Is Soul really the best hotel on the Gold Coast?

There are a lot of great resorts up and down Queensland’s Gold Coast, but few have both luxury and location nailed. Soul is a very popular five-star Gold Coast hotel for the super-rich from all around the world. The main entrance looks like something out of Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous – Maserati’s, stretch-Mercedes and Ferraris of Soul’s affluent guests abound.

Some guests live there, some are on holiday – some even stay for several months over winter. The lifts are full of supermarket deliveries to the rooms of Dubai nationals taking time-out from the heat of the Emirates in Summer, and the odd nanny escorting children down to the pool for a swim. People-watching is just part of the fascinating experience of staying at Soul!

The best accommodation location in Surfers Paradise

Soul is widely recognised as the best-located luxury apartments in Surfers Paradise – and for good reason – it’s smack-bang in the centre of Surfers Paradise, and directly opposite the beach front. This makes for unparalleled convenience, and absolute ocean views.

Walk out of the Soul hotel’s front doors, and you’ll find yourself across the road from the world’s most beautiful beaches – Surfers Paradise beach – famous for it’s clean white sands and crystal-blue rolling waves. Take the kids for a splash in the sea under the careful watch of the Gold Coast life-saving club, or just go for a stroll along the beautiful esplanade – also home of the fascinating Night Markets three times a week.

If you plan on taking the kids to a theme park during your visit to Queensland, Sea World is just five minutes drive up the road. Dreamworld and Movie World are only about twenty minutes drive away, too.

The iconic Surfers Paradise metal archway sign and busy pedestrian Cavill Avenue are right next door – home of touristy shopping, cheap foot-massages and family entertainment – everything you need for a fun, relaxed holiday – and at Soul, you’re staying in the centre  of it all.

Our two-bedroom Soul Apartment

Staying at Soul apartments is everything you would expect from a five star hotel. Full digital security access, with tags or cards for doors and elevators. Stylish, expensive décor with immaculately maintained interiors and exteriors.

Each apartment features a spacious open-plan lounge and dining area, and is elegantly furnished throughout. Marble-topped tables, plush cushions, glass and mirrors complete the modern luxury look and feel of these apartments. Floor-to-ceiling windows monopolise that fabulous Gold Coast view.

Even though this is Queensland, it still gets cool in the evenings in winter. The apartment has reverse-cycle climate control to keep things at the right temperature, no matter what time of year it is.

The apartment layout and space gives a family of four plenty of room for togetherness, or alone time too! The lounges are super-comfy, and a great spot to settle down when you’ve all dropped from Gold Coast too-much-fun-exhaustion and just need some quiet-time to watch a family movie together.

There is a plethora of modern appliances throughout the apartment too. Stero systems, flat screen TVs in each room, a bluetooth DVD player, and well-optioned Foxtel Pay TV too.

The bedrooms

We stayed in a two bedroom apartment, however Soul three bedroom apartments are also available for larger families.

Our master bedroom was huge, with a king-sized bed, direct access to the main balcony and a spacious en-suite.

The en-suite vanity has two basins. The shower is oversized, strong and hot. It also features a deep spa bath tub with a glass window overlooking the master bedroom, and then on, out to the balcony and view beyond.

The second bedroom has two single beds and even has its own sea-view balcony. You can to drift off to sleep each night whilst watching the rolling waves of the Surfers Paradise beach far below.

Both bedrooms feature comfortable beds with pristine linen, flat-screen televisions, plenty of wardrobe space and heavy curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows.

A smaller, second bathroom services the second bedroom.

The kitchen

The kitchen has plenty of space, and is fully optioned for a three-course dinner, or simply serving up the kid’s morning breakfasts at the kitchen bar or dining table.

There’s a large corner pantry to hold your groceries, a large fridge with ice water dispenser, full sized oven with cook-top plus a microwave. There’s a super-quiet dishwasher, and the usual hot water kettle jug, toaster, crockery, pots and pans and cutlery.

A laundry nook

A quiet front-loader washing machine and separate dryer reside in their own little alcove opposite the kitchen area. A storage cupboard holds cleaning products and an iron. There is also a washing basket, ironing board and airer/drying rack.

But a video is worth a thousand words – here is our Soul 2 bedroom apartment walk-through video.

The balconies and view

As expected, Soul offers amazing, expansive views of the ocean and Gold Coast for miles in multiple directions.

Our apartment was on the 30th floor, and featured two balconies – the small one off the second bedroom, and one huge main balcony, which extended along the lounge and main bedroom. The large table and chairs are perfect for al-fresco dining, and there’s a long lounge chair to snooze or read a book on.

