We stayed at The Arabian Court with a family of two young children, 3.5 yrs amd six months old and despite the amount of cranes hovering over the Dubai skyline we found the Arabian Court /Royal Mirage an outstanding hotel set up for our family, set within beautiful gardens with a low rise authentic arabian style architecture. All the facilites and services were definately of 5 star level, and of particular highlight was the friendliness and helpfulness of all the staff to both ourselves and our children. We particularily enjoyed the Roof Top bar which had great views and ambiance and felt like we were definately in the middle east! We would definately go back as we all felt we had a good break.

We have just arrived back from a 3 night stay at the Arabian Court and it is definately the best hotel we have ever stayed in, including several 5* hotels in Europe and the Caribbean.

We were blown away by the beauty of the Hotel and all the small details at every turn.

The staff were so friendly. smiley and helpful, any minor issues would be dealt with immediately.
We felt a bit guilty being so spoilt by the staff around the pool area, nothing is too much trouble. If you get the chance to escape the children sunbathe in the adults only grass area - amazingly peaceful.

The restaurants were also amazing, the Eau Zone in particular, sit outside by the pool. Also Ninas- quite spicey but good food.
The beach bar and grill at the Palace, also beautiful - overlooking the beach.
You must have a cocktail in the Rooftop bar also.

Wine is horrendously expensive so we stuck with cocktails instead.

We stayed on the 3rd floor and it was so peaceful - never heard any construction noise at all and you can;t see it either until you get onto the beach, I was quite surprised by how close it was, but again it does not spoil your holiday.

You must do a dune-bashing trip too, great fun but you have to be quite brave!

All in all a fab trip and we will most definately recommend this hotel - the Residence looked lovely too but very grand, perhaps a bit too posh?! Depends what you like.

You really will not be disappointed with anything at this hotel!

there are numerous comments about this hotel on the web.
We - family of four - stayed there recently and a very short summary is as follows:

1.) Very high quality standard Hotel, nice rooms with a bit of arabic feeling, nice location as such.
2.) Very good selection of restuarants - i recommend the Indian Restaurant and the Rooftop place, just for the view and ambiente
3.) Lots of employees - we were looking for a chess partner for my son - ther was an Indian chap right there who played very well.

Her are a few shortcomings

- Noise on th beach stemming from the Palm; i could hear it also in the room, but if you keep doors shut, its gone. THIS WILL BE THERE FOR ANOTHER YEAR OR SO.

- Overpricing - if you know that the average employee earns in a month as much as you spent on a room only a day, you can see why Dubai is a place to get rich (but for a limited few) - I suggest you have to disucss this with yourself, and this argument apllies pretty much to all places in the emerging markets...

- Size of the property - This leads to all kind of funnny stuff, like the chap at the reception trying to sell you a heli flifght with a company where he gets a bacschisch back, etc, etc - this is annoying.

- lack of environment - to leave the property, you need a taxi, noone walks around there; this is different at Madinat Jumeirah.

My wife and I went here for our honeymoon in October 2007. I can safely say that out of all the hotels that we have stayed in throughout the world this takes 1st place amongst all of them.

They have just got everything 100% right from the staff that work there, to the facilities available, the sheer fact that if i was to sit here and write about everything i thought was good about the place i would be here for ages. I think its best to bullet point our experience

Positives

1) Staff training is obviously a priority here as the professionalism / service and decidation to their jobs in every single department is fantastic.

2) The style and interior of the whole hotel and rooms just ooze quality.

3) Food in every single place we eat was amazing - particularly Nina which had it all.

4) The beach and beach side service was second to none.

5) You can move freely throughout the whole complexes three hotels and try out all the restaurants in each one. We were there for ten days and tried them all, each fantastic.

6) The breakfast needs to be seen to be believed

I could go on for ages, i know it might sound too good to be true but my wife and i are not the most difficult people in the world to please and are by no stretch of the imagination divas in any requests we made while we were there but anything we wanted we asked and it was there literally within minutes!

Negatives

1) There is quite a lot of building work going on which is visible from the beach, as a result construction noise is quite loud, however im not sure where in Dubai you could escape construction as there seems to be more cranes than people!

2) As it is an expensive place to stay you get the inevitable Rich People Syndrome as the wife and i like to call it. People that obviously due to their pots of cash have been accustomed to a certain level of hotel and as a result speak to everyone like crap to get what they want. Maybe you never escape characters like this wherever in the world you are, who knows?

3) The cost of Alcohol is major, being a Muslim state its heavily taxed and as a result reflects in £6 a bottle of beer, cheapest bottle of nice white wine £40, but then we were on honeymoon so werent watching the pennies that much.

So there you go, if i could own a hotel anywhere in the world it would be this one, in fact if the owner is reading this then i congratulate them on the way they have gone about the hotel, it really was the best honeymoon we both could have ever asked for.