Caretta Beach Resort & WaterPark
Caretta Beach Resort & WaterPark is a large family resort at Kalamaki, on the quiet south coast of Zakynthos, one of the Greek Ionian islands. It's built as self-catering studios and apartments but sold mostly all-inclusive, spread across ten buildings a couple of kilometres from the airport and a short walk or shuttle ride from the beach. The draw for families is the free on-site WaterPark, with five big slides for adults and a separate shallow area of slides and water games for younger children.
On this page
Is it worth it?
The quick read before the detail: who it suits, what the free waterpark gives you and where to set your expectations.
Caretta Beach is a mid-market family resort built around its water play. It's a three-star resort, so read it as a comfortable, good-value waterpark base rather than an upmarket one. The free WaterPark is why most families book it, and it's all included with your room. Staff, cleanliness and value are what guests praise most, and food draws the most mixed reviews, along with a free beach shuttle that doesn't always run to its hourly timetable. The thing to weigh before you book is childcare. The Kids Club starts at around three, and there's no crèche or babysitting for younger ones, so a family with a baby or a very young toddler has no supervised care to fall back on here. If you need a separate bedroom to settle a baby, only the two-level Duplex rooms give you a door to close, and there are just 38 of them.
Best for
You want a big, free on-site waterpark, a shallow area for younger children and a comfortable all-inclusive base at a mid-market price on a quiet side of Zante.
Maybe not for
You need supervised care for a baby or under-three, you want an upmarket finish or you want to step straight onto the beach.
Best ages
Walking, water-confident children from about three, who can enjoy the WaterPark and the Kids Club. Babies are welcome but have no childcare on site.
What stands out
The free WaterPark, included with your room, and staff that guests rate the highest of anything here.
What to check
The cost of a cot, whether the Kids Club suits your child's age and room location if you have a light sleeper.
Where is it?
Kalamaki, on the quiet south coast of Zakynthos in the Greek Ionian islands, 2 km from the airport and 700m from the beach.
Quick facts for families
A big waterpark resort at Kalamaki
Where it sits, how the ten buildings are spread out and what that means for getting around with a pram.
Kalamaki is a village on the south coast of Zakynthos, inside Laganas Bay. It sits on the quieter, more family-minded side of the bay, away from the nightlife strip at neighbouring Laganas, and its beach is one of the protected loggerhead turtle nesting beaches of the National Marine Park of Zakynthos, which is on the doorstep rather than a day trip out. The resort takes its name from the turtle, Caretta caretta.
Caretta Beach is a large resort of 322 rooms, spread across ten low-rise buildings, one main building and nine next to it, in gated private grounds beside the main Kalamaki road. The resort centre, with shops, tavernas and mini markets, is about 150m away, the airport 2 km, Zakynthos Town 5 km, the beach 700m and the nearest hospital 8 km.
Being spread out like this, some rooms sit a good walk from the pools, the restaurants and the beach shuttle stop, and there's no golf buggy or cart service to ferry you around, so if you rely on a pushchair expect a long push from the farther blocks. There's a lift in the buildings, but the resort doesn't set out which routes or rooms are step-free, so anyone who needs step-free access should ask the resort directly before booking. Every room is built as a self-catering studio or apartment with its own kitchenette, but the resort is sold mostly on all-inclusive. For the wider island, its beaches and when to go, see our Zante guide.
Every restaurant and bar
The buffet, the three other restaurants, the bars, how booking works and how it reads for a fussy toddler.
Meals centre on the Main Restaurant, an indoor buffet serving Greek and Zakynthian cooking alongside international dishes, with themed evenings through the week. Meal times run to roughly 07:30 to 10:00 for breakfast, 12:30 to 14:30 for lunch and 18:30 to 21:00 for dinner, though they can shift with the season, so check locally.
There are three more restaurants. Ellinikon is the Greek room, freshly grilled meats and local recipes. A few booking sites still list it under an older name, Grill House, so don't be thrown if you see that elsewhere. For The OG's is the casual spot, burgers, finger foods and salads. Dolce Piatto is the à la carte Italian, open daily 19:00 to 21:00, with a reservation needed in advance.
There are three bars plus a snack bar, the Snack Corner, which serves cold snacks from around 10:00 to 18:00 and hot snacks from around 14:30 to 17:00. The bars run from around 11:00 to 23:00, with drinks charged after 23:00. These times can shift with the season. Dinner has a "no beachwear" dress code, so pack something to change into after a day at the WaterPark.
