Dreams Tulum Resort & Spa

This was a resort with a smaller footprint than many that I have been to on the Mayan Riviera. There are 432 rooms. No wristbands and no reservations for dinners. The rooms were spacious, most had garden views. If you choose an ocean view room be careful that it is not near the activities pool which has loud music and lots going on. I talked to people who had the preferred club and they said it was not worth it. You have a separate area for breakfast and a roped off area for lounge chairs on the beach. There are two pools. One is quieter that the other. It is difficult to get lounge chairs both at the beach and around the pool. Shade areas are hard to come by. Even if you are a preferred club member that does not guarantee you a lounge chair. Only if you pay 50 US dollars can you have a palapa with service. The beach was a disappointment – rocky and filled with seaweed. Visibility in the water was nil even with googles. There are kayaks and one sailboat but being able to use them is a problem because of too much wind or not anyone there to help you. All information about the resort is on an app the QR of which one can download at check in. It has a map of the resort, all the menus for all the a la carte restaurants, activities and entertainment for the day. We enjoyed all the a la carte restaurants. Well prepared food and good service. The sushi restaurant was surprisingly good considering you are in Mexico. The ice cream stand and Coco café were nice additions where you could get ice cream and smoothies and at the café coffee and homemade snacks most of the day. The Teppanyaki restaurant is a waste of 20 US dollars a person. It was free at other resorts. If you have the option to fly into Tulum airport as opposed to Cancun take it. The ride from Tulum airport is 1 hour 15 minutes. Cancun's airport is busier and it is a 2 hour ride from most resorts. All in all a beautiful and well-maintained resort with friendly and helpful staff.

We just returned from a one week stay. We booked Preferred Oceanfront. Our room was nice and so was our view. Overall, we really enjoyed our stay. Usually when we travel there are always a couple of staff that stand out but here it was almost everyone we encountered. At the preferred desk Paolo was always so friendly and helpful. Breakfast at Portifino’s was great. The food was always good and it was a pleasure being served by Eliceo and Josmar. Honorio at Bordeaux did everything he could to make our evening perfect. You can tell how important it was for him that we enjoyed our experience. He truly was fantastic. I must also mention Armando at both the Italian wine cave and Sunset Grill. He gave us a great show making my Spanish Coffee tableside and then setup a very nice evening meal one night for us on the Sunset Grill roof. A couple of days we rented a poolside Bali bed and were served by Laura. She too was fantastic. Very attentive, always smiling and helpful. We also received great service in the preferred beach area by all the staff there. The bed in our room was very comfortable. Our mini fridge was always replenished. The room cleaning was a disappointment however. They kept taking our hand towels and face clothes and did not replenish them. What made it worse was that we did not ask for them to be changed. The beach was beautiful however you couldn’t really go into the ocean. It was very rocky and only a few people ventured in. It is least rocky in front of the sunset grill but still a challenge especially if windy with some waves. The buffet was not good. We went the first night and never went back. Service, food, atmosphere it was all bad. Stay to the specialty restaurants and if you can, upgrade to preferred and have breakfast at Portifinos. Coffee was also a disappointment which being in Mexico was very odd. It tasted weak even at the coco café. Entertainment was okay. The fire show and a couple others were enjoyable. The silent dance party that happened twice in our 7 days was kind of pointless. Not many participated and it offered no enjoyment to those not dancing. Perhaps stage that in the indoor dance club and have outside entertainment all can enjoy. All in all we really did enjoy our stay mainly due to the exceptional staff we encountered everywhere we went.

The food was fantastic, the site was clean, rooms were big, beds comfortable, staff were very helpful especially Horacio, the fitness and tennis coach.

We stayed in an oceanfront room with a beautiful view. The room itself was quite small, though — with two double beds, there wasn’t really space to lay out our suitcases. Housekeeping was phenomenal, and the overall facility was beautiful, very clean, and well maintained. There are two pools, both great. One includes a shallow section for small children (about 2 feet deep), which was perfect for families. The beach was gorgeous with clear water. There was some sargassum — worse on certain days and in some areas — but it wasn’t a major issue. Staff regularly cleaned it up using machines. The beach also had a small playscape, which was a hit with my kids. The food was typical resort fare — not a highlight, but about what you’d expect from an all-inclusive. We didn’t go out much at night, but my husband felt there wasn’t much nightlife available. The kids’ waterpark is located in the Explorers Club and is only open for family access from 12–1 p.m. Unfortunately, it was closed for maintenance for two weeks during our stay, which was disappointing. Staff were overall friendly, though not quite as warm or attentive as we’ve experienced at other resorts.

We've done several all-incusive resorts and choose this one in particular for it's location to things we enjoy in the Playa/Akumal/Tulum area. I'll start with the Pros: my husband isn't currently drinking alcohol, and after a couple days of us asking, they did indeed get him some NA beer. He really felt like he could enjoy the experience of a beverage in hand (that wasn't the super sugary ones) withouot the alcohol and that was very nice of them and improved our trip greatly. The majority of the people we encountered were very kind and wanting to do their best to help. You could also almost always find food avaialable and sevearl options that you didn't have to get too dressed up for which was nice after a day of sitting out in the sun and wind. The grounds are pretty and well kept and there seemed to always been fun activities going on although we didn't partake in much. Cons: The seats by the beach could use an upgrade, our room had half painted stuff and the smoke detector was missing from our room altogether. We didn't really care for the food options and I have a rather difficult allergy (garlic and onion), and while that's not their fault, I often had no options of what to eat - this tells me things are not very freshed and almost everything is already mixed up. I get this to a point feeding mass crowds, but it would have been nice to have some nicer fresh options that would have made eating easier for me. Be aware that there always seemed to be someone bothering us while sitting on the beach - for photos, to join a game, for a massage, etc. That got old as we were trying to just relax. All in all, the trip was nice and we had fun, but probably wouldn't go back here.