Dreams Madeira Resort, Spa & Marina

Customer ratings & reviews

TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

424 reviews

• 

  Spa experience

  The spa experience and facilities are amazing and of a high standard. Marlene and Claudia made the massage experience very relaxing yet beneficial.

  Jul 31, 2025
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  Dreams Madeira, where dreams remain dreams.

  Dreams Madeira, where dreams remain dreams. The entire complex is a very special place to be and makes the hearts of designers and architects beat faster. Even if the cleanliness leaves a lot to be desired, the complex is a piece of jewellery. Everything else, however, can be forgotten and can also be found in a 3-star resort. Poor service, unmotivated, untrained staff, bad drinks for which you have to wait up to an hour and a buffet that would be better in any school canteen. Fortunately, because we wouldn't put our children through what Hyatt puts us through here. You shouldn't touch the oysters! In general, the quality of the food is inadequate and everything is cold. In the themed restaurants, if you manage to make a reservation in the poorly organised app, the service is also a disaster and the food is the same as in the World Café. The spa is beautiful and high quality and the staff is just amazing. The café on the first floor, on the other hand, is great and the staff is friendly and on the ball. 3 out of 5 points are the stars this hotel deserves.

  Jul 31, 2025
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  Never 5 star 👎 Many basis and continuous errors, dirty and cold 🥶 pools. Not a holiday experience!

  On very windy part of island but not geared up for it. Cushions not tied down to chairs - the chairs are stacked and therefore you cannot use them. Pool and surrounding area not cleaned enough. Food and trays strewn across. Lots of staff around but only 1 or 2 taking orders, making drinks, and others just standing around watching the queues. A la carte restaurants always got something wrong with our order and booking system is terrible. Restaurants regularly ran out of food half hour after they opened. I didn’t find any staff approachable or friendly. Severe language barrier. Preferred club not worth it, ants in rooms, amenities not replenished or even there in the first place. Snacks not replaced in the lounge. There are waiters in the buffet but they do not assist you with finding a table, or anything you need, they only clear plates (slowly). Kids club was good as was the coffee shop. Entertainment was very poor. Resort has potential but it should not be open until issues are all addressed. First and last time ever trying a Hyatt resort, and we travel 6-7 times a year. Do not book, otherwise you will spend time trying to feel on holiday as opposed to that lovely feeling of being on holiday and feeling relaxed. Service falls down here and you spend your time asking for things you should already have. Staff and management do not care if you are or are not having a good time.

  Jul 29, 2025
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  Very disappointed, not 5 star.

  This hotel is in a stunning location. The hotel itself is like a little village. It has the potential to be a five star establishment but is far from that at the moment. We stayed for 10 nights and had 3 rooms, all in the preferred rooms.  The rooms are spacious but also inconsistent in the items provided. Some had no towels, another no face clothes, pool towels missing.  The refilling of the mini bar was not done unless we phoned and complained. That might sound trivial, but the rooms were up a very steep hill in block 6, there was a swim up pool for the rooms so we spent most afternoons up there and needed the drinks in the mini bar, otherwise it was a long walk down and up the hills. The pools at the hotel were all very cold. No good for toddlers as they had blue lips after about 10 minutes. There is not really any other activities for young children, the adventure zone allows them in for an hour twice a day but there is not much for them to play with. It would have been nice to have a toddler playground. The splash pad was at the top of the hill and cold as exposed to the winds and again, very cold water. Restaurants were "interesting". The world cafe buffet was not good at all. Food barely luke warm and lots of flies. The other restaurants needed to be booked on the app at 8am each day. We managed to book one of them for most days, the service was hit and miss. Sabor was a good option for lunchtime and Pablo and Hassan were excellent. A few weeks before arriving I had exchanged emails with the hotel to arrange a reservation at Sabor for my daughter's birthday, along with the table to be decorated and a birthday cake. I checked these with the guest experience team once at the hotel and they confirmed them. The day before the booking I received a notification on the app saying they couldn't decorate the table as they were short staffed, but would supply other amenities to make it a memorable celebration.  Well, it was memorable but all for the wrong reasons. No decorations, no amenities and no cake! I complained to the concierge in the preferred lounge, they asked the F&B manager to speak to me. He turned up and said it was a miscommunication. That really isn't good enough. He said the manager would contact me the following day regarding my complaint.....I am still waiting. My daughter had water dripping through the ceiling in her room for 3 days. Despite numerous calls and visits to reception to complain, no one did anything about it and I suspect it is still dripping! The management clearly don't care. The staff just say yes to guests and then nothing happens. It also shows lack of care that they do not acknowledge any reviews here on TripAdvisor.

