Iberostar Selection Albufera Park

We stayed for a week at Iberostar Selection Albufera Park from 30 September with our three-year-old twins, in a Premium Family Room. We paid around £3,100 for the week. We deliberately chose these dates because the same room type was around £4,300 only about a week earlier, so there was a significant seasonal price difference.

Overall, this is a good family resort with a fantastic beach location and some excellent touches, but there are also several practical and safety issues that families with younger children should be aware of.

The biggest positive is the location directly on Playa de Muro. The beach is beautiful, with golden sand, clear water and a relatively shallow entry. It is public rather than private to Iberostar, so sunbeds are separately chargeable, although the hotel does provide useful items such as parasols, buckets and spades for guests to borrow.

The location is less convenient if you want shops, restaurants and activity immediately outside the hotel. There is a small supermarket opposite and buses run towards Playa de Muro, Alcúdia and Can Picafort, but the busier parts of the area are some distance away.

If you are hiring a car, be aware that the hotel has no dedicated parking. The surrounding spaces are public and free, but heavily used by beach visitors. We arrived around lunchtime and could not find a space, and the same happened when returning during the afternoon. On two occasions I ended up parking on the grass. Parking became much easier towards evening, so once you find a space you may be reluctant to move the car during the day.

Our Premium Family Room was a good size and we were lucky with its position, close to reception, the restaurant, ice-cream shop and laundrette. The laundrette was particularly useful with young children, and the room itself was comfortable with a pleasant garden area.

One concern for parents of very young children is that none of the main doors had an additional childproof latch. This applied to the sliding doors and the front entrance door, and our three-year-olds could open them from inside. As parents of non-swimmers, this concerned us, particularly when thinking about family rooms located close to pools.

There are some excellent family touches. The dedicated ice-cream counter was one of the highlights of the holiday and our children loved it. The 24-hour Star Café in the adjoining Albufera Playa is also very useful for sandwiches, cakes and drinks. Water stations are available around the hotel, and the app has some good features, including notifying you when your room has been cleaned.

We found the food mixed. There is plenty of choice and some themed evenings were better than others, with the Moroccan evening probably our favourite. However, I found the buffet repetitive fairly quickly and did not think the overall quality felt particularly premium. My wife was a little more positive, so this is clearly subjective.

We only managed to try the Mexican speciality restaurant because our daughter became ill and we had to cancel the Greek and Spanish bookings. The Mexican was okay rather than memorable. The restaurant reservation system could also be better. I agree with only allowing bookings once guests have arrived, but the app should make it easier to see live availability and book a time slot.

Another disappointment was Tamarindos, the beach/grill restaurant. It did not open once during our stay. We were told this was because of adverse weather, which made sense on wet days, but it remained closed on several warm, dry and sunny days as well. When paying an all-inclusive rate, advertised restaurants and facilities form part of what you are paying for.

The pools are attractive and there are dedicated toddler areas, but they were extremely cold during our stay. Our children barely wanted to use them, so we spent considerably more time in the sea.

I also had concerns about supervision around some of the children's facilities. Lifeguards were present, but the level of proactive supervision felt quite light. The large inflatable pool feature could become chaotic, and the lifeguard position did not appear to give a clear view of both sides of it.

The main trampoline was another concern. It is very popular, but there is only one in the main communal area and children of very different ages use it together. In my view, it would be safer to have more than one trampoline, ideally separated by age, with clearer supervision.

We also found some of the poolside tiles very slippery when wet and saw several people fall, including children and an older guest.

This is a lively family resort rather than somewhere for tranquillity. Our room's central location was excellent for convenience but meant hearing children, the trampoline and evening entertainment. It did not ruin our sleep, but families with young children who go to bed early should think carefully about room position.

Service was generally good and responsive. Staff were pleasant, requests through the app were dealt with quickly, and the hotel handled our daughter's illness well. There is not a resident doctor at the hotel, but a secretary during the day, or reception outside those hours, can arrange for the duty doctor to attend. In our case the doctor arrived in roughly 30 minutes and the consultation cost €140.

Housekeeping was adequate rather than exceptional. The room was generally cleaned, but there were some lapses with towels, toilet paper and attention to detail. We also noticed a strong sewage-type smell around the hotel on some mornings, although I cannot say where it came from.

Would I return? Probably not, although that does not mean this is a bad hotel. The beach is excellent, the grounds are attractive, our room was good, the ice-cream station and Star Café are great touches, and the hotel dealt well with our daughter's illness.

For us, though, the combination of the broad age mix around some children's facilities, relatively light supervision, cold pools, parking difficulties and overall price meant it was not the right fit to repeat.

At around £3,100 for our week, I did not feel the experience was sufficiently premium to represent particularly good value. Knowing that the same room type was around £4,300 only a week earlier made that harder to justify.

If deciding between paying extra for a Selection property and a cheaper Iberostar Waves — or even considering good self-catering accommodation near Playa de Muro — I would think carefully about what you actually value. The Selection property certainly looks more upmarket and has some excellent features, but I would not assume that paying the premium automatically gives you a dramatically better food or family experience.

For us, the standout feature was ultimately Playa de Muro itself. It is a good resort with some excellent qualities, but at this price I expected some of the details, particularly around family safety, supervision and overall value, to be better.

We’ve been coming to this hotel for over 15 years now, always enjoying our stay.

Unfortunately this time we found out the hotel is great, just as long as you don’t need any extra help. We were informed that our “platinum” status comes with a free late check-out, which was, of course, unavailable due to a supposedly “fully booked” hotel, with rooms that were obviously unoccupied. We reached out twice, asking if we could stay in our room for just 15 minutes longer, and were met with no understanding from the reception staff. Not only that, but on the day of our check-out there was a knock on our door at 12:01, followed by a phone call at 12:04 asking as to leave the room. It is incredibly disheartening that guests of over 15 years are treated with so little understanding and offered no help, not even an extra 15 minutes in a room.

This entire situation was a very unpleasant ending to an otherwise great stay. The food is incredible, the staff is amazing, and everyone other than the reception staff was helpful and friendly.