never experienced a ton of kids running around the family pools to speak of. In fact, we were surprised as to how low-key it was being a "family pool." There was a really good mix of older couples, younger families, and young couples. There is a very nice facility that has lots of activities for pre-teen/teens...basketball, pool table, pickle ball, soccer. We ate at all for restaurants on site. The food was very good; a bit pricy after they add 10% service charge + 13% for taxes and then the tip! There were not a lot options on the menu at any of the restaurants during evening dining for say a casual burger or pizza etc. (except on a child menu), that kind of food you could order pool side or room service. Speaking of room service, we ordered it one night while we where there and our server was great. The burger was good, the Cuban sandwich was decent, not the best, lots of fries and the key lime pie as wonderful. They provide you a weekly schedule. Be sure to review it each day to see what complimentary activities are being offered. If there is a fee for the activity it is listed. We missed out on a lot of things because we failed to look at the schedule, unfortunately. We never did any of the excursions, so I can't offer any information of that, but they do have lots of tours offered. The bay side of the resort is where all the water sports are happening. I did the corral reef snorkeling thing with a guide for $16 along with two other couples. The water was not very clear, but I did see some sea life...sting ray, schools of fish and a turtle poked his head out of the water. Our guide Daniel was very attentive. I was expecting to see much more corral but instead he was showing us how they are regrowing corral on these cages on the bottom of the bay...it was interesting though. It's a 5-6 minute walk to the beach side. There are lots of lounge chairs and service available there as well. We spotted a iguana, an ant-eater, some howler monkey and a ton of various birds. There is constant chirping from the birds. We did not experience any real issues with bugs, but they do supply bug spray in your room in the closet. We rented a car and took a day trip to Play De Coco about 50 minutes away just to see the surrounding area. Lots of bars, souvenir shops, pharmacy and restaurants. We were approached by street vendors several times and were a bit nervous about parking our rental car. The area was not trashy or anything. All the shopkeepers were very friendly. The beach area wasn't impressive really, lots of boats in the water, no real waves to speak of. Overall...Resort is beautiful, service amazing, good food; bit pricey., I'd recommend purchasing treats, soda and/or alcohol on the way to the resort. There was no fridge in our room, only the mini bar stocked with overpriced items! You are isolated a bit as there is not much around the resort even if you just wanted to run and pick up something at a store. There are a few shelves of treats in one of the shops, but they wanted $5 for a can of coke. Pretty much once you leave the airport surrounding area there aren't many places to stop along the way. There is a Marina that we did not explore and we did not utilize the golf course.