Mgm Resort Hotels South Of Chennai

jackiegear

Hi all you Mike fans. Does anyone know about the MGM resort hotel? I have been quoted 7600 rs per night!! I cant find much about it though except it is near to where we want to be. We want to visit the crocodile bank, the temples at Mamallapuram, Kanchipuram and Dashina Chitra, a heritage village showing old Indian houses etc. so we need a decent hotel for two nights on the beach somewhere near and MGM seems to fit the bill except it seems overpriced, which I dont mind if it is worth it. We may even visit the DIZEE world. Does anyone know about this or have you been and is it worth a visit. I know it isnt related to the USA MGM but hoped there may be a few Bollywood type shows there etc. Looking forward to coming to India, toblerones an all for grumpy PEACOCK. We set off in a week!! Yippee cant wait, a whole month in south India, bliss. Hate this wet country in UK. Who wants to swap living here for over there. JACKIE

Nick-H

Definitely no swaps!

I know someone who might be visiting MGM, so if I get to call on them there I can let you know what it was like.

Oh! It's You!

Isn't Dizee a we daren't use anything that sounds more like disney because they'll sue us out of existence name? That thought has always put me off!

Thee's VGP in the same direction, I think I had a meal there once and it was ok --- you could google that.

What would worry me about resort places in that area is that they are probably favoured by the weekend drinking crowd set free from their offices. If you are going midweek, I don't think that will be a problem.

Taj have Fisherman's Cove, a bit further out: five-star, I think, with five-star prices, but I have visited (not stayed) there, and it is very nice.

GRT have a place in/near Mamallapuram; that's nice too, though not as nice as Fisherman's Cove.

Mamalapuram is less than an hour away from anywhere on the East Coast Road; only half an hour away from Fisherman's Cove.

All those places you want to visit are easily accessible from any of those hotels, including Mamallapuram itself. Looking further afield, Pondicherry is only 2 hours drive from Mamallapuram.

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jackiegear

Fishermans cove sounds great. I will look into it. I think I saw it in AListair Sawdays book, Special places to stay. GREAT GREAT GREAT THANKS A LOT. SEE YOU ALL SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON OUT THERE.JACKIE

Nick-H

If you can afford it it is great.

They have a website; take a look. Hope you can book at short notice!

See you there one day soon, maybe!

There is an even posher place just outside Pondicherry. I can't remember the name, but I'll dig it out if you are interested. But it puts you a couple of hours or more from the other places you want to visit.

Merchant

Both MGM Dizzee World and VGP Golden Kingdom are standard-issue amusement parks. They belong to international trade associations and conform to the same standards of safety and cleanliness as those in the US or Europe, If you are used to hi-tech thrill rides, you will probably be disappointed. Both of these parks are really popular with Indian kids, though, and you can have a very pleasant time there.

MGM is part of conglomerate that does parks, resorts, restaurants, and industrial stuff like port handling. It's a big operation and the resort around Dizzee World is pretty nice (though I haven't stayed there).

In fact, this whole strip of the East Coast Road from Chennai to Mahabalipuram is big corridor for tourism and leisure development, and as Chennai grows so does this strip. There is high-end stuff like the Taj Fisherman's Cove and lots of middle- and budget-level development, too.

The cheaper hotels tend to be closer to Mahabalipuram, and the facilities are older.

I wrote about all this for an amusement park trade magazine a few years ago. It's a bit dated now (from 2003), but you get the general idea.

http://www.iaapa.org/industry/funwor...st_Road.htm l

cool blue

I stayed at MGM a couple of times last year - was ok, but heavily used for corporate events, days etc so it might be a bit busy......

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Radjesh

Must be the Dune resort, it was mentioned in some other thread as well...

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jackiegear

Wow, thank you. I read your link with great interest. There seem to be many spots we can visit around that area. We were going to go to Pondicherry but to me it looked a bit sparse and boring and I have heard a few bad stories about it so I decided visiting the temples, the boulder, a bit of fun at MGM and the silk factory 20 or 30 miles away would be better. Its our last few nights in India so it will make a change going to MGM as we will probably by then, in a whole month, have visited every temple worth seeing in the South of India. We are even staying in a little private beach house in Trivandrum with its own temple in the garden. So I think we will have O.D.'d on temples by the end of the holiday. Crocs and Ferris wheels will give us a bit of variety.Thanks for the interesting article. bye. jackie

jackiegear

Yep.See you soon. We are going to stay at the MGM. They have offered us a suite with an open garden bath whatever that is. We are going to have a bit of a rest for two days and mess around in the theme park, swim with the crocs, ( at least my husband is, although he doesnt know it yet LOL)and visit the silk factories. We will arrive in Chennai at the Park hOTEL in the afternoon on 30th August so maybe come up for a drink. I will email you before I arrive and present you with a melted down, silvery papered toblerone. hee hee. Hope there are some nice cheap silver markets where I can spend my last bit of money.

We may pop into Adyar on the way from MGM to Chennai. I used to be the secretary to a branch of the Theosophical society in Adyar where the famous Madame Blavatsy studied eastern religion and brought them over to UK along with her joints of mariuana apparently. Annie Besant, also used to live there. She was famous, or infamous for inventing contraceptives!! and Leadbeater who wrote tons of books about Yoga, and Hindu religions and desciples on the path of life etc was 'done' for meolesting young lads. Right load of rubbish but anyway I had fun years ago when I belonged to the society and definitely had some good experiences of life and its great pageant. So I would like to see it, although it is usually full of old ladies who have nothing better to do than talk to Masters about out of the body experiences. C U SOOOOOOOOOOOOON. JACKIE

Nick-H

Great

nuclear

Not to sound incredulous, but are you -serious-??

We went to Dizzee World early last year and it was anything but "to the same standards of safety and cleanliness"!

jackiegear

You ARE sounding a bit incredulous and a bit patronising especially as you went yourself!! I am assured the hotel is good and as for Dizee world, it will make a fun change after a month of doing the culture bit.ie looking at temples, quiet rainforest retreats, wildlife parks, houseboats on the backwaters of Kerala. So I think we deserve a bit of incredibilty and we will go for fun not cleanliness. In anycase, I have been in dirt before. For instance back in 1971 I was in Madras with no money at all so I have no airs and graces about dirt!! I am from dirt and to dirt I will go. Ashes to ashes dust to dust etc.

Nick-H

I'm with Nuclear on this one: the hotel etc may be fine, but I would not set foot on an amusement park ride in India.

There are no inspections; no enforced standards.

jackiegear

Ohhh. Allright then....

nuclear

*laugh* Sorry I made you mad. You're right, I -did- go, but I had no illusions whatsoever that it would approximate anything like an amusement park back home. We went to an amusement park in the Philippines a few years back so we knew what to expect, and Dizzee World was so far below even that place.

It was a last "fling" for folks leaving that following weekend and after living here a year at the time we needed something to do. But it's not someplace we'll go back to and if you're up to it, great, then go. I just don't want anyone to go there under the assumption that it's held to any safety standards whatsoever. Cleaniliness, perhaps, but it's still India, and the cleanliness was about on par. But safety...

-Michele
(most of a lifetime overseas... Belgium, Zaire, Algeria, Niger, home in the US, Philippines, Togo, India)