Hotel Riu Palace Costa Mujeres — Hotel in Quintana Roo

A quick overview is at the end. See: Bottom line.|Family vacation to one of many RIU resorts. |Our trip to the RIU Palace Costa Mujeres was in the beginning of October, 2025. The resort is located about 45 minutes from Cancun airport. ||Pros:|Check in and check out: process was a breeze!  Friendly staff made sure to explain everything upon arrival.  |Room (4110) partial ocean view. Room was ready, stocked and clean! Sunrise is not visible from our room. |In-house keeping: room cleaned 2 times a day. Floors were swept, to remove sand, which is a huge plus!|Staff continuously made sure to pick up any loose leaves, trash, etc.  Had some rain during our stay, making the walkways slippery.  Staff made sure to remove standing water practicality immediately!  Clearly, safety of the guests is at the top of the list at RIU Palace! |Beach: best beach by far! Broad shoreline. Gradual ocean floor descent. Soft, rock free ocean floor. Practically no seaweed. Soft white sand. Plethora of beach chairs. Whatever seaweed washed out, it was cleared off a few times a day by means of a tractor, to make a sure you have best beach experience! |Pools: 3 kid-friendly pools. 2 adult-only pools with swim up bars. Pools open to 7pm.|Entertainment will keep you engaged: activities by adult and kid-friendly pools daily. Daily evening entertainment from music shows, to dancing, to karaoke, to silent DJ party, to kid programs (closer to dinner time). ||Cons:|Mosquitos are super friendly! It was bad in the evening time! Make sure you have some sort of spray with you or you will suffer!|Fairly small resort. With 60% occupancy upon checking in, the service of staff, while very polite and friendly, was very sparse.  Even at 60% occupancy, it felt like the resort was drastically understaffed.  Same staff was rotated through different restaurants.  Mosquitos!  No drinks from the bar were not allowed when dining in.  Several times placed drink orders were wrong or forgotten, unless mentioned again.  Service at the beach was spotty.  Sometimes the server checked on us periodically, other times we didn't see anyone for a couple of hours before they showed up again. Did I mention mosquitos?!  The beach had a ton of beach chairs, but other than shade from palm trees, there was no cover from sun/rain. |For a family resort, it was surprising how few restrooms there were on the property!  Big shortage!|Food: |biggest downfall of this resort, in our opinion, is food quality and variety. Out of last 5 resorts we visited, RIU Palace had the smallest buffet with the least varieties of dishes and least flavour.  Biggest disappointment was in the restaurants!  Dishes served at the restaurants are practically identical to buffet dining.  Actually, pasta was better at the buffet than at an Italian restaurant. That should tell you everything you need to know about "fine dining" experience.  Meats were consistently overbooked. Ordered medium, received well done. Lack of flavor is very obvious!  No use of herbs or spices to bring the flavours out.  Food came out from the kitchen almost always lukewarm. Servers were not attentive to drink refills, empty plates, lack of silverware.  Restaurants worked on rotating schedule.  Two out of 5 restaurants were closed every day, which leaves little to choose from if you want to venture out from the buffet.  After visiting three out of five restaurants, we concluded that food: from appetizers, to main courses, to desserts, was better at every aspect of dining at the buffet.  Desserts, while visually appealing, had very little difference in taste.  Restaurant desserts, left like the leftovers from the buffet.  Adult beverages were watered down and medium quality at best...and what resort in Mexico has only one top shell tequila (aka Anejo)?  Riu Palace does!  Staff taking drink orders often didn't bother to write down the order, leading to wrong and/or forgotten drinks. ||Suggestions: any entry from the beach into pool areas MUST have a wash-off station with, at least, a bench where guests can set down their belongings, instead of setting them down on the ground/sand. |Beach could use some shade: beach umbrellas, hammocks.  Maybe develop an area with a nice view of the beach and ocean where families can take pictures, like a swing set.|The ramps leading to/from the beach need to have none-slick stickers, like the ones found on stairs, to minimize slippery surprises.|Food: increase the variety of dishes in the buffet. Restaurant dining needs to be up scale experience from the buffet. ||Bottom line: RIU Palace at Costa Mujeres is a beautiful place, with enough greenery not to feel like you are in concrete jungle setting, with an awesome beach!  Entertainment will keep you engaged if you are easily bored. Make sure you know where the nearest restaurants are, in case you need to use one, as there is a shortage  of them on a resort.  Bring mosquito spray!!! If you travel with kids, the non-alcoholic beverages from the bars are great for kids, but if you want an adult drink, low quality liquor is what you'll get. Food options will keep you from being hungry.  From buffet, to bar grills, to restaurants. However if you want a more upscale dining experience, look else where as you'll not find it at this resort!  When serving guests, staff always friendly and professional, but it felt like the resort was...

