I wish that i had read the reviews before i booked. The staff at the hotel, cleaners and restaurant staff are 1st class very hard working people and i hope they get paid well. Its the management and holiday reps that let this complex down. Please, please, make FIRST CHOICE YOUR LAST CHOICE if booking. If you are going away for entertainment on an evening, save your brass and go to Butlins, its very repetitive as is the food at the hotel, and basically rubbish!! Park is open until midnight during high season which is basically the school holidays. The children really enjoyed this holiday as a whole and wish to go back, this is because we as parents, protected them against all of negative aspects of the holiday which left a bitter taste in our mouths.

El Rip Off
First, the good points - the hotel looks lovely, great attention has been paid to the aesthetics. This is a very large hotel but is set out as a main building and several annexes throughout the extensive grounds around the spectacular pool area, which avoids the block building appearance. You should note if that kind of thing bothers you, that topless sunbathing around the pool area was openly condoned on our visit.
The staff are probably the nicest I've met in a hotel anywhere. From reception to the maids, everyone was pleasant and helpful, and not just the schmaltzy 'have a nice day' variety, either - genuinely warm friendly people, who really appreciate it if you make an effort with their language; a simple 'Hola' and a smile work wonders!
Food is good; on half board breakfast and dinner are buffets and more than adequate. They are naturally better at the local produce than the proverbial burger and chips / meat & 2 veg, so be brave and try and encourage your kids to do the same! What's the point of being abroad if you don't sample something different? Do be aware that you are staying in a very large complex and waiting is sometimes inevitable.
Facilities at the hotel range from wonderful (the pool) to barely adequate (the shop - souvenirs only, no staples except newspapers, sweets and fizzy drinks - the rest is souvenirs). Machines to buy bottled water are located near all room blocks but ours was out of order for the entire week we were there despite our reporting it. 0.5 litre bottles from the hotel machines are 1.20 euro compared to 1.30 for 5 litre carry packs in town (Salou).
Entertainment is provided nightly at the hotel on a purpose built stage. Dance trio for kids every evening - Hi 5 kind of thing, then jugglers, magicians, etc. Good clean family fun. I would think most families looking for evening entertainment head to the theme park where there are some spectacular shows.
All of the complex, including our room, appeared to be very, very clean.
Big bonus for staying at either the El Paso or Hotel Port Aventura is the park privileges - unlimited access to the theme park and one day at the water park, Costa Caribe. I thought the theme park was excellent. Very clean and well run and being Universal guests our room key / park pass gave us queue jumping privileges which are nothing short of amazing and very welcome in the heat. Be warned though, it doesn't work on all rides, including the popular Silver River Flume in the Far West area of the park and also the people in the regular queue can get very miffed - tough - they could have obtained a similar express privilege ticket at the gate for an extra fee!! Also, you must bring all the room keys for your party in order for them all to use the Express queue jumping. This wasn't made clear to us and we naturally left one in the sensor inside the room door to keep the power on, so that the air conditioning would continue to work. Having to take all the keys with you means returning to an unpleasantly stifling room! We visited in early July when our schools in Ireland are closed but schools in most other countries in Europe are still open and I'm sure the park was much quieter as a result.
There is a wide range of rides to suit everyone from the tiniest to the thrill seeker, though I would imagine the latter to be less than satisfied with only 2 rapid coasters - Stampida, an amazing traditional large wooden coaster and Dragon Khan, an 8 loop major G-Force modern spectacular not to be missed!!
Some attractions are visually interactive, rather than rides as such, which I found refreshing - A must see is Templo del Fuego - even though the commentary is in Spanish only, you get the gist and the end result is definitely worth it. Might be scary for small children. Sea Odyssey is in similar vein and also worth a look.
The shows at the park are excellent. We particularly enjoyed the Wild West and the Sol del Oriente - Chinese acrobats. FiestaVentura - a light and fireworks show, takes place on the lake each night at 12.00 and is really good. Your privilege hotel card will get you seats at some shows but not this one, you have to join the scrum for space around the lake with the masses, so get there early, we arrived at 11.30 and had to sit on very uncomfortable sand with a restricted view.
I was told at check in that I could charge everything to my hotel room card and have it delivered - great I thought, no cash to worry about when I'm getting soaked on all the water rides! Then I went to purchase my photographic record of us getting drenched at the ride photo shop and was told, 'cash only' and also that they do not send photos to the hotel. Cash only is also the case at the drink/snack stands around the park. The only places where the room key can be swiped to charge items are the larger food stands, restaurants and shops, so you will need cash as well, which rather defeated the object, in my view!
When you do manage to purchase items with your room key, they can be delivered to the hotel, which is a good and efficient service. They are happy to put your ride photos in with other merchandise and send them off, which prevents them getting damaged. A cynic would view this as pressure to buy other merchandise!
I did find the surprising number of people (mostly native, I think) smoking hash around the park off-putting, in view of the fact that I was with my children and they kept asking me what the funny smell was. Park security obviously needs to be tightened in this area.
