Hotel-Aparthotel Dorada Palace — Hotel in Salou

There is no way on earth that this is a 4 star hotel!  Here are the good points:|||Powerful showers in the rooms.||The adults only rooftop area is lovely (but you have to pay for your drinks, they aren't included under all inclusive, which is a bit of a contradiction!)|||Now for the bad ones:|||The toilets in reception are filthy.  Frequently missing toilet rolls and hand soap.  The disabled toilet did not have any soap in it and the ladies toilets had a broken tap for the duration of our 11 night stay, despite this being reported to reception.  ||Massive queues at reception, no matter what time of day or night.||Massive queues at the pool bar during the day. Clearly not enough staff.||The food is terrible.  It has obviously been made with the cheapest possible ingredients.  Lots of it is just mush.  No proper desserts, just ice-cream cones and lollies in a freezer.  Like being in a cafeteria!||Nowhere near enough sun-loungers for the number of guests in the hotel.  The doors to the outdoor area also remain locked until 9am.  This has resulted in the ridiculous situation of guests queuing up at the doors from 8am and then racing outside when the doors open!||There are no parasols around the smaller pool.  It is impossible to sit comfortably around the pool and protect children from the sun with no shade at all.  (My 75 year old Father, who is in ill health, put a sun-lounger under a tree and was immediately told to remove it.  He wasn't blocking any paths and wasn't in anyone's way.  The lifeguard later put his own chair in the same spot!). ||You aren't allowed to wear sunglasses in the pool, even prescription ones, apparently for safety reasons.  So if you have bad eyesight like me, you have to go in the pool without being able to see anything around you (which is surely more dangerous than wearing glasses!).||The staff turn the lights out in the reception/bar area more or less as soon as the bar shuts at half 11, even if guests are finishing their drinks.  Several times we ended up sat in the dark, despite being sat chatting and playing cards whilst we finished our drinks.  We once asked them to put the lights on so we could see what we were doing and were met with a rude response.  ||No luggage room to store luggage in on the day of departure.  So cases are constantly piled up everywhere the reception/common areas.||The reception area is worn and grubby, which was a surprise as it was apparently refurbished last year.  Also the layout is bizarre - the lifts are located in a narrow corridor at the side of reception, which is only wide enough for one person to pass at a time, so when people are queuing to use the lifts with luggage, etc. it is chaos with people trying to get past and dodge each other.||The rooms are tiny with hardly any storage space.  One small wardrobe and a few drawers inside.  No bedside drawers or any drawers in the dressing table.  As a family of 4, there was nowhere near enough room for our stuff and we had to live out of our suitcases piled up on top of each other on the floor.  The layout of the room is also odd - if the wardrobe door is open it totally blocks the walkway and it is impossible to get past to/from the bathroom or to actually leave the room! ||Theme park - Jet2 sell this hotel as having free theme park tickets as standard.  No small print excludes this.  It even says it in the Jet2 brochure on the plane!  When we tried to book our tickets at the hotel, we were told they weren't included.  We queried this with the Jet2 rep and showed her the part of their website which says the tickets are included and although she agreed this is what it said, she explained that you have to book a different package to include the tickets.  So basically if you want the tickets you pay a higher price for the holiday, so you are effectively buying the tickets anyway!  Which would be fine if that is what it says on their website but it is completely misleading.||The kids club is completely unsafe.  Kids are able to get out of the back of the building where they can freely access the steps up to the pool area.  I took my 4 year old son and waited outside for a while to make sure he was ok.  I went in to check on him, couldn't see him and was told to look outside.  I went outside and he was with 2 other small children, totally unsupervised.  One of them was trying to pull down a rusty old metal basketball stand, which could have caused serious injury.  The area surrounding the club is overgrown and untidy, and there was a pair of mens underpants outside of the entrance for the duration of our 11 night stay!  ||The towels in the room aren't replaced regularly.  We asked for more several times but they never arrived.||The little we saw of the entertainment was dire.  The animation team did their best for the kids but the rest of it was absolutely rubbish.|||In summary, don't waste your time and money...

Unlike the recent reviews here, we had a great time at Dorada palace and we really enjoyed our stay there. First upon arriving we were greeted by the smiles of the reception guy, checking in was fast and smooth and we were pleasantly surprised to know that our room is ready for us although it was only 11 am (checkin is at 3 pm)

Pros: 1-Hotel & rooms: The hotel is very clean and well maintained, corridors are always clean and smell good. The room is nice, good size, not too small. It has a balcony with a small table and 2 chairs. It has no kettle/coffee machine though and there is a mini bar. House keeping service is excellent as rooms are spotless cleaned everyday.

