The Royal Cancun — Hotel in Cancún

Tourists BEWAREI I want all to know that this resort is not to be trusted. It is not family friendly and shows poor interaction with guests, especially Afro-Americans. This is the worse resort I’ve ever experienced in all my years of travel. I will not disregard the efforts of some of the staff members, but the majority was absolutely horrible. Poor customer relations, very unprofessional and discriminatory. I feel very uncomfortable. I was made to feel like I didn’t belong. If you are watchi my family, and ever move we make, at least greet us! The food is not to be trusted. The Manager over food services (Mario), Reservation Manager (Monica) along with the GM should be terminated immediately. The resort is operating dysfunctionally because of poor leadership and insufficient training. No greetings, no smiles and no comfort. I informed one of the ladies at the Front Counter that she was very preatty and would enhance her beauty if she simply smiled. This iResort’s climate is bad, and lack kindness and compassion. A simple food order placed out by the pool was uncomfortable. The server took my room key and held on to it for hours. I completely forgot that he took it and walked to my room without my key. While out by the pool, I asked for the key twice and he informed me that he would return the key once he’s done. Why should he hold on to my room key for nearly 2 hours. Later that day, my son ordered and once again, he took the key and held it. After about an hour, I demanded that he return the key. This is dangerous and a risk factor. I did not see the same actions carried out on other guests. At one point he disappeared. Was he in my room? The food is a health issue that will be reported to higher authorities. The deep fried coconut shrimp looked delicious from the outside, but on the inside, they are completely raw and cold. Anything breaded from this resort is dangerous to eat. I decided to peel off the breading on the remaiming shrimp and they were all gray, cold and uncooked. The manager on staff informed me that the grease was too hot. Burnt coconut shrimp were brought out to me and placed on the table. I was taken by this action. Did the cook do this intentionally? This was not my mistake. I was told that no one seem to have a problem with the shrimp. The manger on staff at the time was rude and very unprofessional. Today, Speaking to the head manager (Mario) was even worse. And is simply crazy. He was agitated, rude and angered that I brought this to their attention. He was not apologetic for what unfolded and offered no solution to alter the known problem. Mario stated that he was shown the shrimp and that he didn’t see a problem and people eat raw shrimp. His response clearly signifies mental instability. If coconut shrimp is served raw then all guests should be made aware. Mario stated that there’s nothing wrong with eating raw shrimp and that I should not eat any of their seafood or food at all. Even though I upgraded and paid for All-inclusive. I couldn’t believe what I was being told, or the way I was being treated. I simply got up and walked out. I immediately informed the GM that I felt like I was being mistreated and that I would not return to that resturant, nor would I give anyone else my room key. I stated to her that I DId not feel comfortable staying, I requested for a partial refund on the 990.00 dollars paid for food. The GM sounded like a nice individual but lacks significantly in her job duties. She does not follow up on anything. Although she told me that she would call me back, she failed to do so. The Manager over reservations (Monica) is rude, disrespectful and lacks patience and leadership skills. She is abusing her authority. I do not recommend this Resort to anyone. Yes! It looks beautiful, but I’m warning you not to trust it! If I could give them a zero, that would be my rating. But for those that were kind, generous and serving, I’ll give this Resort a Big One! I visited the other Resort—-Royal Sands and it was pleasant. The feeling...

TLDR: The all-inclusive package is absolutely not worth it. Service is hit and miss. The food is unimpressive and about the same price as other restaurants down the road that taste better and provide an experience. If you aren’t planning to do all-inclusive and plan on only using the resort for the room and beach access, you’ll probably enjoy your stay. I personally would not stay here again. 2 out of 5 stars for the service from some of the staff and the room.

Check-in When you first walk into the hotel, they say “Welcome home” and call you “familia.” After our check-in, we were pulled aside for a mini orientation which was a guise to sell packages and upgrades. The vibe of the pitch seemed similar to timeshare sellers and car salesmen. We declined both and the orientation presenter immediately turned perfunctory to finish as quickly as possible. We were rarely greeted with those terms after that orientation to sell us packages so it doesn’t seem to be standard service verbiage.

Service The majority of the front desk staff seem to treat kind service as a reluctant obligation, as opposed to something the guest has paid for as part of the resort fees and only want to help if they are helping with something they can charge you for. Once they can charge you for something, they seem to perk up. If you need to find pool towels or water, the response is a rush of directions that is confusing since the layout or the resort is maze-like. These instructions are spoken with the enthusiasm of a fast food drive through worker, minus the clarity. I gave up approaching the front desk for assistance because I knew it would most likely be a futile effort. This is not specific to any front desk agent, but of most of the agents we all interacted with. Service level is equivalent to that of a budget hotel which costs a fraction of the price per night at this resort.

