We stayed at the new Riu Palace, Cabo San Lucas from Jan. 16 to Jan 20. This is an absolutely beautiful resort, the largest in Cabo. I am glad I chose to stay here despite the early (December stay) reviews. This was our first time at an AI (All Inclusive). Yes, the Riu is going through growing pains but they are making great strides in correcting any problems or complaints.

HOTEL CHECK IN: When we arrived we were seated and brought a margarita. After paperwork was filled out we were given an envelope with our assigned room key and towel card. Also our wrist bands and safe key and lock. All very smooth and professional. All staff except the maids easily understood English.

ROOM: Our room was a Junior Suite with an ocean view balcony. It had a king bed, mattress was firm but not hard. I preferred this to a soft, mushy mattress. The mini fridge was stocked with Corona beer, Pepsi, 7 Up, Orange Crush, bottled water and club soda. Also there were 4 top shelf liquors of brandy, vodka, tequila, and rum. Our fridge was refilled every day. The bathroom had a tub/shower along with 2 sinks. Hair dryer was very efficient. In the double closet were an iron and board. There was a sitting area with a love seat sized sofa facing the television. Switch for overhead fan is by your bed light.

SPECIALTY RESTAURANT RESERVATIONS: For the 4 specialty restaurants, the new reservation system, as of Jan. 19, now has you waiting in the conference room with chairs. Previously you just lined up outside. Management is trying to make this system as comfortable as possible. They start taking reservations for the day at 9:00am. There are 2 seatings, early and late. For the winter, early is 6:30pm and 7:00pm and late is 8:30pm and 9:00pm. They stager the times so that the kitchen and staff can be more efficient instead of being hit all at once. Our service was just wonderful at each restaurant we ate at. The harder reservations to obtain are due to the capacity of each restaurant. In order of difficulty of reservations is Gourmet, Japanese, Mexican, Steak House. If you want the early seating at the Gourmet restaurant, I advise getting in line by 7:15am. Between 8:00am to 8:30am will generally get you early seating at any of the other 3 restaurants. Get a seat and then go get some coffee, juice, or champagne at the buffet. Come back and talk to others. I met a lot of people and learned from their experiences. The line goes quickly once they start as there are 3 women taking the reservations. One of the 3, Sugey was an absolute wealth of information. If you are having an anniversary or birthday, speak to a manager and see what they can do for you without getting up early and waiting in line. Ruben and the other managers really want to make your stay memorable in a positive way.

BEST TIP I LEARNED FROM WAITING IN LINE: Getting into Cabo San Lucas cost $10 per taxicab. The public bus system was 8 pesos/person. To catch it you walk up to the highway and you have to cross the main highway to catch it. Be very careful. Look for the green bus and ask for "central" Cabo. The tip is that there is a white mini bus that stops right outside the Riu gate and it only costs 6 pesos/person. Get off 1 stop after you see McDonalds on the left. To return back to the Riu, there are bus stops just past the Puerto Paraiso Mall. Look for the white van with "Hotel Riu" written on the front windshield.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES: Bring lots of $1 bills for tipping. I suggest at least $2 per day for the maid and $1 per person for the waiters and bartender. They appreciate it very much.

Try speaking a little Spanish. A simple "hola" or "buenos dias" always brought a smile and a positive response.

As you can tell, I highly recommend this hotel/resort. Look at the reviews from guests that stayed here in January. It will only get better. Go to the Riu and have fun. We surely did.

I tried to enclose photos but could not add them as the files were "too large". Email me for questions or photos if you like.

I was pretty concerned about the Riu prior to the trip after reading all the sketchy comments but we decided to give it a go. My friend and I are in the hospitality industry, so are fairly understanding when it comes to issues with the hotel. We arrived Jan 9th, and the front desk did seem very disorganized. While we were trying to check in I noticed quite a few other guests coming up to the front desk with a wide variety of problems. We got to our room which was nice & clean, but not as luxurious as I was expecting. The biggest problem was the noise. We were beside the elevator and as the hallways are all tile, we could hear everything all night long. Also, the doors to the guest rooms close with a huge bang that you can hear down the entire corridor. I spent the first night thinking someone was shooting a gun or something everytime someone's door closed!!
After the first night, we asked to be moved to a quieter room which we did. It was better, but the doors were still really loud.

