Scott Dunbar's web log

My wife and I just got back from a trip to Dreams Tulum Resort and I wanted to post a bit of a review of it for future travelers. We were there from June 16 through June 23 inclusive. What follows are my impressions of the resort and the Tulum area in general.

But first a little background. Almost every time I read resort reviews I wonder if the people are the same as me or if they want different things. So... this trip was for my wife and I only. We have 4 kids but they stayed with family at home. We're 40'ish and reasonably active. We enjoy good food and drink. We're pretty generic in most other aspects.

The Reservation
We booked our reservation through a local Apple Vacations agent. I personally find these types of people easier to deal with as they pretty much take care of everything. The advantage of Apple is that they have everything very well organized for your transportation down and back. They seem to be pretty cost competitive when you put everything together.

The Resort
Dreams is an all inclusive resort. If you don't want anything optional such as a spa treatment you will never need your wallet the entire time you're there. We find this to be a fantastic setup as you don't care nearly as much if the waiter brings you the wrong type of beer or if you don't like a particular drink that you ordered. It allows you to experiment with food and beverages that you might not otherwise experience if you were directly paying for it. We did tip some servers who seemed to go above the call of duty - like the guy who was sweating visibly as he delivered us our third round of drinks on the beach.

Having said that, Dreams Tulum is still very family friendly. There seemed to be lots of things for kids to do and there were many, many families there.

The resort is in the town of Tulum Mexico and nearthe Tulum Mayan ruins. But when I say near I mean pretty close, not next door. Some of the promotional materials we read lead us to think that they were a lot closer. They are about a 10 minute cab ride or a half hour bike ride. The ruins themselves are pretty impressive and can easily be explored in a half day trip.

The buildings and decorations made the resort feel like an old style Mexican building. The wood floors creaked a bit which added to the charm. The two pools (a "quiet" pool and a "play" pool with a swim up bar), coupled with the beach, allowed you to pick a location based on your mood at the time.

We stayed in what I have seen other reviews refer to as the "old" section - building 7. We were on the top floor of a three story building with an ocean view - a very beautiful ocean view at that. The room itself was great - I heard some people complain that their air conditioning wasn't great but we had no problems at all. Our particular building would not have been suitable for handicapped people (at least past the first floor) as it didn't have an elevator. It looks like the newer buildings do have elevators.

The resort is laid out in a long strip. We were lucky to be staying towards the beach side as that is where the majority of stuff is located. The end furthest from the beach has a theater, health club, and the bicycles for the Tulum bicycle ride. If you are staying on the end away from the beach you will be walking a good amount.

I would estimate that at least 90% of the clientèl were from the US. I have stayed in a Mexican resort along Playa Del Carmen before and it was a lower percentage there. What that means for those of us who like to, uh, people watch (yeah, that's the phrase) is that those bathing suit tops stay on the entire time. I convinced my wife that is was ok to remove it for an afternoon but that was the first day. After that it was glued on unless we walked a long way from the resort. I will say that the drink server on the beach circled around much more often once she decided to go topless though.

Restaurants and service
There are several restaurants at the resort and while they all have a different "flavor" they are all excellent. We love sushi and the sushi restaurant did not disappoint. The French restaurant was a bit surprising because the portions were fairly small but the presentation was great and the food tasted great. Please don't be the ugly American seated a few tables from us and order two entrees at once though. The Italian restaurant has a spicy tomato sauce that made my eyes water (and I love very spicy food) but I finished it off. At lunch time only two of the restaurants are open but they were still good.

At another all inclusive resort I stayed at there were limitations on how often you could visit the "good" restaurants. There were no such restrictions at Dreams Tulum. We had sushi and the outdoor Patio restaurant two nights each.

The overall service at the resort is superb. Whether we were on the beach, by the pool, or in a restaurant the service was always top notch. The servers seem to be genuinely concerned with making sure you were satisfied.

Extras
We had the beach side couples massage. It was at 9 in the morning and except for the construction at the dive shack it was very peaceful. The massage therapists were very good and very professional. It's not cheap at about USD $200 total for the both of us but it was well worth it.

We used our Apple representative to book a day at Xel Ha (pronounced shell-ha). It was pretty good - we saw a stingray foraging for food. It is a bit over-priced but we still enjoyed it. One thing though - if you think you want to go buy bio-degradable sunscreen before you leave home. Xel Ha charged 169 pesos for it - about USD $15.

My wife and I took a scuba lesson and trip to the ocean. Neither of us had ever been scuba diving before and it was incredible. The staff at the scuba shack was extremely friendly and professional. And the reefs are, for those of use who have never done it before, very impressive. Yes, I'm sure that there are more impressive reefs in Mexico but it was a great experience for us.

The downside
While Dreams Tulum is a nice resort there are a few things that I would caution you about before you go:

• Communication back home - given that we left kids at home we wanted to call them. While that was possible from the room with a credit card it was incredibly expensive. USD $40 for a 10 minute call and USD $9 for a failed call (we're still going to dispute that one). My T-Mobile cell phone was nearly USD $5 / minute so it would have been about as cheap. Internet access was extremely limited and expensive - don't bother bringing a laptop. While I do go on vacation to get away from it all I wanted to be able to communicate a little with back home.
• Salt Water - it takes a while to get used to taking salt water showers and brushing your teeth with bottled water. Add to that the salt water pools and you'll feel a bit overwhelmed with salt water by the time you leave.
• The ocean - if you're like me you like to wade out into the ocean. Not real swimming just stand up to your waist in the warm ocean water. Well don't count on doing that very easily at Dreams Tulum. There are rocks/reefs not two feet from shore (or on shore) along most of the beach. It gets a little bit better on the south side but not much. If you want an incredible beach walk south about a half mile outside of the resort. There you can wander out pretty deeply in only sand. Of course, you're off property so don't expect anything else down there.
• Construction - when we got the paperwork from Apple it stated that, while there was construction going on, it would be done by July of 2006. We thought "well if it is done then then they'll only be working inside by now". Bull. It looks like they are about doubling the size of the resort and they might be done by July 2007. While there was no apparent work being done on the weekend it occurred during the week for most of the day. On Friday, our last day, we took a walk along the beach at about 7:30AM. They were already working on the buildings. I did not stay directly next to the construction (other than the dive shack) so I can't speak for how much you could hear in the rooms. The construction on the dive shack was almost complete when we were there so if you're not going until, say, the middle of July 2006 and beyond it is likely to be done. We were told that the dive shack construction was because the old shack was destroyed in a hurricane. 

 
Summary
Overall I would recommend Dreams Tulum, subject to the caveats above. It really kind of frustrates me that, given the cost of the resort, the phone situation is the way it is. Everything else I could handle but that one still has me fuming. But if you're there with your entire family that may not apply to you.

Some more pictures

• Cenotes in front of the main building
• Construction site on the north side of the resort. This seems to have been abandoned and there was no work occurring during our stay.
• Construction on the south side of the resort. As you can see it is still very active and very much not done.
• The "fun" pool.
• Another view of the fun pool.
• A different view from our room
• Yet another view from our room

I'd encourage you to post any questions or comments you have - thanks for your time and have a great vacation wherever you decide to go!