Of course with those breathtaking views overlooking Surfers Paradise Beach all the way up and down the Gold Coast, the balcony is the perfect place for sighting whales during whale-watching season.

The only way to effectively show you the scope of the balcony view, is by video, so take a look for yourself…

Spending time out on the balcony just watching everything that goes on is lots of fun – the pool, beach strip and night-markets, beach-goers, surfers, shoppers – the passing parade of news helicopters, joy-flights, blimps and birds – there is always something going on in Surfers Paradise. Take a pair of binoculars, or a good zoom camera and you’ve got entertainment for hours!

Here are just a few of the fascinating things we saw from our 30th floor Soul balcony – click on the image to enlarge it.

Soul complex facilities

The Soul hotel / apartments complex offers two swimming pools.

There is a good-sized outdoor pool located on the second floor level, with direct views over to the beach and esplanade, making it a great place to spend a lot of time relaxing on one of the luxury pool lounges.

The outdoor pool is heated just enough to take the chill off. The outdoor spa is hot, however, and there’s two shallow luke-warm baby pools.

During winter (excepting school holidays and weekends),both the outdoor and indoor pools seem to be barely used by guests. Often, we had the entire pool area to ourselves for hours!

You can also access the pool level directly from the street level using a lift in the Soul boardwalk arcade, which means you can pop down to grab some lunch or ice creams, or swim in the surf and then go straight up to the pool without having to walk back through the hotel lobby. There are landscaped barbeque gardens on this level too.

Inside, there is a large indoor pool – again, just slightly heated. There are also two indoor spas – one small, one very large. A steam room and a sauna are located off the spas. There’s also a large sundeck with plenty of lounges located off the indoor pool.

There’s is a small but well outfitted gym spread over two small rooms, located near the pools. The gym rooms have TVs to watch whilst you exercise.

Take a video walk through the the pools area and gym here…

Soul’s onsite restaurant is “Seaduction”, which has views over to the beach. The price range is average to high.

Free parking is onsite in the carpark under the complex. Considering the location of Soul, you can count on an extra five to ten minutes just to get in and out of the city and onto the Gold Coast Highway – but at least you get a rock-star drive though the centre of Surfers each time you go out!

Dining in or out

Although Soul apartments are perfect for self catering, it’s no fun for mum or dad if the family eats in all the time! After all, you didn’t come on holidays to cook and wash up!

Located right outside the entrance to Soul Apartments is a row of good quality cafes and restaurants overlooking the beach (my review of these restaurants is on the way!). Don’t holiday at Soul without sampling at least a couple of these eateries.

In the Soul Boardwalk arcade beside the Soul tower you’ll find a Hogs Breath Café and Pancake Parlour, or if you’re craving fast-food, a McDonalds and KFC are also on the Esplanade strip.

For a quick bite, there is every kind of take-away food bars up and down Cavill Mall. Grab a bench and soak up some atmosphere tucking into your slice of pizza, kebab or hot dog, listening to the buskers play!

How to book a discounted Soul Apartment

Instead of using the regular route to book in at Soul, we used a unit rental company – and there are a few of them. You can find them by Googling, and some you can find as Airbnb type rentals, Stayz and other common holiday booking websites. Booking this way can get you significant discounts, particularly in the winter months.

The Soul building is partially run as Peppers Soul Resort. The remainder of apartments are privately owned. Some owners live on site, and others choose to rent out their apartment using a real estate manager.

Using a private management company, as opposed to booking through Peppers, can reduce your accommodation costs significantly – particularly if you are staying for a few days.

In order to save that money, there are some small inconveniences.

Sometimes you will need to pick your keys up at the rental agency, instead of Soul – so you may need to drive out of your way a kilometre or two.

At the end of the rental, you leave the apartment keys locked inside the apartment.

If you have a hire car, you will need to move the car out of the car park and leave it at the entrance whilst you go back up the lift to leave the keys in the apartment, as normal receptionist assistance does not apply when privately renting.

Hotel reception is there to service Pepper’s guests alone. If you lose your key or have any problems, the people to contact are the rental agency, not reception, so there is a call-out fee. That said, we had one small maintenance issue which was immediately attended to – no problem at all. During our stay we had access to all hotel facilities as per normal – we felt no different to any other Soul guest – but we had paid a greatly-reduced price.

 Soul useful info

Rating: Five-stars
Address: 8 Esplanade, Surfers Paradise QLD 4217

Getting there

From the Gold Coast (Coolangatta) airport – approximately 30 mins drive
From Brisbane Airport – approximately 1 hour’s drive
5 minutes walk from the Cavill Avenue tram station
Free parking in the underground car park

Gold Coast Luxury Resorts booking agents

*All prices are correct as at September 2016

This review is an independent, non-sponsored Australian hotel blog review. All opinions are my own.

