"A lovely resort in a decent location, with great food and drink selections. Although I really enjoyed my time here, it was clear from day one that this resort leans not towards young families than older families or couples and I wouldn’t return for this reason - though that isn’t the hotels fault and it clearly serves its purpose for that cohort of people.
Pros -
Great staff, very attentive, friendly and always happy for to help out or even just chat. If the hotel is unable to provide something they’ll go out of their way to help you, and are more than happy to arrange excursions and activities. Specifically the bar and restaurant staff were great - we didn’t catch his name but Shore has a lovely bartender (lots of tattoos!) who loved a chat, recommended drinks and clearly had a lot of pride in his work, his drinks and service were outstanding, and staff were always positive and smiling in general.
Very clean and well maintained grounds. Rooms were lovely and well maintained.
Great selection of food and drinks (every restaurant, buffet area etc has different wines and the cocktails are varied though many come from a machine). The buffet keeps the same foods for breakfast, and lunch and dinner vary with each day having a slightly different dinner theme. Toward the end of our stay a large amount of new arrivals began their stays and the buffet got quite busy. The restaurants are lovely and a great change to the buffet however not the biggest menus and quite large portions, and it’s worth noting the started and dessert are self serve buffet style however the service makes these lovely experiences. There is also a BBQ held next to salty every day if you don’t fancy a buffet - burgers, hot dogs, grilled meats and snacks, and a grab and go snack area by salty which also serves a small buffet, pizza etc.
Great pools, though the adult one lacks a bit of ambiance. Most of the activities happen around the 3 main pools.
The land train into Alvor is great, although Alvor is a bit small and not much to do. I’d recommend Albar for a lunch/drink and Eden minigolf. Lots of tourist shops too.
The included day trip for stays of 7 nights is great - we went to Splash and Slide and had a blast. Worth noting you’ll need a taxi or uber for this as the hotel don’t seem to arrange transfers for these trips.
Cons -
As mentioned, unless you are a younger family, there isn’t all that much to do. All of the activities were geared toward much younger guests and didn’t vary much - for example, every day starts with some form of stretch, some variation of a mini fun game in the pools (table tennis, beer pong?) and daily water polo/aqua fitness but again mostly for children.
The animation/entertainment team only really care for the younger guests and in 7 nights we rarely saw them as they base themselves in the kids clubs. Although they appear for the scheduled pool activities, they don’t make an effort to engage anyone other than kids and are very scarce otherwise. They also made some strange and questionable decisions - leaving a beer pong table full of beer unattended with children in the pool, and during the Friday party, did some quite adult themed dancing and encouraged young children to do the same. It’s also very unclear what is happening and where most of the time, and you have to find things most things/areas on your own as the reception didn’t explain where activities, the bbq/snack area etc and events are.
The 3 main pools are quite loud and has very loud bassy music, while the adult pool is much quieter, but no inbetween - it’s either too loud or too quiet.
Evening entertainment is held currently in a tent which gets very busy as the other bars all shut at 7 - we assume this tent is temporary. Queues get long and lots of young children running around with nowhere else for a relaxed drink as an adult which can be overwhelming. The evening entertainment is hit or miss, some things were quite low quality while others much better.
As mentioned, around half way through our stay a big influx of new guests arrived - this made the last few days of buffet dining quite intense as it was very busy and although the staff remained positive and engaged, it was noticeable they couldn’t keep up - from starting our week with a lovely welcome and drinks orders immediately, we ended the week with little interaction with staff outside of being seated and no one taking orders for our drinks at lunch or dinner or even water unless we fetched this ourselves.
There’s a small games area - air hockey, table football and some arcade machines - these seem quite old and not maintained and you need money for these.
Overall, the hotel is a well maintained and lovely place to be, staff are great and the food/drinks were lovely, there’s just a few areas for improvement. Would highly recommend for a young family but advise older families (16+ teens or adult families) and couples to look elsewhere as this hotel isn’t intended for those groups and that’s fine as it serves its intended cohort very well."
