El Dorado Seaside Palms — Hotel in Quintana Roo

I want to give an objective, impartial review of this place as opposed to many other reviews seemingly written to artificially promote certain staff and bump up the resort's Google score. It will be long but I hope that it will actually be helpful to people considering staying here.

OVERALL The resort is very large and well landscaped. Staff are very polite, although very few have a good working knowledge of English. If you're tired of walking or just want to get some place fast, staff can give you a ride in an electric cart. Note that the resort consists of three different parts: the Palms, the Suites, and the Hidden Beach (for nude beach goers). We stayed at the Palms. It was somewhat unusual to discover that the resort has a more modern "main lobby" closest to the entrance, plus a separate lobby for each of its three constituent parts.

ROOMS We stayed in a Junior suite in Building 41. It is the type of suite you get with their standard package. The rooms have an outdated dark decor style (which the resort refers to as "colonial") and, while okay for a week-long stay, are clearly in need of a facelift. There were a lot of small things requiring attention: old mattresses with visible wear marks, poorly functioning or loose light switches, and overall sense of wear and tear about the room. The jacuzzi, which sits almost next to the bed, feels out of place (ours also had a broken drain) and we would have much preferred if that space was used for a couch and a coffee table. The good part was that the mini-bar was regularly re-stocked with water, three brands of beer, and various soft drinks. There was also a modern smart TV with a good selection of channels and YouTube streaming. Air conditioning and WI-FI (throughout the resort) were also very good.

BEACH AND POOLS The beach is very large and has a large number of bali beds and palapas; however, as others have commented, to get the best ones you have to get up early (around 7:30 am or so) and "reserve" them by placing your towels and/or some other personal item (the same goes for the ones by the pools). Beach towels are easily available at several towel boxes, even in the afternoon (something we found to be be an issue at some other resorts). However, this is not a resort for you if you love swimming in the ocean, as the swimming area is very shallow (around 4 ft max) and the bottom has multiple rocky spots (so, bring your swimming shoes). There was also lots of seaweed being washed ashore during our stay; however, the resort did do their best to remove it.

ENTERTAINMENT We found entertainment to be pretty average. The weekly Fire Show featuring acrobatics with fire rings and torches was ok, but everything else didn't really hit the mark for us. The resort has no entertainment theatre, so the shows are held on a small makeshift wood stage on the beach or in a small Piccadilly Club.

RESTAURANTS AND BARS Probably the best aspect of the resort. The place has a large variety of eating and drinking establishments. Most restaurants operate on a first-come, first-serve basis except two (Mia Casa and Klay Talay), where you need a reservation, which is made through a concierge (we recommend doing this early in your stay). Our favourite was the Culinarium. Food variety was adequate, service was generally fine, although it visibly took a hit during busy buffet hours. Most of the bars cater to the beach and pool crowd, serving typical resort fare in plastic glasses (unless you bring your own mug); however, there is also a more upscale Mezcalito bar in the main lobby, which we highly recommend. It is also the only place with an espresso coffee machine at the resort (unless you're in the mood to spend US$10 for a tall latte at the resort's Starbucks joint tucked into the Palms reception building).

Would we come back? We are not sure but then we are the kind of folks that always love exploring new vacation destinations rather than...

Okay so I'm editing my review as this initial one was pressured by the activity organizer Jose during coconut painting which is partly why I'm downgrading the service level from 5 to 4. I didn't appreciate that he was tricking guests to add a Google review to mention their names by telling us "this is how you put up a picture of your coconut".

The other feedback for improvement I have is if the hosts of the eating areas are asking guests for allergies, they should be telling their servers. Several places after we got seated we had to re-tell the servers that we had an allergy to and one time they tried to offer us a welcome drink with the allergen in it. So they should either have the hosts inform the server or make it a policy that servers need to consistently ask for allergies (some of the eating areas do). We don't mind re-telling the servers, just don't try to serve us anaphylaxis!

The room got 1 reduced because our hot tub kept spewing black particles out of the jets when turning on the hot water. Though they were quick to have maintenance respond to it, they fixed it enough to have minimal black particles but still had some. The maintenance guy however used our towels to wash and wipe his equipment, stepped all over our bath floor towel with his boots and left a bit of a mess. However housekeeping was very responsive in coming to clean that up at 11pm.