The housekeeping team, bellman/transport coordination team, and the bar/beach servers were great. Most of the positive interactions with the resort staff we experienced were with these teams. The beach servers were quick and approachable. Reynaldo at the front entrance coordinating transport was very nice and helped us while we were stressed after missing our tour bus on our first day at the resort. Big thanks to Reynaldo for saving our first night in Cancun! Our room’s housekeeper’s name is Lorena and she was great.

Two friends from a different resort came to meet up for a tour and we accidentally missed the tour bus. As we had paid for two drinks for them and they went to our room for about 45 minutes beforehand, they charged me a visitor fee of $170 USD ($85pp which the front desk agent stated was discount from the normal $115pp). A visitor charge never mentioned to us and I’m not sure if they felt like they could take advantage due to the fact that I’m a short female when I explained the situation. I tried to talk to two manager about the situation and neither helped and said they would have to talks to higher level of manager and did not get back to us. Seems they either didn’t care or just lack authority to do anything about it.

Room/Resort We enjoyed the rooms in the suite, the amenities provided, and suite layout, which included a small kitchen. My impression of the resort, is that it may have once been a 5 star resort that has now been eclipsed by the newer hotels. The pool and beach were lovely and the shaded lounge chairs by the beach were awesome.

Dining The trattoria is their attempt to maintain a semblance of prestige and fine dining. When two members of our party tried to book a same day reservation for dinner at the trattoria, the only available time a lot was at 8:30pm. They arrived to a near empty restaurant and still to wait 40 min for the bread and an hour for the entrees to arrive. The food was about the same quality as Olive Garden.

The main dining restaurant was mediocre all the way around with rude hosts.

Would not recommend...

Overall the Royal Cancun resort is a really nice resort.

Pros: The price is great for what you get. The size of the resort is perfect for families, it’s not so big that you can’t keep track of your kids, but not so small that you feel over crowded. The location I think was perfect. It’s far enough out of the main hotel zone that you aren’t over crowded in the hotel or at the pools. We always were able to find a spot with shade and plenty of chairs, at both pools and on the beach. The food is wonderful! There are only a few restaurants, but the main one with the buffet always had a large number of options and had a few specials nights with lobster, shrimp, kabobs, etc. The bar food is great also, and room service was also really very tasty. There is a free shuttle to the sister hotel so you can go exploring more of the busy hotel district and market areas. The pool at the sister hotel is really beautiful, but there didn’t appear to be as many options for shade, and it was definitely a lot more crowded. There is also a market on site that has somewhat reasonable prices for food items as well as toiletries. We only used the maid service once, but she did an amazing job cleaning and getting rid of all the sand we managed to track into the room. We weren’t bothered at all for timeshares or sales while we were there.

Cons: The noise level at night is pretty high if you’re a light sleeper. The resort definitely has older windows/doors and they don’t keep the sound out from the pool area and the booze cruises that go by all night. The AC unit in the room sounds like there’s a huge generator right outside, and when it’s hot (which I’m pretty sure is all the time), and the AC turns on every 20 minutes, it’s disruptive when trying to sleep. We weren’t too thrilled with the TV not showing any English shows. When the kids have been in the sun and water all day and need some down time, it would be nice to have some TV to watch to relax, but almost everything was in Spanish. I realize we were in Mexico, but heck, even in the US there are Spanish channels, I would think Mexico would have some English ones. The beds felt kind of like we were sleeping on a big concrete block, they were super uncomfortable. The biggest disappointment for us was regarding the “All-Inclusive” option that we paid quite a bit of money for. Not everything is all-inclusive, some of the buffets had “surcharges” if you wanted a specific item that was offered that night. Plus, we were expected to pay tips for everything from a drink to a waiter bringing us coffee. Everywhere they wanted our room key, even though we all had bands on that showed we had purchased the all-inclusive option. They would run a tab for everything we had, then expected a tip for it. I understand that wait staff works really hard, but the benefit to us of other all-inclusive resorts we have been to, is that all of that is covered in the up-front costs. We were not prepared to spend another $200-$300 for the week in tips. Lastly, the manager of the buffet restaurant wouldn’t let us take food back to our room…again, isn’t this an all-inclusive? It’s not like I wanted to feed an army, I simply wanted to take a small square piece of cake to our room that my 4 year old son couldn’t finish and wanted it later for dessert. He wouldn’t let us take it. That honestly was the worst slap in the face to us. We paid a few thousand dollars for this trip, and I can’t take a small piece of cake to go?

Overall the resort is very pretty, and we liked it a lot, we just would have preferred to know some of these things up front to be better prepared. If it weren’t for the tipping and not fully all-inclusive options, we would probably stay here again, but at least we’ll know these things when considering this as an...