I've stayed at the Reef Club twice. Once in November 2004, and again in Jan 2007. I absolutely loved it. The atmousphere is gorgeous, there are beautiful flowers and vines everywhere, and our hotel room view and balcony were so beautiful. The scenery really made our pictures turn out great. There are also cute little lizards out and about every so often, but they're too fast to catch!
I know a lot of people are saying the food is bad, but I didn't think so at all. The snack bar was awesome, my favorite was the guacamole, I ate it all week. :o)
The pool was beautiful, no complaints at all. This isn't a huge resort, so there was only one swim up bar. There are three bars total in the whole resort I believe. One on the rooftop, and two down below by the pool.
The beach was a lot different the second time we went. I guess the year before the beach really changed because of Hurricane Katrina. The first trip in 2004 the beach was HUGE! We sat in chairs with umbrellas and were served drinks, but when we went in Jan 07 the beach was gone. The sea level was so high that there was no room anymore. There was a small spot that you could still swim in, but overall there was no more beach to walk on. Maybe it's different now, because that was 2.5 years ago, it's worth looking into. Even though it's smaller, we still had an awesome time and were able to enjoy the ocean. If anything there's more room now for water activites!
As far as entertainment goes, we booked a catamaran in the lobby, BEST PART OF THE WHOLE VACATION! I highly recommend doing a catamaran if you are going to carribbean. It felt like we were in a dream, and all I did the whole boat ride was think of how lucky I was to be dipping my feet in crystal clear water, and probably wouldn't be doing it again for at least a year! The group I was with also rented the wave runners the third day we were there. It was a blast, there were nine of us cruising around the perfect water. It was just amazing.
The rooms themselves are alright. Nothing TOO special, but they were very clean and I didn't really have any complaints other than the poor water pressure in the shower, but that is common with Mexican resorts. We didn't spend a lot of time in our room anyway, there was too much to do all around us!
One of my favorite nights was a Friday night at Senor Frogs. It was one big party and was by far our craziest night in the Riviera Maya! We stayed out all night and just had a blast. They walk around in Senor Frogs with a whistle and a bottle of some fruity tequila drink. If they stop and blow the whistle at you, you have to put your head back and they poor it in your mouth. It was hilarious. Even the older people in our group were having the time of their lives.
Overall this resort is worth the money and makes for a truly beautiful vacation. I don't know anything about the recent food poisining claims, but when we stayed we didn't experience anything like that.

After reading the reviews you will find a common theme. My wife and I stayed here for a short two day trip and never left the resort. We both became very sick the first night we got there and barely made it back home to receive medical attention. The food was horrible the sanitation was appalling. The concierge ( Brandon ) hounded you from the minute you walked in, the room ( 1023) was full of ants and bed bugs of some sort. The smell of sewage from the bathrooms and water. My advise to anyone wanted to spend time in Mexico is to truly avoid this resort. I spoke with three other couples that were staying at the resort and two of which shared dinner with us and both got food poisoning. It is not a coincidence that several people are getting food poisoning from this resort and the health department or some other sort of department should be inspecting this facility to assure someone doesn't end up seriously affected. Please all I can tell you is avoid this resort!!!!

We just returned from staying at The Reef Playacar. Where do I start, this is my 6th trip to Playa De Carmen. We arrived at the Reef with a surprise that my Wife and I have to get a room with 2 double beds instead of the king sized bed we had requested. We went to eat some dinner and the food that was left at about 8:30 pm was scary and we settled for some watered down pasta. We had a few drinks and headed to bed and the bed was so hard that we had to put our blow up water floats under the sheet to be able to sleep due to the bed being very hard. The pillows were poor as well. We woke up the next day and went to ask for some bottles of water and were told that we had to go into the shop and purchase bottled water. I couldn't believe we couldn't get bottled water at an All-Inclusive resort. I've never had this come up before. We went to the restaurant and woke up the next day sick and didn't leave the room the entire day along with the rest of our friends. Please stay away from this Resort, all of the people we had spoken to have gotten sick.

The sickness going around The Reef was a real thing. A previous review mentioned that the staff blamed it on going into town. No way! Our group of 15 family members had 8 of us getting chills, throwing up, having diarrhea, and stuck in bed for a day or two during our 5 days there. None of us went into town until the last day. We went into town for a decent meal. There were several problems with the restaurants at The Reef. It started with having to wait in line for a reservation. If you weren't first or second in line then you couldn't get a reservation for a party of our size. It seems they could only seat 15-20 people per time slot. Also, they say there are 2 restaurants, but it is really one. One night it's Mexican and the next night it's Italian. Of the six items on the menu, two entrees were not available on two different nights. It got boring and that is why we went into town our last night there. The buffet also didn't have eggs one morning. We had to wait 15-20 minutes until more eggs came. The overall quality of the food was poor at best.
On a positive note, the lush tropical atmosphere was beautiful and the staff was very friendly, polite and courteous.