BlueBay Grand Esmeralda — Hotel in Quintana Roo

Let me start this review by saying people are being VERY dramatic. I'll break it down for you:

Food: There are two buffet options for breakfast and lunch. The one next to the lobby and another one next to the pool. The better one is the one by the lobby, since it has A/C and overall better options. The a la carte restaurants were great. We ate at all three (Mexican, Italian, French). At the french one they have champagne! We didn't have any problems with making reservations, we used the app for two of them and the concierge for one. You can make reservations days ahead on the app (once you check in, ask for your reservation number to enter in the app). Lots of people tried to show up with no reservations, those will get denied. Dress code for the italian and french restaurant is formal, the biggest thing about it being no open toed shoes on men.

Getting around: We saw a ton of people get mad over the golf carts/train situation. There are set stops for the train, and for some reason a ton of people don't like walking, so the carts get full at the early stops (lots of big groups and families). A lot of people try to stop them while they are walking and not on a set stop, so they end up getting ignored. Employees told us they can get in trouble if they just pick up people wherever whenever, since there are designated stops. I don't think we used the carts more than once or twice because you can walk from one extreme of the resort to the other in 15 minutes, so we didn't see the need to except for when we were in a hurry. I think people just hate walking?

Staff: super nice, extremely so. A few names that stand out: Nicolas, Job, Felipe, Kevin.

Entertainment: a lot of people mention the entertainment being the most talked about thing on the reviews and skewing them. We did not do one single entertainment thing during our stay (didn't really want to), so I wouldn't know if they offer something in exchange for a nice review or something. People seemed to be having fun 🤷‍♀️ There's a different show every night at the sports bar + live music + dj.

Wildlife: tons!! And we were SO happy about it. We saw almost all of the animals that live in the resort: cats, coatis (cutest little mexican animal from the same family as racoons), racoons, iguanas, deers, cereques (they look like small capibaras). They are well taken care of, too! We saw a fauna expert with a service dog trying to get them to stay in the jungle and not endager themselves by coming close to us or eating human food. She later brought an eagle to control another bird population. It was cool!

The pools: okay, yeah, I do have to complain here. Other people are right: there is practically NO shade. It's insane. No umbrellas ANYWHERE. Highly suggest buying a portable one or planning accordingly and going to the pool to get one of the very few sunbeds with shade at 7am sharp. You are not supposed to reserve them, it's not allowed, but that leads me to the next point...

The guests: Jesus christ some of you are insufferable and/or bad drunks. No wonder the employees don't call anyone out, I saw a guy trying to punch an employee for not letting him cut in line for the train. Some guests are extremely rude, both to staff and other guests. Dirty, too. Smoking cigarettes on the pool and leaving trash in the nearby cenote/lagoon (which I cleaned up and you should too if you see some). Do better. The world doesn't exist to serve you, not even in a resort. You are a functioning adult, act like it.

The rooms/buildings: I do agree they need a renovation, but they weren't bad by any means. Everything worked. Water pressure was a little off at times but nothing dramatic. The beds can be uncomfortable if you don't enjoy mattresses on the firmer side.

The beach: full of sargassum. Not the hotel's fault, this year there were record amounts of it in the caribbean. Sargassum smells like fart when decomposing and there's a lot of it, so do with that what you will. We still had a great time (we booked a catamaran at the hotel to swim further into the ocean,...

I stayed at BlueBay from May 1st - May 15th with my mom. We had a lovely time and I have collected many thoughts... Beach 3.5/5 Food 4/5 Room 4.5/5 Activity 5/5

