We have stayed at the Dar al Masyaf four times and we are going again in September.

The hotel and staff are absolutely fabulous, very helpful and always smiling.

The rooms are beautifully furnished and always immaculate

Food across all the resteraunts is fantastic and really well priced for the standard.

If you are staying there, I would definately recommend the Spa - treatments are wonderful.

This was our second trip to Dubai (first trip last August) and our first trip staying at Dar Al Masyaf or any hotel in the Madinat Jumeirah Resort.

The whole Madinat Jumeirah Resort is gorgeous. An ever so slight “Vegas” feeling (i.e. on such a grand scale and everything done to the max), but delivered with amazing class and attention to detail. No matter where you go in the resort, you are rewarded with a beautiful vista.

The Madinat Resort consists of two sizeable hotels (Al Qasr and Mina A Salam) and the villas (Dar Al Masyaf) as well as the Royal Villas (Malakiya Villas). The hotels and villas are connected together by golf buggies and abras (little boats which run around the resort’s scenic waterways). As a guest at Dar Al Masyaf, you can use the facilities (pools, tennis and gym etc) and the restaurants (including for breakfast) at any of these hotels.

The resort is also part of a larger collaboration with the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, the Burj Al Arab and Wild Wadi. One of the resort’s golf buggies will take you between any of these places and you can charge meals/purchases directly to your room. As a guest at the resort we were given complimentary access to Wild Wadi and allowed entrance an hour earlier than the general public – both of which were valuable.

At Dar Al Masyaf, the rooms are arranged in villas (a small number of rooms – about 13 – are arranged around a central courtyard) and each villa has its own reception area and butler (to check you in/out, to make reservations, to call golf buggies and generally look after you). Complimentary drinks are served in the villa reception area between 6 and 8pm each evening.

The villas and rooms require some getting used to – they are quite different to the modern, hi-tech styles of most 5* European/US hotel rooms. However, they are beautiful, peaceful, secluded and full or Arabic charm: photos do not do them justice. They felt like a very suitable choice of accommodation for a holiday in Dubai.

The bathrooms are HUGE – almost as big as the bedroom. There was a large double-ended bath, a sizeable walk-in shower, a separate WC and a dressing area. The king-sized bed was very comfortable. Rooms included a DVD player and a safe. Each evening turndown service would leave a little gift (chocolate, lip balm or massage oil etc) and sometimes a towel animal. The only real down sides were that internet access was expensive – about £20 a day – and that there were no sockets near any of the mirrors (so difficult to straighten your hair).

We were in Villa 1 and had an Ocean Deluxe in a Gulf Summer House. Great, light, quiet room with lovely view across to the beach. This villa was in an excellent location: right on the beach, very close to the Madinat Souk, fairly close to the Mina A Salam (great breakfast, very nice pool and for the Quay Leisure Centre), fairly close to the main Al Qasr pool (and a nice bar for lunch and another breakfast venue). If we wanted to go anywhere further a field, we would phone the butler to request a golf buggy and one would be waiting at the front door of the villa before we got there – very convenient.

Staying at Dar Al Masyaf is a great combination of both worlds: you have very convenient access (and charging rights) to a huge amount of facilities and restaurants, but you can escape to your own peaceful, secluded retreat at your villa.

This hotel is the worst I have ever stayed in!
We arrived here 29/12/07 after a truly fab time in the Maldives only to find out our rooms were not ready (because a local Diplomat was late checking out!) We were offered a meal that night as compensation but when we tried to book, literally ALL the restaurants in The Madinat were full. So we were offered room service, which arrived after an hour's wait and the order was wrong by which time our 7 year old son had fallen asleep!
Breakfast the next morning was like a "bun fight" with an unbelievable level of noise and chaos in the restaurant. The beach wasn't much better and full of Russian's.
In our room the balcony light did not work, a lamp in the room had blown, we could not get all channels on the tv and many of the products were missing from the bathroom. We ofcourse complained and people scurried around but it was all just a bit too late.
We hated the hotel so much that we departed Dubai early on 31/12/07.
We have stayed at some truly amazing hotels and locations all over the world and were underwhelmed to say the least by the attempts of The Jumeriah Group.

My daughter and myself stayed in a arabian de-luxe summer house. Our room was absolutely magnificent.There was a swimming pool to each summer house and each summer house consists of 10 rooms. Most days there was just the 2 of us at the pool. The service round the pool and room-service was fantastic.Towels round the pool were provided no matter how many you used this was nit a problem.The whole of the resort was paradise it was surrounded by waterways and no matter where you wanted to go your butler got you a golf buggy to take you or you waited a couple of minutes for an abra.The restaurants were expensive but well worth the money.There are 2 other hotels on the resort and also a souk.I will definately stay at this resort again.