For younger children the buffet is the easier bet than the à la carte nights. There are children's menus, and a children's ice-cream service around the middle of the day at the waterpark and pool bars. Vegetarian and gluten-free options are listed too, and one family whose child had multiple food allergies praised the head chef for cooking for them individually. Food is where reviews divide most, some guests happy with the variety and freshness and others finding it repetitive or the drinks weak, so it's the part of a stay here to set middling expectations on.
How the restaurant booking works
The Main Restaurant buffet is walk-in for every meal. The à la carte Italian, Dolce Piatto, needs a reservation made in advance, so book the evening you want once you arrive.
The rooms
The four room types with their official sizes, then the pools, the WaterPark, the Fun Park and the beach.
There are four room types, all with an official size in square metres. The table is the full line-up; the guidance after it is which suit a family with a baby or toddler and why.
| Room | Size | Sleeps | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | 25 m² | Up to 3 | One double and a single, or three singles, in one open-plan room, with a balcony and a bath or shower. 52 of them. |
| One-Bedroom Apartment | 30 m² | Up to 4 | A double and two singles set in a separate bedroom area, with a pool-view balcony. The most common room, 213 of the 322. |
| Duplex Room (Maisonette) | 60 m² | Up to 5 | A two-level room with a double downstairs and three singles upstairs, the only genuine two-bedroom layout. Just 38 exist. |
| One-Bedroom Swim Up Apartment | 30 m² | Up to 4 | A ground-floor room with steps from the balcony into a shared pool. Only 19 of them. |
For a family with a baby or toddler who needs a separate room to sleep in, the Duplex is the only true two-bedroom layout, and with only 38 of them it's worth booking well ahead. The One-Bedroom Apartment, the most common room, puts the second beds in a separate bedroom area within the same room rather than behind their own door, which is better than an open-plan studio for settling a child, though it isn't a closed room. The Swim Up Apartment suits a family with a water-loving toddler, since you step from the balcony straight into a shared pool without carting towels across the site, but some swim-up rooms sit farther from the main restaurant and the beach shuttle stop.
A cot can be added to any room on request. The cost isn't published, so confirm it when you book. It's also not clear whether a cot for a baby counts within a room's stated maximum occupancy or sits on top of it, so if you're booking a room at its full capacity, check directly that a cot can still go in.
The resort offers paid baby-equipment hire on request, though it doesn't list exactly what's included, so ask for the specific item you need, whether that's a high chair, a stair gate or a travel cot, when you book. Booking sites use different names for these rooms, but there are only the four types, not more.
Pools, the WaterPark and Fun Park
The WaterPark is the reason most families choose Caretta Beach. It's free for guests and open daily 10:30 to 17:00, with five big slides for adults and, separately, a shallow pool with its own slides and water games for younger children that reviewers describe as safe and easy to watch from close by. There's also a wave pool and a lazy river, a snack bar inside the WaterPark for a drink or a quick bite, and towels on request.
Away from the WaterPark, the resort has a spread of pools rather than one big main pool. There's a separate children's pool, a games pool used for water polo and volleyball, a jacuzzi and a shared pool that the ground-floor Swim Up Apartments open onto. Around them you'll find changing rooms, parasols, sunbeds, a pool bar, outdoor showers and pool towels, which are lent on request against a deposit.
The Fun Park is a separate thing again, and a paid one. It runs in the evening, 18:00 to midnight, as a separate business open to visitors from outside the resort as well as guests, with bouncy castles, a trampoline, pedal go-karts, water balls, an arcade and a snack bar and pizzeria. It's an evening out to pay for rather than part of the all-inclusive.
The beach
Kalamaki beach is 700m from the resort, roughly a 10 to 15 minute walk, or a ride on the free shuttle. The shuttle is scheduled hourly from 11:00 to 19:00 every day, though guests report it doesn't always run to that timetable, so a family without a car may end up walking some days.
The beach is sandy, with shallow, clean water, and it's one of the protected loggerhead turtle nesting beaches inside the National Marine Park of Zakynthos. Kalamaki carries Blue Flag status on the island's 2026 list. There are no watersports run from the resort's own beach.
Babies and toddlers
The childcare gap to know about, the Kids Club, cots and how the booking ages count, then what fills a family day.
The most important thing to know for a family with very young children is what isn't here. There's no crèche or club for under-threes, and no babysitting service, so if you need supervised care for a baby or a very young toddler this isn't the resort for it. Other resorts on Zante do offer it, and we point to them in how it compares below.
The Kids Club runs six days a week. Its age band isn't officially published, but guests commonly describe it suiting roughly ages three to twelve, with hours around 10:00 to 12:30 and 16:00 to 18:00. Treat those as a steer rather than a promise, since they come from guests rather than the resort. There's a children's play area on site.
