Mexican Wedding: The Resort

Alright, it’s time to tell you about my recent trip to Mexico for my friends’ destination wedding. Let’s start with the resort.

We stayed at the Mayan Rivera all-inclusive resort the El Dorado Seaside Suites. Forbes called it “one of the 10 most romantic hotels in the world” and it claims to be five-star.

Well, the resort was quite beautiful and romantic but I wouldn’t quite call it five-star, maybe Mexican five-star but the attention to detail and maintenance wasn’t quite at what I would consider a five-star level (more on that later).

Our room was wonderful. It was huge and had marble floors, giant marble shower, a Jacuzzi, a balcony and double sinks. But the rooms varied in amenities. For example, we had a king sized bed, a flat screen TV and a separate sitting area. But some of our friends, who paid the same price as us, had old TVs, smaller beds and no sitting area.

Also, the bride and groom paid more for a “swim-up” suite that included a pool in front of it. This was a fun feature but their actual room was smaller than and not as nice as ours.

One of the big selling features of this resort is the food and booze. At night it’s all à la carte dining and there are six restaurants to choose from. The food and the alcohol selection was great and things were quite yummy though it would be nice if you could make reservations (some nights it was hard to get a table in our first or second choice place). Sadly, I couldn’t fully enjoy this aspect of the resort because I caught some kind of food poisoning (I’m pretty sure I caught it from an off-resort restaurant).

On TripAdvisor.com, there were a lot of complaints about the beach and the swimming area but I thought it was fine. Sure, it could have better sand and the swimming area is bit rocky but the water’s fairly warm and calm and there are plenty of fish and even some rays swimming around. We also found quite a few crabs and even a lobster. Unfortunately a hurricane really smashed up the reef a few years ago but it does seem to be coming back.

The resort is located about 20 minutes south of Playa Del Carmen and 30 minutes north of the Tulum ruins. It’s an area that’s packed with stuff to do including scuba diving. Shawn and I were really hoping to do some diving but on the second day he had an accident that crushed that dream.

The El Dorado’s beach is dotted with wooden, four-post “beach beds”. Some of the beds are regular, one-level beds and then some are two levels, with the second level being about six feet off the ground.

On our second day, the bride and groom claimed one of these beds. After lunch the bride, groom, Shawn and I were planning to all sun tan on it (they are quite large) but I left to get a book and the groom left to get a drink. This left Shawn and the bride on the bed. And then somehow it collapsed and they both fell head first to the ground.

In the end everyone was OK. But Shawn and I decided it would be wise to skip the scuba diving since he was knocked out for a bit and his back was sore.

We went to the Playa Del Carmen hospital (quite nice and pretty quick) to get Shawn and the bride checked out and the resort covered the cost of that, as well as the ambulance, the taxi the groom and I took and the prescriptions that Shawn and the bride picked up (for pain). They also paid for massages but only after we asked. The bride and groom were also able to get quite a few wedding-related upgrades but the only thing Shawn and I got was a bottle of sparkling wine.

So that incident kind of put a damper on things. I thought the resort could have been a quicker to apologize (I think the only resort we got anything beyond the medical expanses paid for was because the groom demanded to speak to the general manager) and obviously those beds could have been better maintained (throughout the week we noticed at least a couple other single level beds that were busted).

I would definitely recommend the Mayan Rivera as a great location to check out but I don’t know if I could confidently recommend the El Dorado Seaside Suites. While in many ways it was a great resort, it wasn’t exactly the safest.

I'll share more on the actual wedding over the next two entries.