Service 5/5 I love the people here. Mostly everyone we talked to were very special and kind and SO PROFESSIONAL. They treated us like royalty, I honestly felt so undeserving. I wrote down so many names of the wonderful people we met. First there is Karla from reception. She is the reason we were able to get such an amazing room. She was very kind and we were SO GRATEFUL for her help. On our first day we met Elliot and Margarito in the reception as well as David who helped us with our suitcases and Carlos our driver. On our first morning here, we met Silver, our instructor for yoga. He was such a delight! As an instructor he is incredible. He is not only very talented, but encouraging as well. He pushes us to do our best, but also reminds us not to hurt ourselves. He is understanding of everyone’s different strengths and weaknesses, and adjusts each exercise accordingly. His service as an entertainer is 5 stars. He’s great at public speaking and engaging everyone. He deserves a 100% raise in my opinion 🤷‍♀️ His excellence is not limited to his instruction though - he is also a wonderful person, and has been our favourite friend that we’ve made. We love running into him. Silver is very respectful and has treated us so nicely. It was so easy to become good friends with him. Silver also shows so much interest in expanding his english (which is already so good), and helps me with my spanish! We are so happy that staff is allowed to eat lunch with us - we NEED a daily meal spent with Silver. Silver has become a great friend and we have loved getting to know him. He is funny, kind, down-to-earth and an exceptional person in every way. Additionally we got to meet all of the poolside entertainment team they were a wonderful group. Pamela, Lalo, Kaci, Valentina, Alondra are all very special people. Also the DJ is so good. I've heard so many awful DJ's in my life (no offense), it was very refreshing to see that good DJs exist, you just might have to go to Mexico to find them. Also from poolside I met Yahir and he was very nice. We had great conversations. Karla and Misael from the diving shop were one of the first people we met and we loved them so much. We didn't even do any activities with them, we just stopped by and talked with them. They're both so kind, funny and friendly. From breakfast there were so many amazing people. Micaela was at our table almost every single day. She is so funny and hardworking and it was a pleasure to see her every day. Francisco, Miriam and Daniel were also very good to us. And Esther made me the best omelettes. From dinner there is Orlando, Benjamin, Nereo, Veronica, Jacobo, Angel, Tomy - all such amazing people. I got sick one day and I told Orlando, Nereo and Angel and they all seemed to care so much. It was very nice haha. Eddie from the beach is one of the greatest people we met here. He was so funny and friendly and we loved talking to him. He knew I was learning Spanish, so we pretty much only talked in Spanish - I appreciated that. Andres cleaned our room everyday. He was not only hardworking, but a wonderful person, I had many conversations with him. We were very grateful to have him! We went out to Playa Del Carmen on our last night and Jesus was our taxi driver. He is a great guy, we felt so safe with him and he had no issues with us moving our pickup time while we were already out. On our last day, Antonio helped us with our suitcases and drove us to the reception. He was the best we didn't have to lift a finger.

Overall 3.5 or 4 / 5 I really enjoyed our stay. My favourite part was the people. This is a really good hotel, but I wouldn't rate it 5 stars. I expect a little more from 5 star ratings. It was still a...

MUST READ BEFORE BOOKING Hey so Iam currently writing this review from my room which iam very upset and want to go home IMMEDIATELY!! I spent my 21 birthday here hoping it would be better then Cuba BUT SOME HOW I PAYED DOUBLE and didn’t get near the experience I did in Cuba.. first day being here took 7 hours to get my room and go sent off to some buffet with little to no Mexican food.. then when I had finally got to my room I was put in a smaller cheaper room with no ocean view like I payed for ! Furniture was horribly used and looked as if it was never updated …there were no ac, the fridge wasn’t working and the phone was down!.. Not able to call front desk to complain so I had to walk to the lobby where I was felt like an outsider.. and had to make multiple complaints to get anyone down to my room. SECOND day we ate at the seafood restaurant where we got food poisoning from bad fish and seafood and struggled for days and had to beg for them to bring water to our room as we couldn’t make the trip to buy some and couldn’t leave the bathroom! We made multiple more complaints and was told the doctor would see us. From there when the doctor seen us we were told we had to pay 200$ usd to even be seen!! No apology no empathy no nothing!! We missed our reservations and missed jet skiing because of this incident… on the 5th day we found 3 massive (at least 2+ -inches) coach roaches crawling and flying around our room where I freaked the heck out and RAN straight out of bed!! We had called and called and called where they sound like they didn’t believe us and sent a cleaning lady and hung up. When the cleaning lady came she was petrified and called for back up LOL . Told us that they spread that off stuff and it’s okay now WHEN INFACT ITS NOT OKAY I HAVE A ROACH CRAWLING ON MY BED IAM LAYING IN!! I then requested a different room where I got a smaller cheaper room then the first room when I was in FACT SUPPOSED TO GET DELUXE ocean view from the start and still haven’t gotten the upgrade I payed extra for!! And yes the fridge still doesn’t work!! Aswell as couldn’t swim in the ocean at all as the water was deemed not safe and the bars are always packed with rude pushy people that I haven’t had a drink since the first day I came.. And let’s no begin on how other guest treat me like trash cause iam not from Cancun and everyone else seems to be from around here or at least from Mexico. Iam pushed while being in the buffet and even stared at no matter if iam just walking of laying down trying to catch some sun. As I have seen they also allow locals in as I said before and get treated very poorly .. I don’t feel safe, as I normally do on any resort I go to. But Mexico has been on my bucket list for soooooo long and this honestly made me so disappointed and sad.. I would have rather stay home then spend money to feel like a joke down here … To end off this paragraph I’d like to say I would absolutely never ever come back here EVER even if I had a vacation payed for me! The front desk is absolutely no help nor do they care and act like this is all to normal which is scary. Theres not a single thing that I will miss about this place and would not recommend to anybody!

But I guess happy...