Value for money. Hygienic, good location, beautiful, sweet and simple.

Lots of kids and families. Make sure you do not have problem with that.

But as I said - value for money. We enjoyed living here and saved some money by not booking expensive resorts and used that money for outdoor activities - speed boat, snorkling, scuba, coco bongo club.

Bottom Line: If you have a limited budget and you want to enjoy outdoor activities also as well have a good time at resort - book it.

Details:

1. Rooms: I took the crown club room in building 2. The room had jacuzzi and nice ocean view. I enjoyed it but I may not take it again. Because I hardly spent any time in room. You can save some money on the room and spend it on outdoor fun.

2. Purple Band: With Crown Club room, we got purple band. That means we get international drinks and some special treatment. But International drinks are only served from 6 PM to 11 PM and that too in Bldg#2 on 8th floor. My advise - You can save some money here. The in house drinks are not bad or anything. You don't really need a purple band unless you have extra bucks.

3. Restaurants: La Palapa is good restaurant for buffet. Nothing fancy but neat, clean and variety. No booking needed.

French Restaurant : Good food. You need reservation for that. We took house wines which are included with food. Menu wines are charged extra.

Italian Restaurant: Average food. You can skip it if you want. Reservation is required here as well.

Yama Sushi : Good walkin seafood buffet.

4. Pools: Infiniti pool is good. In other pools, no one hangs out. Do not fall for pictures. Stick to infiniti pool and you will be happy.

5. Location : Not bad location. You can get a bus outside of the hotel to go to downtown.

6. Spa: Spa sucks. The simple oil massage is expensive and nothing special about it. I will not try again or recommend it to my friends.

7. Staff: Staff if good. They respect you and listen.

8. Kids and Families: This resort turned into Day Care on Monday. Lots of kids everywhere. But as I said above, this resort is not exactly for couples but if you have limited budget and want to enjoy outdoor cancun as well, you should not complain.

9. Will I go there again: No. I will try something else.

Me and my girl stayed at crown paradise for 2 weeks. After a 30 hour delay we arrived tired and hungry and decided to order room service at around 11pm. Half an hour later it arrived stone cold and smelt rank. So we went to bed hungry. After 2 days of cold food i decided to try the chinese buffet, what a mistake!! I was so ill for 3 days with sickness and the squirts Around 9 prople were sick the time i was there. The breakfast lunch and dinner buffet was always just warm. Never once hot! We tried the italian and orderd pizza, cold and under cooked!! Even the steakhouse food was warm. All im sayin is its a lovy hotel. Alot of fun but the food is a joke!!! I'd highly recomend going out to eat. We had to lie and say my girl was pregnant for them to make us a hot meal.

I am very fair with my reviews and like to be as accurate as possible.

As per title of my review there is absolutely no way this is a 5 star resort. I would consider myself generous in offering it a 3.5 rating.

Best points:-

Beach is beautiful - stunning. Current very strong whilst we were there and shelves very quickly. Loads of shells some large smash into your shins so beware.

Sea view in all rooms is nice.

Bar staff quick and efficient and some nice brands available.

French Restaurant lovely both in decor and food standard.

Buses outside super cheap. $1 takes you anywhere and they are frequent to escape the monotomy of the hotel.

Not so good:-

Extremely slow check in on arrival
Hotel appearance very drab and basic
Room musky but this is always the case in the Caribbean and has no reflection on the hotel as maid service very good and efficient. decor just drab generally in appearance. Very basic.
Fridge never stocked with water or any other drinks and if you rang room service they took around 2 hrs each time and the food was lousy.
I am vegetarian and always struggle with choices. Whenever are they going to discover soya protein in these complexes for non-meat eaters? Just to be able to have something other than vegetables, chips and cheese for 2 weeks would be a luxury, especially as we pay the same as those having steak, fish etc. They had a cauliflower cheese one day and I was so excited but this turned out to be completely tasteless and nothing more than a white sauce with no cheese flavour whatsoever. All food was basic and always lukewarm-cold. Omelettes were cooked fresh but same spatula used for meat and non-meat preferences. Food never changed at all from day to day. My husband did have some of the freshly cooked poolside Paella which he said was the best thing her had eaten during the 2 weeks. I obviously cannot comment.
Coffee not very nice and no cappacinos available at the bar etc.Took ages for waiters to bring coffee to your table in the morning. They just seem so overworked its terrible.
Poolside entertainment as painful as it always is. Could be made bearable if not so loud and I mean excruciatingly loud - same day in and day out

We were delayed 29 hours on return flight and put up at the Iberostar Paraiso on the Riviera Maya. Absolutely stunning hotel and brought home just how basic ours was..

First of all I want to start by saying that we did not "stay" here. We stayed right beside this resort at the GR Solaris, which is one of the greatest resorts we've ever stayed at. We came over to "this" resort for a friends wedding.
To get a day pass, in order to attend the wedding, we had to give the CPC front desk our passports, (which is ILLEGAL), but we did it unknowenly and $80pp. Went to the wedding, had a few cocktails and went back to the GR Solaris. Went to sleep, got up and forgot to pick up our passports at the front desk. Phoned over to the CPC where the wedding was to ask if they had our passports. They said, "No". Starting to panic, we searched everywhere, all day. Next day, we called over again to ask. Once again they said, "No, they did not have our passports". We thought maybe there was a translation problem, so we got the GR Solaris front desk to call the CPC front desk. Again they said, "No". This went on for 3 more days, 5 days total. Called the Canadian passport place, in a panic and was ready to do a 7 hour run around in order to get new passports (the last day of our trip), decided to go in to the CPC where the wedding was and ask if they had our passports.
And whattya know. They had them. AND THEY WOULDNT GIVE THEM BACK, UNLESS WE PAID THEM $880US!!!! The anger we felt was undiscrible. We werent about to pay the $880 and demanded to talk to the manager. He was too busy, so we stood in the front desk lineup for a half hour. Not moving. Big line up behind us now. They still refused to give us our passports back. We wanted them to phone the police, because what they were doing was illegal. They refused. Front desk person went back and forth, talking to the "manager". $880 went to $750, went to $600, went to $550, then to $400 and finally a hour later $200. We paid the $200, cause we were just fed up. This place is SLIMY, SLIMY, SLIMY. And the 60 people who stayed at this resort for the wedding were not impressed by it either.
The resorts claim was, that since we did not pick up our passports after the wedding, we now owed them for 2 ppl for 5 day passes. Even tho we called everyday asking if they had our passports, our resort called them every day asking them the same, they change the wrist band color everyday and they admitted that they knew we werent there any other days besides the wedding. They still held our passports hostage. Absolute garbage!! Ruined our week vacation. Please do not give a buisness like this a penny of your money. There as slimy as they come. The GR Solaris was extremely discusseded in what happened and appologized on behalf of Cancun and Mexico. This is how/why Mexico gets such a bad reputation. Because of slimy buisnesses like the Crown Paradise!