Dreams Estrella del Mar Mazatlán Golf & Spa Resort — Hotel in Sinaloa

We are on a family vacation. This has been a trip from hell. The servers (Ruffo, Esau, Hernan, Alonso, bell service, &a couple others) have been amazing.

The management level, Omar&Gabriela in particular, have been AWFUL. They have treated my family like we are scum &keep saying we haven’t paid for our rooms or upgrades. It’s May 2024, we booked &paid for our rooms &upgrades in December 2023. Their head of room reservations, Lourdes, has been “helping” us since December (email &phone calls) to book everything. We were promised coupons for things, credits for things as deals for the grand opening, we were promised the resort would be FULLY open for our trip. We understand delays happen, but weren’t told that there were any.

The hotel is still under construction. There are drills and machinery all day &night &construction staff all over the resort. Bathrooms around the pool are closed &you have to walk across the resort for open bathrooms. There are shards of metal, concrete, rocks, etc from construction all around the resort &around the pool &private cabanas. When we told someone, they blew us off &we had to get the pool concierge, Alonso, &he handled it around our cabana.

Restaurants are on rotation, not all open, &one isn’t open at all, another is only partially open. One is an adults only restaurant so really a family w/children have even more limitations (some nights only one restaurant open for families). The World Cafe (buffet) has also been closed for dinner at least one night we’ve been here so I couldn’t even take my toddler there.

The spa (which we were also promised packages to) is not open at all. They are trying to sell massages for over $300 (US) where they will do it in one of the rooms &doesn’t include all the amenities (hydrotherapy) that would normally be included w/that fee. The theatre is also not open, they hold certain nighttime entertainment in a foyer right outside of rooms. The entertainment schedule is not fully open, like advertised.

We arrived &all our rooms were incorrect (we had been on phones confirming &reconfirming for months) that we would have specific rooms. Emails were sent by Lourdes w/the rooms circled. Upon arrival we were told otherwise. Then had to wait 2hrs for our rooms to be available, only for 3 of the 4 rooms we booked to STILL be incorrect, &ended up having only one of those revised.

One room had no hot water in the showers for 4 days, 2 rooms had broken toilet seats, 1 room has water that shoots from hot/cold in seconds constantly no matter the temperature set. We call room service &the food doesn’t come for 2hrs &our orders are always wrong (whether we order in English or Spanish). We ask for waters &we are told there is a cap on how many we can get to the room at a time &they take 24-48hrs to bring them. 2 rooms have stains on the sheets, 1 was blood that wasn’t ours. Housekeeping one day took the tip money but left dirty cups &dirty towels. One of our group got food poisoning from lunch one day.

All of these things would have been understood better by our family if it was actually taken care of by the staff &if management didn’t keep trying to tell us that we are the problem. Gabriela said that their staff have said that we are loud &rude, &some of their staff, have come forward to say that’s not true &they like us. We’ve loved them &have felt it has been mutually fun &respectful in interactions.

The grounds themselves are beautiful &have so much potential once finished. The serving staff are great &would have earned this place more stars, but altogether we cannot in good faith give more stars. Management has handled this awfully trying to place blame on UVC &us when it’s been clear it’s been the actual hotel dropping the ball, not...

Due to the polarizing reviews i read; I wanted to write a very detailed review of this resort; Dreams Estrella Del Mar.

First off, booking with sunwing is very easy, having airfare, transfer and all-inclusive included is so helpful when booking for a family of four. We arrived and went immediately to the designated area and were greeted by the sunwing representatives and nexus transfer.

Upon arriving, we were greeted with champagne and our luggage was secured with baggage tags. We were directed to the check in desk. Miriam checked us in and since we arrived several hours before check in, she told us that we would get a call if our room was ready early.

We were then directed to the closest restaurant open. We then used the common washrooms to change into our bathing suits and spent a few hours by the pool until we received a call that our room was ready.

Geovanny took us to our room and gave us a very detailed tutorial of how things work. He was knowledgeable and very welcoming.

We were told to get the Hyatt app and this was key to knowing what activities were happening when and the various restaurants working hours. Everything is posted in several spots as well, however, I loved having the app.

