Hotel Review: Hotel Port Aventura, Salou, Spain

Last Christmas, my family of two adults and six children (three of whom are babies) decided to treat ourselves to five days and four nights at Port Aventura on the Costa Dorada in Spain. This theme park is situated ten minutes from Salou and a twenty minute drive from Reus Airport, or 45 minutes from Barcelona Airport. It is also served by the local railway and so is pretty accessible from local towns and cities. The Port Aventura theme park is owned and run by Universal Studios and is well known for some of it's white knuckle rides such as Dragon Khan and Furious Baco.

We flew in to Barcelona airport and hired a car to take us to the park, where we had booked to stay at the main hotel in the park, Hotel Port Aventura. The other hotels are Hotel Caribe and Hotel El Paso. As it was Christmas, the main park was open but the water park was closed due to the cold, but we were aware of this prior to booking.

On arrival to the hotel, we noticed that everything was nicely signposted so the newcomers could easily see what area they needed to go to. At the hotel, the porters, who were extremely friendly, helped us unload the car and they took our bags away for delivery to our rooms. My husband parked the car up while I went to check in. Thankfully, there was not a big queue as we were tired, and the bi-lingual receptionist was able to check us in immediately. He cashed some of our travellers cheques, provided us with our room keys, park map in English, and details of the breakfast times for the following morning.

Off we went to our rooms and we were happy to see that we had been given two adjoining rooms, each room with two double beds and a travel cot. The rooms had each a desk, television, air conditioning, fridge, plenty of wardrobe space and a bathroom. Our rooms had a full length window over looking a pool, but, as it was winter, it was closed. One could imagine that during the warmer months, it would be very nice. The rooms were clean and warm and comfortable and we felt safe in the fact that the rooms opened up to each other, so that our whole family was sleeping together.

The hotel staff were extremely friendly, and at several times of the day, there were opportunities for photo shots with the Park mascot, Woody Woodpecker. The Breakfast in the hotel catered for every taste, from a full fried breakfast, cereal, toast, coffee, juice, fruit etc. The kitchen staff were fantastic and every day sterilised the eight baby bottles that I required to feed the three babies (I had twins and another baby)

The facilities were very good and there were plenty of ramps for pushchairs, prams and wheelchairs in the hotel. At night, there was a kids club with singing and dancing and activities in all languages so that everyone was included. There were many restaurants surrounding the hotel and for picky kids, there was a MacDonald's in Salou, a five minute drive away.

Every day the room was cleaned and clean towels were brought in. The hotel was fantastic, the staff was brilliant and I definitely would return!