Riviera Cancún Golf & Resorts — Local services in Quintana Roo

We travel to Cancun often and stay at the Royal Sands. Having played many of the area courses, we asked our concierge for a new option. He recommended Riveria Cancun, a Jack Nicholas course. Royal Resorts is just starting a relationship with this course.

Our price included transportation, practice facility, golf, food and drink. A nice clean van showed up and took us to the course, which is set back off the highway - you would never know the course was out there!

We checked in and since we had not brought our clubs (a long story), we rented the Calaways they offer. Within minutes we were in our carts and escorted to Hole #1. So far a good experience...then our friend bent over to tee his bell up and without very much pressure on the driver; the head twisted off at the shaft!!! I have never seen anything like it, my only thought is the club was flawed or previously damaged. We had a foursome they had “staged” behind us, so he put the shaft and head in his cart and used mine. When we made the turn; he and his wife went to the Clubhouse while we hit our drives and told them what happened, they said “these are new clubs”, I will tell you that they had use on them and were not brand new, They would not give him a replacement and told home he would have to pay for it. My friend told them he hadn’t even used the club and it must have been flawed...their representative said “I want to believe you, but I don’t“????

My friend said “we can talk about this when we finish”, but requested a replacement and was told NO. We continued on the back nine, enjoying the golf, but perturbed about their attitude. A couple of holes later two employees showed up with another driver and said they were sorry about their stance, and they would reduce the cost for the club from $100 (USD) down to $75...I didn’t believe he should have any responsibility for a club he did not abuse at all, but he said he just wanted to put it behind him and agreed.

We finished a wonderful round and as they cleaned their rentals and our shoes, we tipped they well! Then he was escorted to the pro shop and told he owed $100, when he said $75? - no it has to be $100! He paid it and we left.

Nice course; beautiful day; but beware of their operation...not ethical! We have informed Royal Sands and I will be reviewing this on Golf sites too.

All that being said “Hit em...

Avoid this course - plenty of other great facilities in the area and our experience here was a disaster.

We booked through a third party (so this initial piece is not the course's fault!) and received confirmation for a 10am tee time. When we arrived at the course around 9:30am, we were told our actual tee time was two hours later at 11:40am and that we should talk to the starter to see if we could get out sooner. Mistakes happen, no sweat.

Unfortunately, this course has WAY too few golf carts and they weren't able to accommodate us despite the mix-up. This was not a case of "oh the course is really busy and all the carts are out". The course was practically empty - we saw maybe 10 total other golfers - but at times there were only 2 or 3 carts sitting waiting for golfers. Not the starter's fault - but how the resort doesn't have more carts is beyond me.

From there, it only got worse. The driving range was closed. We eventually convinced them to let us use it to try and kill some time, but the range was under water (despite no rain the previous 3 days) and the range balls were BAD. Broken and old.

This is supposed to be "all inclusive" - so we thought, "oh, we'll go grab food and drinks". Nope, the bar and restaurant were closed. We asked if the bev cart could come by.....it eventually did. We were told they didn't have water and that we needed to fill our own inside the club house. No bottled water at a golf course in Mexico is a real problem.

A few guys in the group needed golf balls - it's not hyperbole when I tell you a dozen Callaway Supersofts....a $20 purchase normally....was $80 USD.

So no golf, no driving range, no F&B, no water, literally robbery in the pro shop....after an hour or so of literally just sitting there, we opted to cancel the day and go back to our resort. We have to go through our credit card company for the refund.

To be clear: we paid nearly $250 a person for this experience. I've played plenty of $250 golf courses. This is not one. This isn't even a $50 golf experience. If I had paid $30, I would have felt ripped off.

The staff was kind enough, the course looked....fine....from what we saw of it. Some nice looking patches and some ROUGH looking patches - but the overall experience was so bad, such a disaster, that I implore you to find anywhere else in Cancun to...

An unconventional 5 star review - mixture of both course and hospitality. Keep in mind, we golfed about 5 days after Hurricane Beryl made it's way through. We booked through Mexico Golf Tee Times (3rd party) and were a little nervous about the booking and how smooth it would go. It took 24 hours for the course to confirm pretty close to the requested tee time we wanted and we were also able to tell them how early we wanted to be picked up as well and they confirmed a pickup time too. Where I would initially knock off stars is that the transportation was late. HOWEVER - about 30 minutes after our scheduled pickup time, our hotel staff actually found us in the lobby and told us that the course called them to let them know that there was an issue with transportation and just to call a taxi and they would pay for all of it. Our hotel had a taxi there in less than 10 minutes and the course took care of everything after that. Driving range was soaked and closed, 4 holes were closed so we played 1-4 twice (par was still the same). The holes that we did get to play were in incredible shape for a hurricane passing over! Most bunkers were playable, some were pullouts. Beautiful fairways, challenging greens, very pretty lagoon scenery! The only wildlife we didn't check off the sight seeing list were the little "bandito" monkeys. The course staff were extremely nice and were always around to make sure we knew where to go when needing to skip holes. I think we saw the food/beverage cart about 10 times, which was great. Transportation was on track by the time we were done, so we still had about an hour before our pick up time, so we had plenty of time to eat lunch at their restaurant and stay out of the heat before getting taken back. I wanted to give them less than 5 stars for some of the inconveniences/struggles we encountered, but some were due to nature and the rest was completely made up for in 5...