Riviera Maya Family Vacation Oct 2010
submitted by Krisha - Bursch Travel Monticello
My family and I just returned from 5 days in Riviera Maya. We stayed 2 nights at Iberostar Lindo and 3 nights at Hotel Marina El Cid. My kids are 11 and 9 years old. I wanted to share a few notes about my recent trip.
*I was real curious as to how it was going now that they are not accepting the U.S. dollar as much as before and the hotel staff seem to be fine with taking our money still, the hotels however not as much. The shops and resorts did seem to be switching over to using pesos.
Iberostar Lindo- The hotel was very beautiful.
Lobby and check in area-as we arrived the bell boy took our luggage and showed us over to the lobby. They were expecting us when we arrived and had drinks ready for us.
Pools- The pools were huge. This resort does have a wave pool and lazy river with it. Big swim up bar area. Nice kids club area with a small splash area as well. The grounds were very well maintained.
Beach here was amazing long white sandy beach. They had beach volleyball, soccer and a shooting archery. Lots of beach chairs. They did have watersports right on sight. We did go parasailing from this resort and it was the highlight of our trip. Just an amazing experience.
Food- lots of restaurant choices. We ate the Japanese restaurant one night and the buffet the other night and both of them were very good.
Entertainment-They had an adults night club and teen night club over in their shopping complex. Iberostar has its own shopping complex. They do have nightly shows and entertainment going on. Nice big area for the nightly shows.
Rooms-we stayed in just a run of the house room here and the room was very spacious with a nice balcony. I do have to say for a 5 star resort the room was very standard. The beds were extremely hard and we did have some cracked lamp shades and the bedding looked to be from the 1980's . This is a large resort so some of the rooms did seem to be far away from the pools, lobby and restaurants.
Hotel Marina El Cid-the value here is great.
Lobby and check in area- This is really the heart of the hotel. They do a lot in the lobby area. Really a relaxing and inviting space.
Pool-They have 1 adult only (whirl pool area) and than the very large pool with water slide. They also have a cliff jumping area into a 12 foot deep pool. The kids and adults love this. They have races and surfing in the pool along with water aerobics. The pool area has a lot of chairs around it.
Beach-The beach at El Cid is a little smaller than others, but for the hotel size it is perfect. Nice sandy beach, however as you get out into the water you do encounter some rocks so I would advise people to wear water shoes. They had beach volleyball, boogie boards, kayaks, windsurfers and lots of other fun beach stuff.
Food-during the off peak season they had the buffet open and usually 1 of their specialty restaurants open per night. Normally they have 4 restaurants open. This includes the Marina restaurant that you get to eat at 1 time during your stay. We did get to eat here and it was really good. Lots of choices on the buffet. The one thing was they didn't have a beach grill.
Room-The rooms at this resort are beautiful. We had a 1 bedroom suite. The master bedroom had a king bed with a huge private bath and a beautiful balcony that overlooked the ocean. The other room was a living area with another bathroom that had a Murphy bed that pulls out of the wall. This room also had a small dinning room table and a kitchenette and this area also had a huge balcony. Nice comfortable beds with huge comforters.
This resort was just about a $6 cab ride from Puerto Morelos. Nice small town fishing village with some shops.
Entertainment-They had casino night, karaoke and magic night. They didn't have a set entertainment area. They really didn't have just a bar area either. The lobby bar became the hangout area. I did notice a few teenage boys around and asked what there was for them to do at night and they said nothing. So I think the teens might have to find something on their own to do.