Dreams Vallarta Bay Resort & Spa — Hotel in Jalisco

Visited Feb 2024 - Stayed for a week - Just got back and had to post a review to sum up our experience. My Wife and 6yo daughter went with our company to this resort. Overall I would say the hotel star rating is slightly misleading, as hotels can achieve these ratings by checking boxes; and the total of our experience would affirm that the hotel might be more interested in this, than delivering an actual 5 star experience. To me, it is quite clear that this is a Hyatt franchise hotel and not an actual Hyatt resort. Hyatt should rethink its brand extensions in cases like these. Let me explain..

The night our company checked in, the hotel double booked several rooms that resulted in tired colleagues walking into rooms with strangers already in them, and other groups checking into rooms with the wrong bed(s) configurations. When we tried to address the issue, the front desk resisted upgrading as a solution, even though the hotel was "fully booked" it took a solid hour and a half of "hard" negotiation to have the situation resolved just so everyone could have a bed for that night; it then took till the next day past noon to sort everyone into an appropriate room. The planning for this trip was months in the making, so... ya.

The food was a solid C in my mind. Each of the restaurants they boast share kitchens with each other, and there was plenty of crossover ingredients showing up on the menus from each, including the buffet. We had a hard time finding food that was the right temperature, and didn't feel pre-made. On multiple occasions, we ordered something with raw tuna/"sashimi", only to be able to smell a warm fish smell on the food (which should never happen). The Italian place seemed to put cheese before herbs on the list of priorities, on nearly every dish (also not hot). The mexican place, also couldn't deliver a warm dish, and placemats at every table smelt like a musty dish rag, and we ate there 4 times, as it was the best option for dinner other than the buffet, and the seafood places ceviche gave my dad food poisoning. There were micro buffets in the lobby on the way to our room, and I bit into a crab cake (ball) only to find the interior to be chilled and the outside to be soggy. I dunno why their putting fried foods in a steamer bowl like its shepherds pie. They need an actual chef to come and crack the whip on food safety, and bring up the process there. For pete sake, You go to a resort to have piece of mind that the food and water you consume is clean, but we found ourselves choosing food based it's risk of making us sick, and my gosh, when the food risk gradient tilts in favor of any place outside the resort, you know there is an issue.

For my daughter; She was really looking forward to the Adventure Club, which claims it has a climbing wall, and trapeze trampolines and other exciting activities for kids, but when we checked her in one night so my wife and I could have a little date night, She came out saying it felt like school, and when they tried to do the climbing wall and trampoline, the staff said they had no harnesses and or that the tramp was broken. All I'm saying is, if it says it on the website, and kids are going to be thinking about this for weeks prior to the trip, you better deliver on that promise, or take it off your website as an attraction. No kid should feel like they just got check into school on a vacation.

As for the rooms, honestly they were nice. But, you can tell the rooms don't get much time to rest and repair between guests. Both our beds had a extreme body imprint gravity wells on both beds that would draw you into them while you sleep. A few of our staff reported leaks coming from the ceilings of their rooms that caused puddles. Our shower would cause water to collect around the baseboard just outside the shower door, and the water would travel inside the baseboard around the toilet and collect around the back side of the toilet, and the AC had a mind of its own. For almost a half-day the power was out.

In conclusion, we will be going somewhere...