We also met Victor upon arriving and asked if we’d like to learn more about the Hyatt club. He promised us $200usd in vouchers so we went to hear more about the Hyatt club, it was to be a 90 minute breakfast and presentation and it turned out to be two hours. However the kids were entertained the whole time, thanks to Estellitta. For us this membership doesn’t make sense but we can definitly see the value in it for others. We were able to use our vouchers for anything on resort considered an extra; such as the spa, excursions, anything not included in the all inclusive package. We decided to buy vanilla and souvenirs from the gift shop.

We went into Mazatlan one day, the concierge arranged for a cab to pick us up; they negotiated the price before we got into the cab, since we don’t speak Spanish. It cost us $35 USD. Ubers won’t pick up from the resort) We took the 45 minute drive into town and spent a few hours walking down the iconic boardwalk. We were able to get an uber back to the resort for half the price.

Overall we have had an amazing time! That being said, we have never been to a Dreams before so we don’t have that standard in our minds. To us this was the nicest resort we have ever been to and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The staff across the board have been amazing! Even the lifeguards and waterslide attendants, everyone was smiling and happy!

The daily activities run by Luis were a highlight for the whole family. His team included Tury, Brenda, Julio, Susanna and Fer but the whole entire team were awesome! If you needed something to do, the activities centre poolside is a great hub. Pool volleyball, the daily crazy game, water aerobics, beachside stretching, and so much more!

One thing to note is that this hotel is still in their first year, not running at full capacity and there are growing pains for sure but that being said, everyone is trying their best, you can feel it, they want you to enjoy yourselves. We can’t say enough good things about the staff. Always smiling, helpful, accommodating and we felt welcomed the entire week.

We would come back here specifically because of the staff and the wonderful time we experienced.

We were able to go watch the Latino dancing on our last night. What a way to end the vacation; the time and energy it must have taken to put on an hour performance with 9 dancers, literally Non-stop with costume changes!! Hello Vegas! Shout out to Tury, Julio, Brenda and Fernanda;...

Beautiful new resort. Gorgeous grounds located on stunning golf course. My wife and I spent 7 days at this resort and loved it. There are some good and some bad with everything. The resort is new and beautiful. Rooms were very nice and modern. Pools are amazing! Loved the infinity pool overlooking the beach. Every day we saw dolphins about 100 yards out. One day we even witnessed them jumping out of the water. What a spectacular show they put on. All restaurants were very good. We especially enjoyed breakfast every morning. Sandra at the omelette bar was so wonderful, as well as Alonso "Morning". They both made our trip so much more enjoyable. Tremendous service! Erik at the swim up bar was also very attentive every day to all our drink requests. My wife also has food allergies and the management and wait staff at all restaurants took these allergies seriously. They came by our table and made sure to explain the menu and what she could and could not eat. We have traveled to many all inclusive resorts, and we have never been treated with such class as this Dreams provided to us all week. Great job Juan and Andre at El Patio for taking such great care of my wifes menu needs. Now the cons we encountered. The beach is not very nice. Lots of grassy unkept areas between pool area and ocean. The nightly entertainment was sub par. They even had a Mexican theme party one evening and was charging $100 extra at the door if we wanted to take part. No thanks. We already spent thousands of dollars already staying here, why should we have to pay more? Not a great way to draw a crowd. I also witnessed some disgusting cleaning practices. I noticed bartenders literally just rinsing glasses clean then putting them on the clean stack. Gross! Thank goodness we brought our own glasses for ourselves and no other lips. Lots of people licking the tejian off glass rims and no thorough cleaning. Thats nasty! This is a great way to spead illnesses and other nasty diseases. Lastly, this resort is about 40 minutes from actual city of Mazatlan. We knew this prior to booking though. We went to town one evening and spent some time in Mazatlan. When we was ready to return to our resort, we tried to get a taxi for our return. Unfortunately, there are very few actual taxis to take you back. They have polmonias, and open air pick up trucks, but only a limited number of taxis for return trip back 40 minutes. We had no Internet service outside the resort. Eventually we had to go into a restaurant and log into their Internet to order an Uber. We finally made it back to our resort after much anxiety trying to get back. We later took a guided city tour with Amstar from our resort, and Juan was an outstanding tour guide. It lasted from 930 am to 430 pm. Well worth the money. Overall wonderful experience. Not sure we enjoyed the area of Mazatlan well enough to return, but the people of Mazatlan treated us so wonderful all week. If you do visit, and you golf, you must play. Its so beautiful! Several holes along the ocean. So gorgeous. Especially hole #14! Great job Dreams team....we really enjoyed our week. Looking forward to our...