Have you ever visited the Gold Coast on a family holiday? What did you enjoy doing there? Tell us in the comments below…

The post Soul Apartments review – Surfers Paradise luxury accommodation appeared first on Let's go Mum.

Dreamworld is the Gold Coast theme park we go to for the best variety of fun rides for young kids. ABC Kids World is amazing for toddlers and very young children, and for older kids, Dreamworld ride height minimum limits are lower than some other Queensland theme parks. This suits my primary school-aged kids perfectly. That’s more rides for them to enjoy, which means great value for money for parents – plus the rides are just as fast and thrilling!

Stop! Before you go anywhere in Dreamworld, get one of these…

To kick-off our day at Dreamworld, we arrived right on 10am – opening time – and got a Ride Express electronic device. This clever electronic virtual queuing unit will save you a heap of time for an extra cost. There are three waiting-time options – bronze ($25), silver ($40) or gold ($65). Gold is the fastest option -90% less queuing time – and we found ourselves waiting no more than five minutes at most rides with our Gold Ride Express – fantastic.

School holidays tip: Of the 3 big Gold Coast theme parks, Dreamworld is the only one which still offers virtual queuing during the school holidays

Let’s go – Dreamworld family thrill ride guide

Gold Rush World

River Rapids

For our first rides of the day, we headed straight off into Gold Rush land. Here you’ll find the terrifying Buzz Saw (“Keep walking children!”) and the “get wet” rides – which are a huge hit with everyone in the family – young kids, teens and adults.

A few goes down the rollicking River Rapids rides started the day off on a hilarious note as we rocked, rolled and spun our way down the rapids. I love the way that this ride gets everyone squealing and laughing together – family, friends and even the strangers sat opposite you!

Don’t forget to watch out for the folk on the banks with the water guns – their only aim is to soak you! You’re going to get a little – or maybe even a lot – wet on this ride!

Rocky Hollow Log Ride

Next-up was the Rocky Holly Log Ride – we were already wet, and decided we couldn’t get much wetter! As usual, the Log Ride didn’t disappoint. We had to tear ourselves away after three rides on this one.

You can see what the Log Ride is like for yourself, by clicking Play on the Youtube video below!

Mick Doohan’s Motocoaster

Next we headed off to our first Big 9 Thrill Ride – the Mick Doohan’s Motocoaster.

This zoomy ride will bring tears to your eyes due to it’s speed, but it’s such a lot of fun you can’t help laughing – that is, if you can possibly draw breath!

Even younger kids (who meet a minimum height) are allowed to ride this one – they can hop in one of the side car motorcycles with mum or dad if they are not yet big enough to hop aboard a motorcycle. The Mick Doohan Moto Coaster’s last two carriages are a parent bike and sidecar. At Dreamworld, few kids are left behind!

ABC Kids World

We love ABC Kids World – it’s an absolute gem for parents of little kids and toddlers.

The Wiggles World Little Red Boat, Little Red Car and Dorothy’s Tea Cup rides, Hop and Hoot ride, the Bananas in Pajamas’s maze, Playschool Art Room and Giggle and Hoot pirate ship – there’s just so much to do!

It’s the most colourful, fun playground around which my kids still enjoy – if you have little kids, make a bee-line for ABC Kids World and let the ankle-biters run-riot!

A variety of lunch options

By this time we were all hungry and I managed to talk the kids into pausing for a moment to eat. It was lunch time, and we headed for the large covered central dining area.

Here you can choose from gourmet pizza, chips and burgers, or if you are completely junk-fooded out at this point in your holiday like we were, there is a healthy sandwich and salad bar called “The Sandwich Shop” – pesto salad for me and wraps for the kids – perfect!

Madagascar World

Madagascar theatre show

Onward to the nearby Madagascar theatre show. This popular show plays twice daily at Dreamworld, and is a real hit with families – it also gives mum and/or dad time for a breather!

Jungle Jam tree house

Then off to the Jungle Jam tree house which the kids always love. Kids will be kids, and this is a big house of fun they can go wild in!

The Jungle Jam tree house is full of kids climbing, laughing, firing foam guns and generally having a good time – great for little monkeys of all ages.

Madagascar roller coaster

When I finally managed to drag the kids out of the Jungle Jam tree house, we headed off to the Madagascar roller coaster. This ride is a must for families – smooth, short but still thrilling, this roller coaster will have you all smiling at the end. Lots of fun for everyone.

