We stayed at this hotel for a week break in November. The hotel is very clean and spacious, we were quite surprised at how big our room was, we couldn't understand the negative reviews on here regarding this. We also had the mountain view which was stunning, being able to look up at monte. The pool bar was our favorite part of the hotel, with really nice food, cocktails and views of the pool and ocean.

Throughout the hotel the staff were really friendly, even though the size of the hotel is huge they would remember your room number at breakfast and have a friendly chat. The breakfast buffet was extensive with different stations including fruit, baked items, full english and champagne.

Out of all the big hotels this one is by far one of the closest to the centre of funchal with a nice walk along the harbor admiring all the cruise ships on your way.

Would definitely stay here again....

I stayed here at the beginning of December, 2012. My room on the 16th of 18 floors looked out over the bay to the rear of the hotel with a stunning view. Cleaning standards were excellent, as you would expect from a five star hotel and the staff were uniformly helpful cheery and polite. Also, everyone both in the hotel and around Madeira generally spoke English to some degree - in most cases fluently, which I wasn't expecting.
Breakfast was very good with a full choice of cooked breakfasts, cereals, continental breads and cakes, cold meats and cheese, fruits and even porridge available at the buffet.
The fitness centre was also quite good, and the indoor pool, sauna, steam room and jacuzzi were never full and I visited these every day. There are also two outside pools - the 'Atlantic' pool was good but absolutely freezing - the clue's in the title - so I limited myself to the inside one.
The 'Pub' bar/restaurant was surprisingly good as far as these things go - fairly inexpensive food and drink if you don't want to go out of the hotel for lunch or evening meal. Again, the bar staff were very helpful and service generally was very quick both here and elsewhere on the island. I did not actually eat in the a la carte restaurant in the hotel as it seemed a tiny bit pricey for a single traveller but I am sure it would be worth investigating - the menus looked interesting. There is no shortage of quite good to excellent restaurants nearby (including a Norwegian and an excellent Indian restaurant) and Funchal proper is only about a fifteen minute walk away.
I would be very pleased to recommend both the hotel and the island. It is worth bearing in mind that there seem to be very few tourist children on Madeira and the average age of visitors seems to be 50+. This was not a negative point for me at all, but visitors with young families might bear this in mind.

My Wife, Father and I stayed here between the 1st and 8th of December. It was my wife's and mine's 3rd time, the last visit was back in 1999.
We were very pleased with the standard of the hotel and although there was a lot of maintainence work going on, such as tile replacements around the pool and a complete makeover of the Taverna Bar, it didn't ditract from our enjoyment.
We stayed on the 15th floor in rooms 1519 and 1521 with a fantastic sea view. The staff were very friendly with the exception of the older chap on reception. When we last visited the hotel car park was free but this time there was a barrier with charge rates on a sign by it. When I asked this chap whether we could use the car park and if so did the charges apply to residents he said " you can use the car park and you pay like every one else". It came across as very rude. Aside from that very small point we really enjoyed our stay and would definitely return.

We stayed at Pestana Carlton for 3 nights as part of a tour group and were very pleased with the hotel. Our room was on the 15th floor (I think), in a corner, and had a balcony with a view of the ocean, the cruise port, and the town ... fabulous! The room was spacious and comfy, with plenty of room for luggage. The bathroom was enormous, with lovely marble throughout, twin sinks, and a separate toilet room. The downsides of the bathroom, to us, were (1) heated towel bar and heated floor ... we couldn't find a switch to shut these off so the bathroom was always QUITE warm, even when it was warm outside; (2) the bath tub was deep (hard to get into if you're short-legged) with very complicated water controls.
We partook of the dinner buffet (excellent) and the daily breakfast buffet. We didn't know how good the breakfast buffet was until our trip had progressed and we saw what passed for breakfast buffets at other properties. Pestana Carlton had a HUGE variety of breakfast foods, including cold cuts and cheese wheels .... just wonderful.
Part of the hotel is also a vacation club of some type ... we saw people checking in for 2-3 weeks.
The hotel's in a great location and has a little market nearby where one can purchase bottled water and snacks if desired.
We'd stay there again, definitely.