Hotel Acao ( Former Hotel New AKao Royal Wing)

It's important to know this hotel is two buildings with two front desks. Your taxi will expect you to know which one you are visiting: HORIZON or OCEAN. Our reservation described our room as "Horizon double" and so we needed the Horizon Wing. The buffet restaurant option was astounding. We loved the food. There were many choices of Japanese foods and a few foreign interpretations, as well as fresh vegetables, soups and children's food. One building is situated above the other, on a gorgeous sea cliffside. The bottom floor of the Horizon Wing connects to the 15th floor of the Ocean Wing via a covered walkway and spiral staircase (wheelchair access by elevator). Our room was on the top floor of the upper wing, and meals were served on the very bottom at 2F of the lower wing! This required a transit of up to four elevators and 25 different floors. As you can imagine, this meant we were at the mercy of the grandmas eager to embark/disembark at each floor during busy times, and so it takes a while to get around this hotel. My only complaint is there were NO stairs available between Horizon lobby and 2F. This meant, we had no option to climb stairs, we had to use the elevator which was congested between Horizon Lobby and Horizon 7F. There are a number of onsen options scattered around the various floors. In fact we had a private bath option just up on our floor, but I did not think it seemed a good value. If you want a mixed male/female onsen then that is your best option. We very much liked the SAIKAI big onsen on Horizon 3F. There are fancier options but the walk would have been longer for us. We also visited the children's indoor swimming pool, down on Ocean Wing 2F. It needs to be booked in advance which for us, was nothing more complicated than picking up a paper form and bringing it back filled out. There were floating toys available for a modest rental fee. A pleasant lifeguard was on duty. We greatly enjoyed our single night at New Akao. We wish to stay longer next time.