Ocean Parade World

Hot Wheels Side Winder

Lulled into a false sense of roller coaster security after the Madagascar coaster, we then headed off to take a ride on the Hot Wheels Side Winder (formerly the Cyclone roller coaster).

We excitedly climbed aboard the brightly coloured Hot Wheels car-styled carriages. This huge coaster pumps out the latest tunes whilst it cork screws, loop-the-loops and seemingly jet-propels you down the rails on a thrill-ride which leaves your heart in your mouth – but don’t worry, you can still squeeze a scream out!

Terrific fun at a gazillion kilometres per hour – no wonder the Hot Wheels Side Winder is one of the Big 9 Thrill Rides!

Tiger cubs on the loose!

Upon emerging from the Hot Wheels Side Winder, we came upon a wonderful surprise – a real-live tiger cub sitting up on the gift shop counter!

Dreamworld’s Tiger Island is currently being renovated and improved for the tigers, with the new-look Tiger Island re-opening this September. In the meantime there is a Tiger Kindy nursery playground where you can watch the adorably cute Dreamworld tiger cubs and their big brother Kai play with their toys.

Plus in the afternoons around 2 to 3pm, the young tigers are taken for leash walks around the park for people to walk alongside, and even pat when they stop!

Professional tiger handlers are with the cubs at all times and make sure they are safe and sound, yet are allowed to lead and explore. These gorgeous little-big-cats are just like oversized kittens – only with really, really big paws! They climb on walls, seats, roll around on their backs and generally have a good ol’ time!

There are opportunities for a professional photographer to take your photo with these young tiger-ambassadors too – a percentage of the price of these photos (which cost $10 each) goes to the Dreamworld Wildlife Foundation (DWF) to help save their tiger-cousins in the wild, of which only 3,200 remain. DWF is the largest zoological donor to tiger conservation in the world – now that’s amazing! Donate and learn more at the Dreamworld website here.

The Wipeout

When we could finally tear ourselves away from the tigers, we headed over to the Wipeout – I like to think of this rides as – well, terrifying to be honest, but if you ask my ten year old, Brooke, she’ll tell you it’s ‘awesome fun’, and not scary at all if you close your eyes! The Wipeout twists, flips and hangs you upside down for good measure – this is yet another Dreamworld Big 9 Thrill Ride, and it’s most-definitely built to thrill!

The Tailspin

This year we decided to be brave and go on the Tailspin. This high-flying ride looks quite intimidating, but it was actually the most beautiful ride to experience. You really feel like you are flying on the Tailspin! Although it does reach some pretty lofty heights, it’s really just a peaceful glide-ride – a thrilling feeling to whoosh through what surely must be the clouds! But if you’re after even more of a thrill, don’t worry – you can use the wing control handles on your “plane” to set you spinning around and around and around…..don’t miss this one!

The Shockwave

Finally, our last ride of the day was The Shockwave. This ride is another favourite of ours. A massive wheel which rotates and zooms along a short and wavy track – it looks scarily powerful, but is just pure FUN! We had to go on this one a few times, right up until closing. Once you’ve had one ride on the Shockwave, you just can’t stop!

A dedicated Lego store is coming soon to Dreamworld!

Everything is awesome!

As if the amazing Fairytale Treasures, Hot Wheels, ABC Kids World and Madagascar shops weren’t enough to excite the kids into a frenzy, Dreamworld is about to add to their shopping fun with a LEGO® Certified Store!

Opening in November 2016, there will be giant LEGO statues, a LEGO wall, LEGO building areas and everything LEGO! We just can’t wait for the new Dreamworld Lego store to open, just in time for the summer school holidays – awesome!

There’s so much more to Dreamworld than we could ever fit into one day, but we certainly got a large number of rides and fun in!

I hope you enjoyed our round-up of Dreamworld fun for families. Now don’t just sit there – go and visit Dreamworld for yourself – you’ll all have a fantastic family day out!

Let’s Go Info…

Opening hours
Dreamworld is open 7 days a week: 10am – 5pm (excepting Christmas Day)

How to get there
You can get to Dreamworld by car (self-drive easily from your Gold Coast hotel – 20 mins).
Many companies run tour coaches to the Theme Parks – enquire at your hotel reception to book and for pricing.

Tickets
There are some great value passes to Dreamworld available – you can buy an annual pass from $109.99 which also gives you entry to the attached White Water World and the (well-worth a visit) SkyPoint Observation Deck too.
For a full listing of tickets and discount online prices, visit the Dreamworld website here.

All prices are accurate for July 2016
We reviewed this theme park as guests of Dreamworld

Has your family visited Dreamworld? Did your kids love the rides – and did they have a favourite? Tell us in the comments below!

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