When you book, the resort counts adults as 12 and over, children as 2 to 11 and infants as 0 to 1, which is worth knowing for working out how your children are counted. A cot can be added on request; the cost isn't published, so confirm it when you book. The resort caters for children at mealtimes, with a children's ice-cream service and children's menus. A doctor can be called out for a charge if anyone's unwell.
On siteThings to do
Beyond the water, there's an indoor gym and an outdoor fitness area, table tennis, a pool table and arcade games, plus bicycle, motorbike and car hire arranged on request. The pool table, bikes, motorbikes and cars all cost extra. Boat trips can be booked through Paradise Tours, an in-house travel agency on the premises that also suggests excursions. There's a weekly entertainment programme with included theme nights, and a newly added Turkish steam bath, the Hamam, for an extra charge.
The Serenity Spa Zante is inside the resort, an extra charge, with therapeutic massages, beauty treatments and a steam room, around fifteen in all; it's one of the things guests single out by name. The group also runs a tennis and padel club, the Caretta Tennis & Padel Club, a short distance from the resort rather than on its grounds, with three clay tennis courts, two padel courts and coaches available. On site there's an ATM, a mini market, a souvenir shop and a garden kiosk.
Beyond the resortThe area and days out
The resort centre at Kalamaki, with shops, tavernas and mini markets, is about 150m away on the main road. Laganas, the island's main nightlife strip, is 3.6 km away, the busier scene that families choosing Kalamaki are usually avoiding. Zakynthos Town, the island capital, is 5 km, and the main ferry port the same distance if you fancy a day across to the Peloponnese.
The National Marine Park of Zakynthos, the protected turtle-nesting area covering Laganas Bay and Kalamaki's own beach, is on the doorstep. For a change of beach, Dafni is about 14.6 km and Gerakas about 15.3 km. The island's famous sights are mostly boat trips: the Blue Caves, Keri Caves, Porto Vromi, Porto Roxa and Navagio, the Shipwreck Beach. Navagio is closed to all landings for the whole of 2026 after a cliff collapse, so this season it's a view from the water or a clifftop platform rather than a beach to walk on.
Loves and gripes
What families come back praising and what frustrates them, how it compares, the journey, the weather and the practical bits.
What families love
- The staff, the single most repeated praise and the highest of the guest sub-scores.
- The WaterPark and the pools, the headline for families and plenty of water to spread out across.
- Value for money, especially for families on a budget.
- Clean, comfortable rooms, with twice-weekly towel and linen changes noted by several guests.
- The spa, praised by name.
- The kitchen catering individually for a child's food allergies.
Common gripes
- Food, the most mixed part of a stay, repetitive for some and the drinks called weak.
- The free beach shuttle, which guests report doesn't always run.
- Wasps in the autumn, around September and October.
- Room-block noise: one family with an 11-month-old were put in a block near the bar and kept up at night. It's a single report rather than a pattern, but if you have a light sleeper it's worth asking about a quieter room when you book, knowing the resort allocates rooms in advance and can't promise a specific one.
- Dated decor in places, in a few older reviews.
The scores are worth reading with their spread in mind, wider than most resorts on this shortlist. Booking.com's is the largest sample we could check in full, 8.3 out of 10 from 97 reviews, and reads well. TripAdvisor sits noticeably lower, between 3 and 3.9 out of 5 depending on which listing you check, and HolidayCheck lower again at 3.1 out of 6, though from only nine reviews, too small a sample to weigh heavily. A meta-aggregator across several thousand ratings sits in between, at 8.1 out of 10. One older review also found the entertainment more "Brits abroad" than Greek in feel, worth knowing if you want a more local atmosphere.
Against the alternativesHow it compares
Among Zante's family resorts, Caretta Beach is the waterpark-and-value pick rather than the luxury or the childcare-for-babies one. Atlantica Eleon is beachfront with a smaller waterpark; Caretta Beach isn't on the beach but has the bigger water offer, five slides plus the separate children's pool, wave pool and lazy river. Domes Aulus, Lesante Cape and Lesante Classic are higher-end and pricier, with proper crèches and clubs for younger children that Caretta Beach doesn't match, and Alykanas Beach has a baby club and its own beachfront. If your youngest needs supervised care, look to those. If you want a big free waterpark and a keen price, this is the one.
On TripAdvisor it sits mid-table for its area, ranked around 21st of 33 hotels in Kalamaki, or lower again on a wider island-wide grouping, so read it as comfortably mid-pack rather than top or bottom.
