We went to Mexico for the month of January this year and decided to start the year off with a week of vacation at the Dreams Sapphire Resort & Spa which is an all-inclusive north of Playa del Carmen.

Anytime we’re searching for an all-inclusive resort to stay at I try to search for reviews/blog posts to read about others' experiences at places. Especially with a kiddo now (he was 22 months when we were there) there are extra intricacies and needs that come along with having kids that you need to account for so reading reviews really helps.

I didn’t see really any blog posts about this place from other people’s personal experiences so we just went off what we could find on the booking site and website -  especially wanted to write this for that reason and hopefully be helpful to others. 

Overall, we had a great time here. I mean no matter what we were at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico on vacation so that puts things in perspective and we were ultimately grateful to be there. 

But I will say from our experience, I don’t think we’d book to stay here again… unless some things changed. I’ll explain why below with details but ultimately it comes down to if I was booking another kid-friendly all-inclusive in that area, I would personally choose somewhere else.

For comparison, we went the year prior in February 2022 to Finest Playa Mujeres all-inclusive and it was a much better experience. They had absolutely everything for our then 11-month-old which made a big difference.

The Rooms and Accommodations

Our room was definitely fine but it certainly didn’t wow us. It just seemed kind of beaten up, I’m not sure how else to describe it. We did take our dog with us on the trip (since we were in Mexico for a month) and Jeff and I kept wondering if we got a downgraded room because we had our dog with us. I’m not sure. 

We needed a crib or pack-n-play for Porter to sleep in while we were there and were disappointed to find that there wasn’t one in our room when we arrived. Weeks prior to the trip, I had even sent a message through Booking.com where we booked the trip and sent an email directly to the resort letting them know we needed one during our stay which they confirmed and said “the special request of crib is already written in the system.”

After we checked in and got to our room and noticed there wasn’t a crib or pack-n-play there, we called the front desk and asked them to bring us one. They eventually brought one after a long wait and someone came to set the pack-n-play up in our room.  It was broken though on one side and I mentioned this to the gentleman setting it up before he left but he didn’t seem to understand what the problem was even though I pointed out the broken side to him. There is a photo below of what they gave us and this is obviously a huge safety concern. There also wasn’t a bottom on the inside of the pack-n-play! This all seriously blew my mind that they were completely fine giving this to a guest.

I spent a long time on the phone with the concierge explaining the problem and letting them know we had to have another pack-n-play because the one they gave us was broken and not safe. To make this a shorter story than the actual scenario was… they said they didn’t have any other pack-n-plays on the property and we would have to use the safety hazard one. I refused and then an hour later they eventually found one and brought it to our room. 

Basically, that certainly wasn’t the arrival we were expecting.

The Food

Overall the food was good but not great which is a common struggle at all-inclusives. For lunch, we usually had the grill next to the large pool which was mostly burgers, fries, and personal pizzas. They sometimes had fun setups as well. Breakfast at the buffet was just okay and we ended up going to the cafe for coffee, pastries, and fruit instead most mornings which we enjoyed more. By the end of the week, both Jeff and I were craving more fresh fruit and veggies. Weirdly enough they didn’t seem to have a lot of seafood available.

I will say the Asian restaurant and the hibachi were two of our favorite meals. The Italian restaurant was probably our second favorite. We were expecting to love the Mexican restaurant ya know given the location haha but it wasn’t great plus it took forever to get food and the service stunk (no one came by to take our order for a long while or refill drinks and I had to flag someone down and ask for a waiter to order anything).

Every night we had dinner at one of the restaurants and we had to wait a long time to get a high chair. Which was confusing to me because this was a very kid-friendly resort. It’s like they had minimal high chairs and had to share them between restaurants or something, I’m not sure. But we’d get a table and then have to wait 10-15 minutes with a wiggly child in our lap grabbing everything off the table while we wait for his seat was a bit annoying. 

The Service

The people were fantastic. We did feel like service was a struggle bus, not because the people weren’t awesome, but because it seemed like communication across departments or among employees didn’t happen very well or at all. They definitely need a new system or processes in place for overall communication among themselves and with guests.

Here’s what I mean as an example… one of our first nights we got room service for dinner and when we called it in they said it would take about 45 minutes. The kicker here is that no alcoholic drinks could be brought with room service- you had to get them at the main lobby bar (the first all-inclusive we’ve experienced this at). So when ordering food, we asked if we could be out of the room and they could just bring the food in and leave it on the counter because we figured if we were waiting anyway we might as well go to the lobby bar to get drinks and let Porter run around with other kids for a few minutes then when we came back our food would be there. The person who took our order said they absolutely could do that. We explained it a couple of times and it sounds like no problem.

Well,  when we arrived back to our room there was no food. So we called and they said someone came but no one answered the door so they took the food back to the kitchen. What?? Then we had to wait another 30 min for them to bring it back to us - cold. So it’s like there was no communication that happened between employees at all.

And of course, another example of this is the crib situation I mentioned above. Telling me they’d have one and then we arrive and there wasn’t one.

Kids Area

One of the cool things about this place is that they had a neat kids area. There were a couple of slides (that Jeff actually loved going down haha) and employees that would hang out with the kids for some of the time throughout the day doing activities. We didn’t take advantage of this because the kids had to be 3 years or older.

The Beach and Pool

The beach was beautiful white sand and was really great here. If you did preferred club you could have use of the palapas otherwise you get just normal beach chairs with no umbrellas.

There was a main pool and an adults-only pool. We had Porter with us so we stayed at the main pool majority of the time and it was overall great. Our only frustration when it came to the whole pool area was that people would come out crazy early in the morning and reserve chairs by laying their beach towels across them and it made it difficult to find any chairs at all for people who were coming out looking for a chair. We saw often that chairs would be reserved all day long and people would never use them. All of this could have been solved if they just didn't allow people to do this and took up the towels. 

Dog Areas

This was a dog-friendly resort and they had a couple of pet relief areas of grass and then other areas of grass as well which was great for Leon. On the dog front, everything was great.

I think I about covered our entire trip! But let me know if you have any questions in the comments below. This was our personal experience and again we had a good time overall but it seems like there are some improvements that could be made for guests. 

Funny enough though we’re going to the Dreams Macao Beach Punta Cana in Dominican Republic in just a few weeks for a family trip with my in-laws. I’ll definitely be reporting back how it compares and a full recap as well!