Grand Palladium Select Costa Mujeres — Hotel in Quintana Roo

Long story short, this place is terrible! Do not waste your money, and definitely do not trust them with your wedding!!|I have never written a review, but I feel compelled to share my experience in the hope that anyone else who is considering this resort for their wedding venue be spared the ordeal my friends and I endured.|I traveled to the Grand Palladium Costa Mujeres to be a bridesmaid in my friend’s wedding. From the moment I arrived, nothing went smoothly as one would expect from a 5 star resort!||The first issue arose at check-in. I was told that my room would be in Building 14, while the bride was located in Building 12; I was then told that it was a 25 minute walk, but a trolley car or boat shuttle was never mentioned. When I questioned why would the bride be so far away from her guests when she had blocked out a certain amount of rooms to accommodate the large group of family and friends attending her special day, I received no answer to that. |Here’s the sales pitch—-now I’m told not only that I am a “supposed” 25 minute walk to the bride, but I also cannot go to her area or the restaurants there unless I upgrade my reservation for an additional $120 per day! It was disconcerting, to say the least, to be informed of that pretty important piece of information as I was checking in rather than prior to my arrival. Seemed a little shady to me, but obviously, I’m here for the bride and need to participate in all the wedding festivities. Naturally, I got the upgrade!|After waiting several hours for the upgraded room to finally be ready, all I wanted to do was take a hot shower. But guess what? There was no hot water and several of the outlets were not working. However, I quickly realized that I was the lucky one—other friends in the group who did not opt for the upgrade experienced moldy, smelly, dirty rooms. The cleaning service attempted to clean, but the smell and the grime never went away.||The second issue—you cannot just walk in to a restaurant to eat. They require reservations but you prior to arrival you can make dinner accommodations. You are expected to eat at buffets every night. We walked into three restaurants asking to seat us and were turned away even though it was 9:00 p.m. and the restaurants were empty! We were given no apologies, no offer to help, just told NO as if it didn’t matter that we all just spent money to be there. Customer service and cleanliness clearly doesn’t seem to be a priority in this establishment.||The third incident—the parents of the bride wanted to arrange a private dinner after the wedding rehearsal as a welcome to all their guests. The mother of the bride offered to pay an additional cost and was told that she would not be able to do that, but was promised a special section in the Isla Blanca buffet to accommodate the 40 guests. When we got there, that was not what happened, and no one offered to fix the misunderstanding. They sat us near each other but all spread out in the front of the restaurant where other customers were standing on top of us and walking by as the bride was making a speech thanking her guests for coming. This is not the kind of treatment a bride should endure, in addition to all the guest room issues and general problems with customer service. |Last but not least, the wedding day started off with 9:30 spa appointments. Another bridesmaid got to her appointment at 9:30 sharp and was told that there was no appointment. The bride resolved that issue, and the rest of the bridesmaids arrived. The spa artists who provided the hair and make-up were great! I have only positive things to say about that, and we all looked good which helped to make the day a little better. However, the rest of the service was horrible. We asked for more champagne which never came. We asked to get some food brought up to us because we were all in our matching pajamas spending time with the bride—no food! Another bridesmaid’s husband had to deliver us pizza! Another bridesmaid and I had to walk over in the heat with out hair and make-up done to get drinks at Fizz Bar. When we got to the bar, the lady bartender seemed bothered that I ordered ten drinks. Even though we generously tipped them, the workers were rude. Another guy bartender showed up and offered to help us carry the drinks back to the spa…Finally, someone who understands the meaning of customer service!||The wedding itself—the wedding coordinator is incompetent and did not come through with anything that had been discussed with the bride. At the cocktail hour, the guests were eaten alive by mosquitoes. The guests were arriving at the wedding venue and the tables weren’t even ready for them to start to sit down!||As a professional in the service industry with years of experience in party planning, I simply cannot understand the lack of detail, lackluster customer service and overall apathetic attitude towards a wedding party and guests. While there were a few wonderful exceptions as mentioned above, I truly hope that more care and concern is given to future brides who book this resort hoping for a dream wedding when inn reality they might and up in...

DO NOT STAY HERE. I cannot stress how extremely terrible the service at this hotel is. If you’d like to feel stressed during the your entire vacation, this is the place for you. Otherwise, please save your sanity and avoid this hotel at all costs.

There is a systematic breakdown of communication and support at this resort. From the very beginning, I and other people in our travel party dealt with service failings at every point. We have been to other resorts in Mexico and other countries and have never considered it was possible to be this stressed during an all inclusive vacation.

The front desk does not communicate with the bell boys and other staff. Because of repeated failures of communication, knowledge, and performance of service, it reached a point where it was impossible to trust whether significant tasks were being done, such as the delivery of our bags to the front desk in time for us to get to the airport. When we asked the front desk whether our bags had been delivered, they directed us to walk to the bellboy service instead of attempting to contact them themselves.

Requests for room cleaning, items delivered to room, and technical assistance are routinely ignored or delayed. We asked for technical assistance with the TV not connecting to the WiFi network. They said it would take 20-30 min. Someone came 2 HOURS later and knocked on our door at 1 am with batteries for our remote. These are individually small issues, but you will be constantly thinking how terrible and unsupported you feel. To clarify, although tipping is not required, we tipped generously for the first few days of our stay. This in no way improved the quality of the service.

