Royalton Riviera Cancun, An Autograph Collection All-Inclusive Resort & Casino — Hotel in Quintana Roo

This place is a dump. It's for drinking and more drinking. That's all folks. Also it smells like sewage. Not sure why but it's pervasive. I don't mind spending money but there is a difference between things that cost more and just being ripped off. Is there a lot of construction? Yes but it didn't really bother me.

The beach is disgusting. I saw zero swimmers and for good reason as it's like a swamp with seaweed everywhere. The watersports are non-existent with one Hobie cat that may or may not float and a couple of beat up kayaks. The watersports guys are just there to sell you excursions. It's fine we bought a few. It's not very expensive.

The food is fit for a US prison. It's not that it's not good it's atrocious. I'd be furious if I got this quality food in a US inner-city gas station.

Update for the steakhouse. It's actually good. I ordered the beet and goat cheese appetizer. It was well prepared and a great balance of sweet and savory with a nice crunch. Great goat cheese selection. I went with the grill mix and my filet was cooked to a perfect rare. Wasn't chewy at all and well seasoned. Chicken was good, well seasoned and not dry. Ribs were a bit over done but decently seasoned. The chorizo was a bit of a sleeper. Hiding there full of flavor. The mashed potatoes were not that great but reasonable. Service is great and was prompt and attentive. The sword of Damocles knife feature is an interesting choice.

The sushi /teppanyaki place is fine for entertainment but the food is atrocious. Had to spit out the steak as it was unchewable and the salmon was not a great choice, Chicken wasn't dry but wasn't particularly seasoned.

Grazie is fine for italianish. If you have kids or picky eaters it's going to work. We are it a few times so it's a decent option.

Taj was borderline. Was it better than what I make at home? No. Was it awful? Also no. They have Aloo Gobi and it's reasonable. The chicken curry was dry but the flavor was spot on. The naan was good grocery store quality.

Is the coffee good? No. No it is not. How are the drinks? I guess they're fine but I have to admit my goal of a vacation isn't just binge drinking.

This is a primarily front for up-sales pretending to be something inclusive. The minute you get here there is a time share pitch and a massage pitch and more massage pitches and photos and dining and infinite offers of things to buy. The store tried to charge me $10 for 2 Dramamine pills. The ATM has a very hefty surcharge and everything here requires a tip so think it through with the cash situation. They also have an unfavorable US exchange rate.

The casino is a room... That is probably all the necessary info.

Beds are like rocks. Butler doesn't really do anything. Managed to get room service once but failed the second time. Probably gonna try to sell me a massage or an excursion. Fridge isn't very cold and drinks are very limited. The walkout pool is fine if you like staying at a food truck. The wall sockets are loose and far from where you want them.

Housekeeping was fine but on our last day we came back and the room smelled like Margarita. It's because the housekeeper broke a $150 (yes overpaid a lot) bottle of coconut tequila and then left it in the bag on a towel on the cabinet. It ran onto the floor and made a mess. They ended up comping a jetski experience based on this initial review so I guess it's all even.

Restaurants aren't open all the time so dealing with the reservations is a pain. Also the hours suck. Getting up early is a huge pain as nothing gets going till after 7.

There is nothing luxury about this place and I mean nothing. Of all the places I've stayed in all the world this is the absolute worst. That may be a bit much, as I once had to stop at a Days Inn in Texas where I'm 99% sure I was the only one without meth and a murder warrant.

I would have found more enjoyment just setting the money on fire and staying home. I stand on this as the absolute worst hotel experience I've had...

Pros: Most, although not all, of the staff seemed genuinely friendly. Some of the entertainment was quite good. Some of the food was good. The drinks were fine.

Cons: where to begin? Let’s start with their tech. None of it works. None of it. Before arriving, guests are asked to book their airport transfer with the shuttle company, using their reservation code. This does not work. I spent hours trying to get this done. The shuttle company itself was great, but the hotel needs to send your reservation confirmation over and they didn’t do this. After many conversations with no one who could help, finally someone got the transport arranged. However, their auto system wasn’t notified of this, and the week before our trip I received multiple emails, phone calls, texts, and WhatsApp messages advising me I needed to book my airport transfer. Again, I spent a lot of time I didn’t have trying to sort this out to no avail. We did get our transfer without issue to and from the airport, but they had two separate bookings.

It got worse from there.

We booked a Diamond club room with ocean view and a tub on the terrace. We got a pool view with a tub in the bathroom. You could technically see the ocean from one corner of the terrace, and that is what they tell you. You can complain, but no one cares or will do anything about it. There is no information about where the Diamond Club (DC) check-in is. We assumed someone would greet us. They did not, and so we went to the regular check-in and were treated like we were stupid for doing so.

It was late when we arrived and our butler suggested room service, which is supposed to be prioritized for DC members. After 1.5 hours, we called again as we were very tired and wanted to go to sleep. They then quickly sent the food, but it was ice cold and not great.

