Hotel Riu Madeira - All Inclusive

“Lovely break in excellent hotel”

A fabulous stay over the Easter holidays! I don’t understand the people moaning about the food. This was by far the best all inclusive buffet we have experienced. Breakfast and lunch were better than dinner but everything was fresh and there was such a wide choice. We love seafood so the fact t... more

A fabulous stay over the Easter holidays! I don’t understand the people moaning about the food. This was by far the best all inclusive buffet we have experienced. Breakfast and lunch were better than dinner but everything was fresh and there was such a wide choice. We love seafood so the fact there was such a range of this was brilliant, and different interesting salads every day, as well as cheeses, fruits, nuts etc. They had catered for the people who just want to eat chips and burgers etc and not try nice new things too - these were tucked away around the corner! The desserts were also lovely; lots of little things to pick from. This was spoiled a bit by the fact they included a chocolate fountain on one day and I hate the mess and germs of these, and the unsupervised children (more on them later) but this was only a minor thing. We never saw the food running out. I am really fussy about food quality and cleanliness and I was not concerned at any point. By the pool there was also a snack bar with plenty of choice. The entertainment was not our thing - I’ve never been to Butlins but I imagine it was a bit like an upmarket holiday camp. Some of the dance shows were quite good but the magician was comically bad and the Elton John tribute only did about five slow songs, all sitting at the piano - not sure he could have managed the upbeat ones! Again this was all spoiled by the children, or rather, their parents who were obviously taking a holiday from parenting. They were just running around everywhere, into people and tables, and nobody was doing anything. We noticed in a few cases the parents weren’t even in the ‘theatre’ - the children had just been left. Every night the poor DJ/compete was having to make announcements asking the parents to take their kids off the stage so they could prepare it for the acts, and every night he had to come out and move them himself. The lack of parenting was shocking. We have no choice but to go in the holidays as one of us is a teacher and we picked this one because we thought that not being near attractions etc would mean there weren’t so many children. It was blissful for the first few days as we travelled on Good Friday but then they all started to arrive. The pool area is lovely. There are two pools - one heated and one not (the y heated one is quite chilly). There is also an indoor pool but we didn’t have reason to go there as the weather was so lovely. There are so many sun beds there is no reason to reserve them, but of course some people were making themselves look silly going down during breakfast and reserving them every day, and families making camps by turning them around and putting their inflatable crocodiles down. There really was no need and embarrassingly it was the British people doing it. You can have clean pool towels every day if you want - the pool guy is there til 5pm. We ate in the Kulinarium one night - it was lovely. Our room was on the first floor with a balcony. It was very quiet as it overlooked partly the sea and partly a side road next to the hotel. One thing I would say is that the tiled corridors are quite echoey/noisy if people are being inconsiderate when leaving to get early flights. The hotel is scrupulously clean and the entrance very grand! If you use the hotel app you can request anything you need - we asked for an iron and it arrived in four minutes! Nothing was too much trouble at reception. There is a courtesy coach in to Funchal but we only used it once, preferring to do our own thing. The Tui rep told us about the Bolt app (like Uber) and we used this to get around. It was great and cheaper than paying the yellow taxis direct. There is a man made ‘prom’ along the back of the hotel. If you follow it up (steep!) to the right you get to shops and if you go to the left you get to a stony beach area with umbrellas and platforms for sunbathing/reading and a cafe/bar as well as a calm area to swim in the sea. Other than that there isn’t much around the hotel and you would need to travel. We didn’t mind this as we just wanted to relax and recharge as well as doing a few walks/trips. Overall we loved this hotel (just maybe not some of the people!) I’m not sure we would travel to Madeira again though as we had a 24 hour delay getting home (we were very disappointed not to be put back in the Riu and sent somewhere else instead)… and definitely wouldn’t book with Tui again as they were so spectacularly useless in that situation!

less