The resort is giant, and relies on golf carts to cart people around. However, you have to wait anywhere from 5-15 minutes for a golf cart to show up, which adds up significantly during the stay. Not only that, but the carts often take round-about trips which take another 10-15 minutes. Just getting from the lobby to our building took a total of 25 minutes at one point. There is very little organization with regard to calling the carts, and the front desk people/butlers that were supposed to be stationed at each building were not there most of the time to assist.

Other issues include the following: -Mold on fresh fruit delivered via room service (see attached photos). -Mold on walls in the hotel rooms (see attached photos). -Buffet staff consistently forget orders or take so long to deliver that you’re already done with the meal. -Buffet restaurant routinely was missing silverware, with no place to get more. Staff often took very long to replenish missing silverware and/or forgot to do it at all. Same with pouring water. -Hotel staff (including managers and front desk people) routinely provide inconsistent/incorrect information about events and happenings at the resort. -Beach drink service is virtually non-existent. If you were imagining relaxing by the ocean with drink in hand, you’ll first have to trudge your drink there and back from the bar. But don’t worry, they’ll make sure to clean up your drink before it is half finished if you step into the ocean for 10 minutes.

To top all this off, at checkout we requested only that the $300 charge for our room upgrade be refunded to us due to a mishap with our transition that caused us to miss almost half my cousins wedding. Despite there being countless other issues that we mentioned, no manager came to assist us, and our reasonable request was denied. They attempted to get us to sign a release when we asked to get a $75 room charge removed as a minimum compensation. We are yet to find out if someone will contact us about this, but I highly doubt it.

There are a bunch of very fake or solicited 5 star reviews that are clearly intended to skew the rating at best if not entirely fabricate it. The 1 star reviews all corroborate what I’m sharing. I look forward to the day this resort either gets a complete management and staff change or is entirely shut down so that nobody has to deal with such an...

We were there for my wedding in October. This resort is a one and done for us. The only things we liked were the people who work there and the beach. Takes an hour to get there from the resort. Once you get there, you’re thinking “wow this place is gorgeous” and then if you’re hungry the only option is the ONE buffet or the 24/7 bar. We chose the buffet and it’s huge but also packed at the amount of people that stay there. Not only palladium people, but other people from the two other resorts as well. There’s long lines at each little station to get food and honestly, people are rude and will cut you or shove into you. We didn’t not enjoy the buffet while there but it’s your only option to eat at if you don’t make a reservation at one of the mediocre restaurants. They also shut down the buffet randomly one night and people didn’t know so what were the people supposed to do that didn’t know and didn’t make reservations??? I’d be LIVID! Luckily, we had a reservation. The steakhouse is not that good. The Thai place was our favorite. The Japanese restaurant, not hibachi, was our second favorite. The pool was PACKED and honestly quite dirty. Peoples hair was getting wrapped around your legs and toes constantly. The service at the pool was amazing but my group tips well. Drinks were actually strong most days. There’s NO hot tubs which really sucks seeings how we got a lot of rain and cloudy skies most of our trip. We were told we were only allowed in the one pool unless we paid $45 a day to upgrade. However, towards the end, we realized you could use the other pools and they didn’t care!! Frustrating. The mini cabanas pool side are free but some guy tried to charge one of our friends so that was shady. We did the salon and got a massage which the massage itself was absolutely amazing, but everything else after that was rushed and you’re with a ton of other people. The water is colddddd and open to the outdoors and unfortunately, we didn’t get a sunny day so we left our spa experience kinda quick. Once again, wish they had a hot tub. Wouldn’t do the spa experience again, too expensive for what it was. The room service charged you before 11:00am and after 11:00pm and would take 2+ hours to get it delivered!!!! The food after 11:00pm was TRASH and $22 charge. Our room was clean and we loved it however, our friends room the electrical didn’t work. Our other friends shower was constantly clogged. Our brothers tub wouldn’t clog so he never got to enjoy the spa bath. Also, his jets wouldnt turn off and had to wait 2 hours for maintenance to come and those things are LOUD and it was late. The beach was amazing and I absolutely adore the people that worked at the bar. The boat taxis are fun. The golf carts are packed and sparingly or they just ignore you. Laundry service is a charge and it never got picked up. For “professional” photos it’s $22 for one download. The chic cabaret show is a charge so it’s not free. There’s no place to stay up late except the 24/7 bar which unfortunately, we were at a lot. No dancing, nothing. The water from the water bottles tastes exactly like the water from the sink. My family and friends alllllllllll of us got sick with diarrhea the whole time we were there and when we got home. I actually got a nasty cold two days after getting there too. Building 13 where some of my friends and family stayed had the fire alarms going off multiple times in the week, also at like 6:00am. We were told at the airport palladium is the one of the nicest resorts in Cancun, however, we didn’t think so. Architecture is pretty. The people are so friendly. Beach is amazing. Everything else lacked. We won’t be coming back here...