Costa Caribe was a disappointment, but admittedly that may be because our youngest is not very confident in the water. You get a 'free' day in the park with your package, but you can't pick which day!! We were allocated a day when our tour company had a trip to Barcelona on offer. I'm sorry I missed out on Barcelona! The place was so crowded it was unpleasant - obviously large numbers of hotel guests had been given free passes for the same day! It cost over €20 for inflatable and locker hire, after return of deposits. Good variety of attractions, though, for everyone from small children to the confident on huge enclosed slides. Adults/bigger siblings are not allowed in the children's area but are expected to supervise from the extremely crowded poolside. I put my foot down and insisted that our small guy's big sister was allowed in with him (she's only 11) and they relented.
My major complaint about the otherwise lovely hotel was our room. For a four star hotel aimed specifically at families, I expected larger and at the very least a fridge. People near us had a baby and a small child and had to go into Salou every day (20 minutes walk, around 5 euro each way in a cab) for milk because they had no way of keeping it cool and when they tried to bring some from the dining room a member of staff chased them and prevented them from doing so - I actually witnessed this, it was quite incredible to watch a waitress in Mexican costume running at full pelt after a mother holding a baby and a glass of milk!!! Fair enough, we're on half board, so we shouldn't expect cooking facilities, but a fridge for those who have babies and toddlers whose mealtimes may not fall into the hotel routine should be the very least expected from a family establishment costing as much as this one does. A kettle would be nice, too - but apparently they're alien items anywhere in Spain! (Bring your own travel version, with an adaptor). Coffee is lovely but tea is non-existent or dreadful, so if you can't survive without, bring tea bags. I would most definitely not recommend this hotel for families with small children.
The shower was so fierce we couldn't use it and the balcony so small it was only good for what a notice in the room asked us not to use it for - drying towels, swimwear and inflatable. Also, when you open the balcony door to the heat (the only natural ventilation in the room) the air conditioning automatically switches off.
A note to those of you who don't like or can't manage a lot of walking - the hotel is not in the park, it's a good 5-10 minutes trek away up an unshaded hill. Not fun in high temperatures if your mobility (or fitness!!) is in any way restricted. You can get a porter and buggy to bring you but be prepared for a wait. Also, you can be booked in quite a walk from reception - we were as far away as it's possible to get; not too much of a problem day to day as all room blocks are within easy reach of other facilities and there are ramp alternatives to steps, but definitely not fun when we had to bring our luggage down ourselves for check out. (In a four star?!)
This was my first ever package holiday - the First Choice flight and reps were excellent and certainly dispelled any misgivings I may have had. The trip was a special treat for my children and I'm only sorry the hotel didn't live up to expectations. It has such potential - it looks lovely and has marvellous staff and a fantastic pool. Sort out the fridge and shop things and it may be worth its four star price, but certainly not at the level of service we experienced. Guests at Hotel Portaventura we met on the free beach shuttle bus told us that the rooms in their hotel were quite spacious and have fridges, so my advice if you plan to stay in the theme park with children is to book early and head there instead. I missed out because it was full for the week I wanted. There were three of us in our room and I found it very cramped, heaven knows what it would be like with another adult and/or child(ren).

This hotel was a real let-down. The week I went, in April, the weather was pretty bad and there wasn't ANYTHING to do. The pool wasn't heated and therefore, when there is bad weather, you can't go in it (unless you like freezing water). You also wouldn't want to go to the themepark in bad weather, but if you go on the days with sun there are hundreds of people there. This is a problem because, for one, when you stay at the hotels your room card is meant to be an express pass, to get past the queues. This doesn't work on the days with lots of people, even though you paid for it, and you have to queue to get a pass to miss the queue to get on the ride! A pointless activity! And when you get the pass you have to wait for an hour or more before you can take advantage of the express pass. The "Costa Caribe" water park was the worst disappointment, because in that park there is a heated swimming pool - but it is only for little kids because it has flumes, water guns, and those doughnut float-y seat things. The rest of the park wasn't open because it was apparently "off-season", not something that they mention in the brochure. Along with "Costa Caribe" being mostly shut because of "off-season", many of the night time activities were closed because of the same reason. The activities that were on were for kids of 11 and younger - a disco or dance lesson everynight. This isn't very good for the people who want to sleep on their vacation, because the music is so loug that it keeps you awake till past 11pm. After a long day of walking through the parks, this seems even later. There aren't that many rides in the park - ones worth visiting anyway. One ride that was quite good was "Stampida" but the queue was over 1 hour 30 mins on the sole sunny day that we had, and the express passes weren't working. The queue to get the pass was 30 mins long, at least, too. There is quite a large variety of food to eat in the park, but only junk food or sandwiches. I was on a diet, so not really a good thing, but the buffet in the "Merida" in the hotel itself was pretty good. The elevators were extremely faulty, not falling to the ground faulty, but faulty as in they go up to level 5 when you picked level 0 and then they stop at every level on the way down, no matter that there was nobody there or that the elevator it full already. The worst point of the park AND the hotel was that EVERYONE was SMOKING! There weren't designated smoking spots like in the parks in America or England, there was just smoking everywhere! It was disgusting! I do not recommend this hotel if you detest smoking as my family and I do, or if you have just given up. It is a sure way to get lung cancer due to all the passive smoking that takes place here. Overall, it was not a very good holiday. Not worth the price, not entertaining, and not somewhere that I would go EVER again. If you want to go on a fabulous holiday for all the family, visit Orlando, Florida.