We just returned from celebrating our daughter’s wedding at Dreams. Their experience was frustrating at best, but I won’t get into it here. Buyer beware…promises are not kept. However, the service staff was excellent! Upon arrival at the resort, we were directed to check in at the Preferred Club. It would be more welcoming to be greeted and guided to the Preferred Club, rather than following signage and lugging our luggage through the resort to the check in area on the opposite side of the resort. Once there, we were greeted kindly and offered a drink, checked in quickly and grabbed a bite to eat in the lounge. We were told our bags would be brought to our room, but 20 min. later, our bags were still sitting by the desk, so we brought them up ourselves. Oh well. The room was clean, but smelled musty. My husband, focused on the great Nespresso machine, but noticed only had one coffee cup and no coffee pods for the morning. He called down to have some brought up and then we went out to explore. When we returned to our room, no coffee pods, so we called again around 9:30pm. We went to bed around 11pm, then room service arrived about 10 min. later. We ignored the knocks 3 times. Then they called our room. My husband got dressed and answered the door and received 4 coffee pods. We ordered room service the next morning at 7:30 and were told it was a 60 min. wait. Around 9am our party texted that they were heading down to breakfast, so my husband called to see if room service got lost. He mentioned what we ordered, but not exactly. They said it was one the way, but as we left out room at 9:30, it arrived with the a stripped down version of what we ordered. We never ordered room service again. We went down to the preferred club for coffee two more times as they didn’t restock every day. The jacuzzi tub on our balcony was great, until I was dripped on from the ceiling above. Black moldy water damage dripped from several spots above my head. Only used the tub that one time. We rented two poolside cabanas on Sunday to relax after the wedding. As our party could exceed 8 ppl at a time, they insisted we rent both at a reduced rate of $400. But only brought one complimentary bottle of tequila, instead of two. The time frame was from 10am-6pm. Our server, Edgar, kept us stocked and served until 4pm, when he announced his service day was completed. We tipped him $80 cash, but he claimed he had only been tipped $5, and waited with his arms crossed until our daughter put another $50 tip on a slip charged to her room. We received no additional service for the last two hours of the rental. My husband and I put the cabanas on our room and all was paid when we checked out Tuesday, 2/21. This morning, 2/25, our daughter was confronted by their butler, Jose, as they sat at the pool on their last day before leaving for home tomorrow. He told them they had not paid for the cabanas. They reminded him that we had put it on our room and asked him to check our bill. They checked the wrong room #, and then finally confirmed that it had been paid for…with no apology. This was confusing, as my husband signed for the cabanas several hours before our time was up, they insisted that it be taken care of prior to 6pm, so they should have been aware of what room was charged. Our daughter got the 2nd bottle of tequila today. The overall resort is beautiful and the staff is friendly and helpful. The beach is clean, but it took over an hour for more beach chairs to be brought to our group area. We should have brought more cash, as the resorts two ATM’s were broken. You can get pesos at the front desk for a 10% charge. We would have tipped more and probably purchased more from beach vendors if we had had access to cash. We would probably stay here again, but would temper our expectations to NOT include room service, as it was pathetic. The breakfast buffet staff was the friendliest. And the pool servers were dependable when tipped regularly. The restaurant food and service was good. Probably a pretty average...

I want to post a more realistic review of this resort. If you're looking for a luxury vacation, this is a production of one, it's not authentic. The resort boosts that it is all inclusive, and that is mostly true on the surface. However, some caveats: The food that is served in the buffet, room service or at any of the smaller service grills/bars, is pretty mediocre at best. The food at the restaurants within was excellent though. So if you go, skip the buffet, room service and smaller food areas.

The cocktails were probably one of the more disappointing aspects of this trip. Yes, you can have as many as you like, but they are going to be largely watered down with mixers, and could hardly be considered alcoholic. The use of cheaper liquor further made the drinks untenable. Most mixers (and juice served in general) weren't fresh juices, they were mostly powder mixes.

The rooms were spacious, but nothing but an empty shell, devoid of any real comfort. The bed was rock hard and uncomfortable, and the pillows had been washed so many times that the stuffing inside had balled up into hard lumps. I didn't get a good night's rest out of any of the 6 nights we were there. I woke up sore and exhausted every morning. The air conditioning in the rooms sorely need to have their filters changed because the air that came out of them smelled very musty and dirty. The jacuzzi for our room was barely functional, the water would drain out of it consistently, so we had to keep the water running in order to use it. The towels provided were extremely rough and scratchy, as were the robes.

The convenience stores inside the resort provided some last minute reprieve for forgotten items. We purchased aqua shoes, some bandaids, and some bug bite gel. Although you may find what you need, it will be very expensive.

You will feel almost every minute there that everything provided has been cheapened at every turn. They will also provide you with opportunities to try and invest in their resort chain, but it's not an investment worth pursuing. We did attend the sales pitch to save money on a spa package, which was rather enjoyable. The staff was generally very polite, spoke English well (which is a plus, if you have no ear for Spanish like me). Everyone was as helpful as possible, very accommodating, so we tried to tip often, and generously, as I doubt that they are paid what they are worth.

My only staffing complaint was the wedding coordinator, Pauline, as I was here to attend a wedding and was part of the bridal party. Often the bride was left confused and uncertain of what was supposed to be occurring, and Pauline was no where to be found for the big day. Some things went awry, such as the bridal party's bouquets all went missing and we went without, the cake had been damaged at some point, and the photographer was left trying to take pictures as well as help us with coordination since Pauline had disappeared. I can't remember the photographer's name, however, he was very excellent and sweet. The food for the wedding was excellent, though the drinks were the very same watered down ones we experienced throughout the resort. The DJ was excellent, played music we could dance to, and we overall had an excellent time, and a successful wedding.

We didn't attend any of the functions provided by the hotel due to timing so I can't attest to any of those. The pool accommodations were great though, I especially enjoyed the pool with the slide. The ocean is right there, and I also very much enjoyed being able to splash about in the ocean at any time, day or night.

Overall, my experience was solidly okay. I think it's a decent place if you want an easy trip to bring your kids (which we did not, but feel they would have enjoyed it). But if you're looking for a lush, expensive feeling getaway for two, this is definitely not the experience you are looking for.

In the end, the resort needs to stop cutting corners, pay its staff better and upgrade...