The journey and the seasonGetting there and when to go
Zakynthos airport (ZTH) is just 2 km from the resort, a few minutes by road and one of the shortest airport hops of any resort on the island. A shared holiday coach that drops at other hotels on the way commonly takes 25 to 35 minutes, so the transfer feels longer than the distance suggests; a taxi or private transfer is quicker. The airport closes to flights overnight, from 22:00 to 05:00, to protect the turtle beach under the flight path, so there are no red-eye arrivals or pre-dawn departures.
The resort is open from 18 April to the end of October. For a family with young children, June is a good window, warm and dry with a sea around 22°C and short of the peak heat and crowds. July and August are hottest, into the low thirties by day, with the warmest sea and the busiest, priciest weeks. September stays warm and drier, though it's when guests notice wasps most. May is pleasant but the sea is still cool for small children, and October turns much wetter as the season winds down.
When to goWeather
July and August are reliably hot, into the low thirties by day, with the warmest sea of the year, and they're also the busiest and priciest weeks. June and September give you almost the same warm sea with fewer people about, which is the easiest window with little ones. May is pleasant but the sea, at around 19°C, is only for paddling. October is a much wetter month as the season winds down.
| Month | Daytime high | Overnight low | Rain | Wet days | Sea temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April | 20.5° | 10.5° | 26 mm | 4 | 17° |
| May | 25° | 14.5° | 14 mm | 3 | 19° |
| June | 30° | 18.5° | 14 mm | 1 | 23° |
| July | 33.5° | 21° | 3 mm | 0 | 26° |
| August | 33.5° | 21.5° | 5 mm | 1 | 27° |
| September | 29° | 18.5° | 58 mm | 4 | 26° |
| October | 24.5° | 15° | 95 mm | 6 | 24° |
Typical monthly averages from weather-station records. Sea temperature is the open-water figure, so a sheltered bay can feel a degree or two warmer. The resort is open 18 April to 31 October.
Good to know
The UK's Foreign Office doesn't advise against travel to Greece. Wi-Fi is free and included, and there's a lift in the buildings. Check-in is from 15:00 and check-out is at 11:00. A doctor can be called out for a charge, laundry and ironing are chargeable on request and there's a currency-exchange service on site. Pets aren't allowed, and while indoors is non-smoking you can smoke outside. The resort's own site, carettahotels.gr, is the place to confirm anything before you book, and its reservations line is +30 26950 49300.
Questions
The things families ask most, the official pages worth a look and when this guide was last updated.
Is it a three-star or a four-star resort?
It’s a three-star resort. Some booking sites still show four stars from an older classification, but TUI dropped it to three and its current listings match that, so judge it as a comfortable waterpark resort at a mid-market price rather than expecting a four-star finish.
How many pools are there?
There are five. A children’s pool, a games pool, a jacuzzi and a shared swim-up pool, plus the WaterPark’s own separate children’s pool. The resort’s own site sometimes says six, but the pools you can actually count come to five.
Is there childcare for a baby or under-three?
No. There’s no crèche or babysitting for under-threes here. If you need supervised care for a baby, choose a resort that lists it, such as Domes Aulus or Alykanas Beach on the same island.
Can we get a cot, and does it cost anything?
Cots are available on request. The cost isn’t published, so check it when you book, along with whether a cot can still be added if your room is already at its maximum occupancy.
Can we rely on the free beach shuttle?
It’s scheduled hourly from 11:00 to 19:00, but guests report it doesn’t always run, so don’t plan a day around it. The beach is a 10 to 15 minute walk if the bus doesn’t show.
Can we visit the Shipwreck Beach?
Navagio, the Shipwreck Beach, is closed to all landings for the whole of 2026 after a cliff collapse, so this season you can only see it from a boat offshore or a clifftop viewing platform, not walk on the sand.
Can non-guests use the WaterPark, and can we bring visitors?
The evening Fun Park is a separate paid business open to anyone. The WaterPark itself is for resort guests, and the resort doesn’t advertise passes for outside visitors, so don’t assume a friend staying elsewhere can get in.
Are pets allowed, and can we smoke on the balcony?
Pets aren’t permitted. Indoors is non-smoking; smoking is allowed outside, including on balconies.
Which Caretta is this?
There are three similarly named resorts run by the same group: Caretta Beach here at Kalamaki, the larger Caretta Paradise at Tragaki and the smaller Caretta Island. It’s easy to mix them up, and reviews sometimes do, so check you’re looking at Caretta Beach at Kalamaki specifically before you book.
See more Caretta Beach photos
Open the Caretta Beach photo gallery →Useful links
- Caretta Beach Resort & WaterPark: the resort's own site for rooms, the waterpark and what's included.
- GOV.UK Greece travel advice: entry rules and safety updates before you travel.
- Zante with little ones: our guide to the wider island, its beaches and when to go.
Last updated 13 July 2026.