  Jul 28, 2025
• 

  A wonderful place with a little room for improvement

  Take home message if you (understandably) can’t be bothered reading the whole review: If you’re a fairly laid back person and don’t stress the small things in life, you’ll love this place. If you can’t be happy unless every i is dotted and every t crossed with the precision of an expert, then it’ll fall a bit short for you. And make sure to do the whale watching tour with Madeira Sea Emotions! We stayed 10 days as a family of 14 (8 adults, 6 children ranging from 1y to 7y) and had a wonderful time. Is it 5* standard yet? No. Did it matter? No. The staff work so hard, and everyone was lovely. Some staff are incredible assets, while lots of staff have lots to learn but everyone has to start somewhere, and as a new resort you have to expect these teething issues. The transfer from the airport is only 15 minutes! Huge bonus with children. The weather varied but on the whole was warm and beautifully sunny. Pack a jacket for the mornings - this was the chilliest time with the wind. No matter how the day started, it was always sunny in the afternoon. It’s truly all-inclusive, we didn’t pay a penny all holiday. The drinks are top quality, not knock-off spirits, watered down beer or cartoned juices like we’ve had at other “all inclusive” resorts. The resort is hilly, which we enjoyed. It helped burn off the extra calories! There are buggies that will take you everywhere at any moment if you need them. We had no trouble with insects in the room but a few in our party did. One room had trouble with air con. A complaint was made, and a lovely receptionist scoured the resort to find us at the splash park, to sit down and discuss each detail in minutiae so she could sort it out. The rooms are beautiful. I have never had a walk-in-wardrobe on holiday before! Great toiletries and top-quality hair dryer provided. Fantastic views. Mini bar restocked daily. TV had internet access and easy to screen-mirror so you could watch pretty much what you wanted. Excellent WiFi throughout the resort. The food in the buffet was absolutely fine, verging on great some days. The only issue for me was the lack of labelling of food. With a shellfish allergy it meant I was nervous to try some of the lovely-looking unlabelled dishes. But I didn’t go hungry, the cooking stations and salad bar always had something great to offer. Don’t miss the BBQ hidden away outside, it was brilliant every night. Breakfast was great with an omelette station and all the fresh fruit you could stomach. I didn’t see a huge problem with flies. We ate most lunches at the pool bar, which was fantastic. Huge shout out to Antonio, who had a superhuman efficiency, alongside a lovely lady whose name I didn’t get. Great food, cocktails and quick service every day. The a la carte was pretty impossible to secure for a group of 14 - the tables book up so quickly and when we asked reception if they could book for us as we were a large group, we were met with a brick wall. Not what you’d expect from a 5* hotel. However when I asked room service to do a little something for my husband’s birthday, they baked a huge cake, and provided fizz and soft drinks for our whole party. It was a really lovely touch which they didn’t charge a penny for. On the couple of occasions we did manage to eat out, we were disappointed with the slow and confused service. Teething issues, which were probably amplified by a group of our size. So we stuck to the buffet and pool bar, but didn’t feel disappointed by this in any way. We did a whale watching tour from Madeira Sea Emotions on the marina in-resort, which was a real highlight. We saw some pilot whales which were beautiful, and some flying fish which were hilarious. This, however, only took up about 15 minutes of the 2 hour tour, but we weren’t left disappointed as they turned the boat into a 90s disco and whizzed some doughnuts round the bay which was incredible fun! And great to see the beautiful scenery of the island. Highly, extremely highly recommend. The ice cream shop on the marina is exceptional - don’t miss it! The one thing that was missing was a proper resort shop. I didn’t pack inflatables or snorkels because we expected to buy them there, but they had nothing of the sort, and had a hard job finding any in Funchal. The snack and drink selection was great though. And wine prices are hard to beat for quality wine. The bar can get overwhelmed at night, it’s not really big enough for the number of guests. So we spent most nights on the beachfront having a drink at Voce while the kids threw rocks into the sea. We never had to wait for drinks and the scenery and sounds of the sea were beautiful. We never got bored. We’d spend a morning by the sea with the kids building structures on the rocky beach or fishing for crabs, then move to the pool for the afternoon, then up to the brilliant splash park to end the day. The kids club was excellent on cloudier mornings. The arcade machines have hundreds of retro games. They also have two Nintendo Switch consoles, and two desktops with all sorts of games on. Add in the usual ping pong, table football and table-top games and you won’t be bored. The toddler area was beautifully clean. The kids club staff were hilarious, engaging and SO hard working. The barista-style coffee shop was impeccable, even by our family’s high coffee standards. Don’t miss the smoothie of the day! I could say so many more positives but I’ve prattled enough. We had a wonderful stay and would return in a heartbeat. Grab a bargain and get an almost-5* holiday at 3* prices while it’s in the “teething-problem phase”, because once they’ve ironed out the creases, it’ll be reflected in the price.

  Jul 28, 2025