Bamboozled by choice of package holidays - how do you do it?

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I’m a single parent and I’ve only ever taken dcs on holiday in UK. I really would like them to experience the traditional package holiday in Spain next summer, a week in a hotel with loads of pools, possibly a water park, hotel cheesy entertainment st night, enormous buffet style meals, days on the beach, a coach trip to the local tourist attraction. The kind of holiday I got as a kid.
But I’ve been looking for months! There’s so many websites, so many hotels, they all look the same but some have terrible reviews, I can’t narrow down where to go, whether we need all inclusive (I won’t really drink more than a couple of glasses of wine a day). Do I book flight and hotel separately? Do I go to a travel agent? How do I decide whereabouts to go? A beach is a beach. Oh and I have not very much money, basically I’ll be sticking it on a credit card because they are getting older and next year ds1 might not be excited by such a thing and I’ll feel sad he missed out.
Help! Please....

Maybe pop into TUI or loveholidays? Even jet2holidays? I'm a single parent and booked with all of these in the past with no issues and been on many package holidays. First think what dates you can go. Then your budget. Then your top three must haves eg swimming pool, kids club, excursions etc. And what is less important eg to be near a shopping centre. You know you want to go Spain so destination is sorted. When looking at reviews consider if what people are complaining about would be important to you. For example I don't drink at all so if a review says "I didnt like the beer etc etc" it doesn't bother me. However if lots and lots of people say "the food was terrible" then i would take notice.
One caveat though, when something is horrible people will rush to write a review. When it's nice they usually don't post a review. If the positives balance out the negatives then you're fine. I also know that on my budget, usually I'll get what I paid for!! I find facebook groups more honest than TripAdvisor reviews too, as most people already have a Facebook account and cant be bothered with the faff of a TripAdvisor account.

Have a look online at club Mac Alcudia. You can book direct and pay at the hotel and book flights separate to Palma with easyJet.
Some trip advisor reviews will always drag a place down and this place has had its fair share of bad ones however it all depends who is on holiday at the same time unfortunately.
I’m paying £650 all inclusive for a week next June for two of us (one 9 year old) and if people are annoying we just move on as the place is big enough.
Otherwise I use onthebeach.com for packages for us two.

TripAdvisor is your friend here. I start by going on the TUI website as it has a really good search facility so you can choose board, star rating, TripAdvisor rating, budget, proximity to beaches etc.

Then I do a shortlist, then I look on TripAdvisor. I find that people broadly complain about similar things so you can get a good feel fo a place.

THEN I fiddle about with prices, it's often cheaper to book directly or in other sites. It'll be cheaper if you're happy to have rubbish flight times etc.

So yes it's a faff but it's an expensive outlay so worth taking the time on. I quite enjoy it really.

pennee is that price out of school holidays? Sounds like a really good deal.

There's a reason Club mac is cheap. (vomit) it's grim, think the the Solana from the TV show Benidorm, Brits abroad, drunks and awful food. I'm no snob but it's truly the worst place I've ever been.

How big is your budget? Is Spain the only option? I'm a single parent and have done packages to the Canaries, Cape Verde, Malta, the Balearics to name a few.

Thanks for the advice so far. My budget is as small as can be, I know it’ll cost me but as I said, it’s going on the credit card. I’m not fixed on Spain, I just thought it would be the cheapest. Happy for any suggestions. Don’t really fancy hoardes of drunk people though.