Spent the last week of January at Riu Palace Costa Mujeres, it was great but it's pretty far removed from downtown Cancun (approx 45 min drive from the airport) and the last major resort on the peninsula. This meant getting to our excursion and trips to/from the airport were longer for us. A delicious drink as we registered with Ricardo at the front desk, who started our trip with a fabulous upgrade from ocean-view to an oceanfront junior suite (room 3138 pix attached). Our fellow couple also got upgraded from a jr suite to a full suite (room 4038 also pix attached). About the rooms: Your key card has to be in a slot by the door to use the lights & TV. The mini bar was good selection of water, can beers, a few club sodas, tonics, pepsi's & 7ups. Part of the mini bar was a wall mounted dispenser of full-sized Vodka; Gin; Tequila & Rum. The coffee packets are replaced by the mini-bar folks, not housekeeping staff & can also at the front desk. Our roomy Jr suite balcony had 2 slightly adjustable deck chairs, a small table and a wall-attached clothes drying rack. The full suite had the same along with 2 full sized loungers chairs. The tub was odd being in the middle of the room but it filled quickly and was comfortable to lounge in. The shower was FABULOUS once you got the button to stay pressed ~ roomy, with a couple handy shelves, decent lighting, a hand-held shower head along with an overhead rain soaker shower head. We had 2 sinks with a small amount of vanity space, along with a full shelf under the sinks. Towels were good sized and nice for hotel quality. Our king sized bed was comfy and had great pillows and it was really nice to find a lightweight blanket in the closet. FYI, the AC turns off when the balcony door is not closed. The resort: The place has 5 pools which are rather similar square with the deepest option being just over 4'. The pool lounge chairs fill up fast in the mornings with towels reserving them, but down at the beach you could always get a lounger. The beach was windy, but well maintained. Not many shells. Both the ocean and pool water were comfortable, which seemed chilly to get in but comfy to hang out in once you were wet. It's easy to get around once you get the layout. The restaurants' open times were a bit different than we expected but overall we didn't go hungry. The restaurants: We liked the Steakhouse (x2 there), Italian (x2 there), buffet and Mexican. The buffet seems to keep with food stations for: Asian; Mexican; Italian; a Carving station; American; Fish; Salads; and Desserts. Some items were great, some not so tasty, but the selections and presentation were wonderful. FYI while dinning, if you want more than beer, wine, mimosa for an adult beverage then you need to pick one up at a bar before getting seated. For restaurants not the buffet, seating happened sometimes immediately, sometime after an hour or so. Buffet seating was no problem. We were totally unimpressed with the Cappuccino coffee bar. However the piano player there each evening was fun, talented and always had a smile. The bars: Daytime there were 2 swim up bars and a bar at Pepe's by the pool. Evenings a theater bar; and the bar sharing the coffee café area. You could also get alcohol in the (24hr) Lobby 24 bar, it was a room-like 4 bottle dispenser to make your own drinks with mixers. They didn't offer a 'drink of the day', but did have a wide selection of specialty drinks from: Scooby Doo, Mango Tango, Superman, Mudslide, margaritas, etc, most all the standard top shelf liquors. The entrainment: Not our thing, but there were activities if you wanted them (foam party, neon/white party, trivia, bingo, etc). We did walk the beach south (about an hour) to Riu Latinos (adults only) and enjoyed their beach hammocks. We cabbed back for $16 USD. Also walked next-door to Dunamar and partook in their Fri night party and waterslides. Our first time with Riu, a tough decision between Iberostar and Riu, but we liked Riu & we'll be back, but prob with a...

People need to read this for their own safety. They tried to drug my wife and I but we caught on. They drugged people we met on the resort.

I will say that the resort is really nice and clean. The food and entertainment are also good. The room was nice was well.

After about 2 days we realized the staff here are not very nice or welcoming. Including front desk staff, bartenders and security. One of the bartenders was very rude to my wife when she asked if they could make her a particular drink. A few times I had to just go and get my own new fork and napkins at the buffet after I finished a plate. Terrible service

So we ended up going to the beach after that bartender was rude to my wife. We already had drinks with us. Usually the servers on the beach come up and ask you what you want to drink. But this one guy came up to us in 5 minutes and had two cups of beer on the platter and asked what if we wanted it. My wife does not drink beer and typically I don't either but he was quite persistent. I took the beer but my wife declined. As he walked away he kept turning around to see if I was drinking it. My wife found this all very suspicious. I took a sip of the beer and it tasted funny, I knew immediately something was off. I had swallowed a small amount.

I made it through the day and hung out by the pool bar and drank a lot and eventually made it back to the room at night. I could not sleep and my heart was pounding. I felt weird and I knew it was from the sip of the spiked beer. It must have been a mix of things as it all just felt so weird. - I know what amphetamines feel like.

I could not sleep until about 5am and trust me after a full day of drinking in the sun, you can sleep. I felt anxious and paranoid and that is not my personality all. I excercise a lot and my resting heartbeat is usually pretty low. My watch was showing resting heartbeat around 110bpm and I could feel it pounding. I also had the most strange nightmare. Usually dreams and nightmares are forgettable but this was more like a hallucination cause I remmeber everything and it was weird. I don't typically have any nightmares and do not suffer from any anxiety problems.

Earlier, we noticed someone at the pool bar became slightly belligerent and incoherent and maybe even having hallucinations of some sort. But they were by the bar the whole time. I feel like they may have slipped some more into my drinks somehow as well even though I was watching thoroughly when my drinks were being made. But like I said I survived. But what I witnessed at the pool was not normal.

I read a few other reviews of people getting drugged at the bar here on Trip advisor and hallucinating and acting crazy and even disappearing and being robbed. These reviews were left after the people realized they were drugged. The hotel then will call the police and have them removed from the hotel. My wife and I contemplated how they manage operating costs for such a nice resort for such a decent price and now we realize.

It seems they will drug you or be rude to you to lead you on to becoming upset or of course acting crazy from the drugs where there they will call the police and then they will extort you and split the proceeds with the hotel. And this place is so secluded it is quite possible to do this very easily. That way they also don't have to feed you and can save costs on housekeeping.

Security is also in on it. Head of security is Veronica. She has a cartel tattoo on her eyelid and she works almost 24/7. She knows exactly what is going on and I realized that after some deep thought upon arriving home with my wife. She's making money off this for sure. A lot of the staff are in on it and will plot to set you up. Jorge is one of Veronica's minions to be careful of him too.

I wanted to get away to relaax but went home fearing for my safety. Read the negative reviews on Trip advisor.

There are similar stories at this same resort and other Riu resorts and places in Mexico in general. I have links to those reviews and...