Family trip to Dubai for Half Term (May).
We travelled out of Heathrow with Qantas on the A380 and I have to say I was very disappointed in their economy class, the seats were very uncomfortable when compared to the Emirates A380 economy, so I’ll always recommend being on a Emirates plane on this route and not a Qantas plane. The service was shockingly bad, terrible food, no drinks served until around 2.5hrs into the flight, rude staff also, so it’s an airline I’ll not recommend to my clients until I experience them again I feel.
We stayed for a week on the Palm at the Jumeirah Zabeel Saray. This is a hotel I’ve sent many families and honeymooners to in the past, it’s a high end 5 star. It’s all the way around the palm, so does take a good 35-45 mins from the airport and I’d say 20-30 mins into the city. So again may not be the best location for all, depends what you’re after.
The hotel isn’t much from the outside but once you get inside it’s wonderfully opulent with a real Arabian and Turkish feel to the décor. No expense sparred kind of décor.
The rooms are huge, we had a double deluxe which consisted of 2 x double beds, and a lovely lounge area too with sofa, desk etc. Lovely balcony and huge bathroom.
We were on Half Board which meant we had a choice of about 7 restaurants in the hotel itself to choose from but could also dine in other “Jumeirah” hotels, of which the closest is the Madinat around 20-30 mins away on Jumeirah Beach (hotel runs a shuttle bus a few times a day to here and also their water park Wild Wadi and the Emirates Mall). So plenty of food choice. The standard of food was very high and we had some wonderful meals, even the regular buffet restaurant was fantastic and the food was varied every night. Worth pointing out that if you’re big eaters and like a full lunch as well as your evening meal then I’d recommend you pre book Full Board and eating in the hotel if you pay as you go is extremely expensive. As is drinking for that matter. A regular coke/sprite is £5 a glass, cheapest bottle of large mineral water is £6, Beer is £10, Prosecco is £15, so this isn’t a holiday for big drinkers unless you have a deep pocket! On that note if you are on a family holiday it’s a tad annoying that apart from the beach bar (which it’s hard to get a table in the evening, especially if you don’t want to be buy smokers) there’s no where to sit and have a drink in the evening if you have kids with you, apart from the lobby which totally lacked in any atmosphere so you didn’t want to sit there anyway.
The pool is “wow” a huge infinity pool and never felt overly busy, the usual busy sunbed situation however does occur here! This big main pool has 2 lovely shaded shallow areas so lots of kids in here, life guards everywhere too. There’s also a lovely pool which is shaded in the kids club with toys and slides, so we spent a lot of our pool time here, never struggled to get a sunbed. Around the pools you can get free bottles of mineral water and ice lollies too, so that’s nice.
The kids club was “okay” nice for a Air Conditioned area for the kids to go to when it got too much (was 40 degrees when we were there), but they never seemed to run any of the advertised activities or actively encouraged kids to engage and go in. So it felt that all the kids did was sit on the Xbox, which to be fair my 4 yr old loved! The kids club is open until 9.45pm.
Dubai has so much to go and see and do, we did the Atlantis waterpark which was fab, the Wild Wadi (was okay, needs a bit of a re furb and more for younger kids), if you only can do one water park then do Atlantis. We went and saw the fountains at the Burj Khalifia and wandered around the Dubai Mall, and we also did the 4x4 safari with dinner in the Dunes, which was my 11yr olds favourite bit of the trip. Dubai again has something to offer all different kinds of clients. The only people that may not like Dubai is those that want some real culture and history as it’s lacking in that area.