2- Food Unlike many people, we really enjoyed the buffet. It was of a high quality, always hot, fresh and tasty. Our only concern was it was very heavy on the pork with the lack of other alternatives, which was not nice sometimes. It was the worst in breakfast, as they only offer bacon, and pork sausages, with no other alternatives. For lunch, you may find pork filets, ribs, meatballs and only 1 or even non meat alternatives (chicken or beef). There was always a fish option to be honest but I don't eat fish so it was not always easy. The worst thing for me was the burgers, even those they make them with a mix of pork& beef which is something I've never heard of and that was not nice at all. Needless to say that the hot dogs and cold sandwiches available for snacking at the pool were again both pork and ham so we couldn't enjoy those as well. But other than this issue the food was great and tasty especially the guy at the eggs station doing amazing omlettes. They also offer pizza everyday for dinner which was always delicious and fresh out of the oven. We also had no issues with picking slots for eating, I actually believe it makes things easier and less crowded.

3- Staff& Animation I would say the best thing about this hotel is the staff. The second day of our stay we found that our sink is blocked, so we informed the reception upon leaving for breakfast and a couple of hours later we were back to our room and it was fixed. People at the buffet restaurant are all also working very hard to keep everything smooth, clean and organized. A big shout out to the animation team especially Javi abd Andrea who work really hard to make people enjoy their time. Midday animation was really good for both adults and kids, they organize diferent tournaments throughout the day; Ping pong, basketball, darts, sjoelen and kubb. There's a water polo match everyday at 3pm which is also so much fun and brought everyone together. They even annouce the winners for each sport in the evening and they get a certificate signed by the team which I found to be a nice gesture. Night entertainment is usally mini disco for kids followed by a kind of show for everyone.

5- Beach The beach is less than 15 minute walk, and it's actually a nice walk with local shops all around.

6- They have a free shuttle to and from Port Aventura with fixed times which was also another plus.

Now to the cons: 1- As I said above, being so heavy on pork is fine and understandable, it's the lack of alternatives that sometimes made things difficult.

2- They don't offer you towels on the pool and you're not allowed to use the room towels, so bring your own towels or else you'll have to pay for them everyday. We also found out that people reserve their place on the pool very early in the morning and don't come back for hours, so fi you come down by 10 am you may not find a place by the pool for the rest of the day which is very annoying, I think the hotel needs to do something about it.

All in all it was a very pleasant experience and I'm glad we didn't listen to the bad reviews...

Currently staying at this hotel and are due to stay for two more weeks. We arrived this morning after being up since Wednesday morning, we have yet to sleep. Once we arrived the problems arrived thick and fast. There was a problem with the booking saying that one of the passengers was meant to arrive on the 25th and was a no show, this was not the case as we had the booking confirmation in front of us saying we were supposed to arrive on the 28th. After an hour of waiting they finally sorted this problem and we were given our rooms but we couldn’t go in them until 3pm (it was about 12pm at this point) so we put our baggage in the store room which cost us €15 for three cases which is unrefundable. Which is absolutely ridiculous as we are frequent visitors of Salou and have never had to pay a hotel to store our luggage for a few hours until we could go into our rooms. Nevertheless, we came back at 3pm and got into our rooms, immediately it became apparent that we didn’t get what we booked. We booked two twin rooms and paid for two twins rooms and got 1 twin and 1 single, after speaking to TUI we were also told that we were supposed to have sofa beds which neither room has. The rooms look absolutely nothing like the pictures posted by management in any shape or form. The twin room currently has no functional air con, reception was notified immediately and at 10:50pm they still haven’t fixed it and won’t until tomorrow at the earliest after we were promised by reception it would be fixed tonight. That room is now not available to sleep in as the temperature resembles a sauna and with no air source( we have a balcony on the main road so to loud to leave open) we are left with the single room to share between 3 adults with a bed that would be classed as a small double in the UK. Just when we thought the problems were over, both fridges in the rooms don’t work, meaning we now can’t keep any drinks cold to have during the night etc. The rooms are dated, the plugs for the bathroom sink don’t work and the shower heads resemble something from the 80s. We were asked our three preferences on the rooms before we booked out of a list of options, we picked, adjoining rooms, overlooking pool and high up. All of which have been ignored so what the point of asking was I have no idea. Reception are fully aware of all these problems and seem totally and completely unbothered. I got given a form to write down my complaints and when I asked what would happen with this form I was told it would be filed and looked at for future improvements, so nothing to help our current situation. We have been offered no apology from the hotel , no mangers have come to speak to us to try and resolved these issues. At one point of complaining to reception I was waiting in and 40 minute queue of people full of complaints. No TUI rep is present at the hotel so we have had to phone the helpline twice now and still waiting for a phone call back that I was told I’d get immediately. There are a few positives I would like to mention as I do want to give the hotel a fair review, the lobby and most public areas are beautiful and while the food choice is restricted, what there is, is fresh and good quality. Unfortunately that is the end of the positives we have found at this hotel. We came to this hotel with an open mind even after seeing bad reviews after we’d already booked and thought maybe people were being a little harsh, there is no strong smell of fresh paint and there doesn’t seem to be much construction work going on in the hotel anymore as I know a few other reviews did mention these issues. Not a great start to a holiday we were all really looking forward to, I would consider very carefully before booking a holiday at this apparent...