We went to Balaia Atlântico for a week in July with all inclusive and we loved.
We have a 4 years old boy and he also had a great time. The pools are lovely, the apartment very spacious and well decorated and the restaurant very good. Nice food and nice people.
In my opinion you need to have a car to take the most of your holidays and go to the lovely beaches around (Rocha Baixinha Falésia, Barranco das Belharucas)
I will go back again to Balaia Atlântico as soon as possible.

After reading the "official" write ups we were expecting a fantastic place. Myself and my Wife went for our first holiday without kids.
The rooms are nice and the staff are friendly ...with the odd exception. It's more like a 3 star than a 4 star hotel.
The food was absolutely terrible and after a few days the smell of Garlic from the Restaurant became overpowering and unbearable.
The food was stodgy and unimaginative.To make it worse sometimes the owner will appear and have the best of Steak or Lobster served to him while sitting in the Restaurant ....If the food is not good enough for him why should it be good enough for the "paying" guests ?.
The courtesy bus stops running too early (8:30)and a it takes a long queue for a Taxi back from Albufeira.The Hotel is not near anything worth seeing so unless you Taxi you're stuck there.
All inclusive was a big mistake and next time i'd stay nearer to the centre of things.
John & Eileen from Waterford Ireland.

The initial overview of the Hotel on arrival at the reception was not as expected from what we had seen in the brochure. It looked more like a poor 3 star hotel. When we checked into our apartment we were pleasantly surprised at the high standard of accommodation. The apartment was cleaned daily. We were All-inclusive, which was a big mistake. We have stayed at many All-inclusive Hotels, and this was by far the worst!! The food was awful. There was very limited choice. The food was generally overcooked and tasteless! The Hotel was very quiet, so the kitchen being "busy" would not be an excuse. I recommend you take advantage of local restaurants rather than take the All-inclusive option of this Hotel. This also helps support the local economy, as All-inclusive Hotel have a very serious impact on the local restaurants. The staff were always friendly and willing to help. This Hotel is located in the middle of nowhere. If you like to go out for a stroll don't stay at this hotel, although Taxis are cheap and the centre is only a 10-minute ride away. I would stay at this Hotel again, but only on bed & breakfast.

Very impressed. My husband and I loved this hotel, it was very clean and tasefully furnished, well deserved 4 star rating.

The kitchen contained everything we needed and again it was very clean (as both my husband and I are chefs this came up to both our hygiene standards). It looked like most of the utensils, saucepans (everthing in fact) were new.

The hotel staff were friendly and very helpfull. We paid 3 euros a day and a returnable deposit of 15 euros for the safe and 50 euros returnable deposit for the controlers for the TV and heat/air conditioner.

We had breakfast in the hotel, which was a good quality and choice or a europian hotel (they were even aware of the europian hygiene regulations, this is very rare, as I normally have to complain about food temperature in other hotels) but not at this hotel a first.

The hotel was a little way out of Alberferia town, but as we had the car it was no problem. We used our Tesco deals to hire the car, this would have cost £108.00 from Avis but only £27.00 in Tesco club card deals (so we really didn't pay anything for car hire as we exchanged our tesco vouchures for tesco deals, it was so easy to book, look at Tesco deals intrenet site).

The hotel was very reasonbily priced and we would recommend it to people who want to have a quiet hotel. We would definately stay here again.

I would also like to add that there is a half finshed housing estate at the side of the hotel, we asked about this and was told the the company had gone bust, and was in the process of going through the courts, unfortuantly some of the houses had grafitee on them and were empty but they will not be like that for ever.