The butler thing sounds cool, except instead of doing anything extra for you, they will spend the entire time trying to get you basics for your room such as water and coffee pods. The app for the resort does not work, our butlers could not get it to work, and this means your butler will spend their remaining time trying to get you reservations at restaurants. So much for cool butler service.

The rooms were likely nice at one time but they need updating/repair. See photos. The chairs on our deck were so uncomfortable that we couldn’t sit on them for long. There were no loungers, which would have been nice. Did I mention you will have to chase down water every day?

The elevator often didn’t work, so many times we took the stairs. They were painting the handrail one day and didn’t put any signage up so I stuck my hand right in the paint. I wasn’t the only one, as the door to the stairwell had lots of paint smears from people wiping their hands. They did eventually put a sign up.

If the weather is nice, expect people to stake out their loungers early in the morning and then not show up to use them for hours.This causes strife and in a couple of cases, outright screaming matches as people are understandably frustrated when they cannot find loungers to use, decide to take a chance when no one has been there for more than an hour, and then are attacked when those people finally make their way to the pool. The staff do nothing about this.

The food is fine in most cases, but we did get food poisoning and were very sick for two of our seven days. This is common, and you will hear many people talk about this. We did not drink any water, we were very careful. We have been to Mexico many times and never gotten sick. It was definitely one of the restaurants, but difficult to pinpoint which one.

It seems to me that they make even the simplest tasks impossible, so that you are forced to chase everything down and then you must tip. Every. Single.Thing.

The DC is supposed to give you special access and privileges. It does not. Although I suppose we were able to get water when many others could not.

This was a terrible vacation and would never return to this resort. I strongly advise anyone considering this resort to...

There are so many negatives about this place, not sure where to start so I will just put it all down into bullet points. on arrival to the hotel, check in was extremely slow, very unwelcoming. No welcome drink, other than water on the side, with about 4 glasses by the side. When when we got to our room, we opened the door, all I can describe our room smelt of was toxic, I am unsure of the smell but it was potent, almost like a really strong turps smell, or other chemical. We opened up the doors, to get the smell out. On opening the doors, there was the previous occupiers rubbish on the floor. I picked it up put it in the bin, thinking this was not very good. There was no bed made up for our son to sleep. Just a very stained and dirty sofa. I lifted the cushions, and see it was a sofa bed. It was full of mould, and the metal work all rusty. The mosquito/ fly net was completely damaged at the bottom, rendering it useless. Coffee machine, no coffee. Finally after 3 days of asking, we get 3 coffee pods and the mugs that they have supplied doesn't even fit under it. Air conditioning unit had water drips, dripping constantly. Not good on a tiled floor. The bedroom furniture is limited. Drawers do not open and close fluently, and they smell fousty. The bed. You get bit at night in the bed, or you get bit out of the bed! You can't win. The following day I said I didn't like it, so I pulled back the sheets, and it was disgusting, food debris, body hairs and black lumps (almost like insect cases) covered the whole mattress in the stitch lines. The pool. I am an early riser, love an early morning swim. The pool had plenty of cock roaches floating in it. On two separate occasions some one had been sick in the pool. It had been reported, one to the bar staff at the swim up pool who was very rude and abrupt saying "well. We will have to shut the pool down then, won't we!. It didn't get cleaned it got left to disperse around the pool in the gentle breeze for children and adults to swim through. The second time, they tried to pass it off as sun lotion. (Sun lotion does not contain lumps!) Again it was just left. Tiles falling off the walls in the pool, drainage around the top was broken in places, the ground very uneven and extremely slippery. The bar man that comes around and asks if you want a drink is lovely. Cocktails are dump. All ice, barely any alcohol. No little menu to see what they do. And no straw's, so when you drink it, you either can't get to it through all the ice .. or you end up wearing it. On entering the main buffet restaurant there is a horrible smell, like sewer. Food is the same day in day out. Waiter service was near on non existent the last 2 and a half days we were there, we got shown to our table, and that was it. Plates were not cleared, and twice as we were about to leave did we get offered a drink. And yes we tipped If the service was good. You can only book the speciality restaurants through an app, where it doesn't work. You try to book by the restaurant (steak house) and they say no, you have to do it through app. You tell them it doesn't work, they send you to reception. They send you back again. Eventually we did get a booking after a few days by basically demanding they book us in. The service in there is extremely slow. We were there nearly 2 hours and the steaks were thin and tough, and accompanied by about 10 fries. Very disappointed. The Indian restaurant has a very limited menu. But what we did have was lovely, and service was great. Lifts barely worked. Escalators... one worked ... one never did. There is one place only for the whole resort to get ice cream, coffee etc. It is lovely in there and the queue does move quite fast. Staff are lovely. The beach sand was beautiful, they did work to try and clear the seaweed that was washing up everyday. Unfortunately though nature kicked in and the water was brown, smelly and quite gross. This is not a 5 star luxury resort. More of a...