Negative comments aside, this was our second time at El Dorado suites and it is by far one of the best resorts you can spend your days at.

All staff are friendly and greet you as they walk by. Some who are more familiar with English are humourous and they all strive to be helpful.

Most food there are good with consistent quality. There's only one place that offers junk food (ie the International Grill) such as pizza, burgers etc, but the other places especially Seaside Market offers really good and healthy food. The new vegan addition Kaab, was surprisingly very good and offers healthy food and drinks and I would recommend trying it even if you're not vegan. The taco lady in front of Seaside Market offers AMAZING traditional Mayan tacos in the morning and is a MUST try!

We like that the resort is big enough to be able to walk around the whole day without getting bored. The resort is well maintained and there are some local wildlife that offers a bit of entertainment such as a big family of coatis, raccoons, iguanas, and a resident cat named Patches.

And for those Pokemon Go players, there are a tonne of stops and gyms to keep you entertained. Other than volleyball on the beach and the pool, they provide guests with giant chess/checkers, ping pong tables, giant connect-4 which were fun. Even though they have a tennis court with pickleball lines, it's in pretty bad shape from water damage and they make you sign a waiver if you want to use it. So that was disappointing and I hope one day they just redo the court to install 4 separate pickleball courts :D They also do a good job scheduling a lot of activities such as Aquacise, workout classes, coconut painting, volleyball etc as well as being able to sign out kayaking and snorkeling equipment at no extra charge.

I haven't talked much about the bars mainly because we're not big drinkers but there are 4 bars in the beach area as well as a tequila bar located in the main lobby. As most Mexicans, they are proud of their tequila and may give you high fives if you ask for tequila.

Thank you El Dorado! We brought our friends here and we decided that we may come back...

This was our first visit to El Dorado Seaside Palms with a total of 8 people in 4 separate rooms. By the end of the stay I did enjoy the resort.

Our main issues: Food options were a bit confusing the first few days. Some places close at 4:30, others open at 5. The Italian restaurant was mostly booked solid until Friday (the night before we left) when we checked into reservations our 2nd day there. Make reservations the first day or in advance for the 2 restaurants that require reservations. We didn't realize the cuisine theme at Seaside Market changes nightly and it's closed Tuesday and Friday due to the buffet on the beach those nights. We finally talked to one of the personal concierges and got a lot of that info on our 3rd day there. On the plus side, the room service options are plentiful and good. However with a group of 8, room service isn't the best option.

Our room (junior seaside suite) had a jetted tub and a love seat with coffee table. Some in our group had a table and 2 chairs instead of the loveseat and coffee table. Just be aware of minor room differences in the same room styles. The table and chairs would have been more useful for us.

The views from the junior seaside suite also vary greatly. We were on 2nd floor but right behind the Kaab restaurant with no view of the beach or water. 2 in our group we're on 1st floor but had all of the beach side cabanas in front of their rooms. 1 room in our group did have a fairly nice view of the beach and water from their 2nd floor room.

The bars and drinks were great, we really enjoyed the buffet breakfasts at the seaside market and the beach side restaurant. The Tuesday buffet on the beach was excellent and the "fire show" was entertaining.

There were a lot of different pools with some running along the front of the rooms. We were unsure if those pools were open to all guests. It did appear that all pools were open to all guests from what we could tell.

Be aware that being near the beach will mean you get to hear the beach side bar music and the patrons until 1am or later.

There were times when waiting for a ride to the seaside market or that area could take a while. However, there were also a few times that one of the staff outside the main entrance would hop in a golf cart and give us a ride immediately.

My wife did get a massage at the spa and she enjoyed that. However, it was charged to our room. We paid our room charges when we checked out and now that I'm back home I'm seeing 2 charges pending on my card for the same amount so it appears we were double charged. Be aware and check charges carefully BEFORE leaving.

Overall, the staff was very friendly. They did a good job of cleaning up the sargassum (seaweed) from the beach daily.

They did have a couple channels on the TV with resort info. Most were the low numbered channels but late in our trip we did find another channel in the higher numbers that had additional info. They do have an app that also has some info. The personal concierges may be the best option if you know what questions to ask.

It's a long ride from Cancun (and hour plus) so consider flying in to Tulum if you have that option. On our trip back to the airport there was road construction which made the trip about 2 hours.

I'm not sure if we'll go...