The only other complaint is regarding making dinner reservations. It seems really stupid to me that you have to get up and go downstairs between 8:30 am and 10 am to a certain place in order to make a dinner reservation for one of the restaurants. Who can get up and look decent before 10 am on vacation? It was a hassle and we didn't do it, so the result was eating at the mass buffet every night. The food was fine but not spectacular. Oh well.

Overall the hotel is beautiful, the staff were nice, the food was good. I probably wouldn't be in a hurry to go back because of the noise and the lame rules regarding dinner reservations.

We found that the guests consisted mainly of couples, so it was a bit difficult for a couple of single gals to meet fun party people, but we managed!!!

My husband and I just returned from a week's stay at the Riu Palace, Cabos San Lucas. We had read negative reviews about this hotel prior to our trip, and were a little concerned. Were we delighted when we found that most of the negativity was unfounded. The Riu is a magnificent resort with wonderful service. The food was totally acceptable; some restaurants better than others, but really we had no complaints. The service was excellent; the staff is extremely well-trained and attentive. The problems that were reported on this site previously have oviously been cleared up. Sure, hearing the doors slam when people leave their rooms is true, but that is so minor. We have been to many wonderful places over the years and know first-class service, and we would certainly recommend this hotel to anyone.

My husband, myself and our 2 year old daughter just returned from the Riu Palace, Jan 8 - 15. I am detailed oriented so this will be long but I hope helpful as I always appreciate the information people provide on this site.

To give my review some context here are some points.

1. We have stayed at the following resorts and hotels in the past few years - Riu Palace in Playa Del Carmen, The Royal Hideaway in Playa Del Carmen, Grand Velas Resort in Puerto Vallarta, Casa Magna Marriott Resort in Costa Rica as well as The Bellagio in Las Vegas, The Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas, The Hard Rock Resort in Bali, W Hotel in NYC

2. Tour books give hotels star ratings that are based on comparing simliar properties in those countries and destinations i.e. a 5 star Riu Palace does not mean it is like the Four Seasons Hotel in Bali

3. You get what you pay for when it comes to travel - Riu Palace was offering a deeply discounted rate for this time frame because it is new and will have some new opening bumps - that being said it should be providing the basics and be working hard to provide good service


Because the rates were a great deal we opted to upgrade and booked a suite. We had room 1030 and it was awesome. We had a beach front location with a large balcony on the 2nd floor. It had a large sitting area, king size bed in the spacious sleeping area, a large sunken 2 person bath (we didn't use but I am sure it is nice if you do) and an enormous bathroom with a great shower, and a huge walk in closet.
The room was located right beside the exit to the pools which was great to have your room so handy. The rooms are spread out so you will be close to something and far from something else but no big deal. We had a small hike to restaurants and the lobby but nothing to be concerned about. Our room was located near the "quiet pool".

There are 2 indentical heated pools. One where it is quiet and the other where they set up volleyball, water polo, do water aerobics and play music. The only pain was the towel hut was located at the noisey pool so you had to hike to get your towel if you were at the quiet pool. The pools have great built in sun loungers. The kids pools are a joke and are freezing cold. No one including us used them and the main pools with the stairs and the ledges with the loungers worked fine for young kids with parents.

The beach is decent, sand is a little granular at places but as you get closer to the water it is much softer. You can't swim in the water because of the currents but we went for long walks on the beach and collected small sea shells with my daughter. And because the RIU is sort of by itself it gets some vendors on the beach but not as many as the resorts closer to town and the vendors all respected the hotel's border on the beach and did not cross it, so if you absolutely did not want to be bothered but wanted to be on the beach stay closer to the hotel, otherwise a polite No Gracias works fine.

We went over to Lover's Beach one morning at about 9:30am - we had the whole beach to ourselves for about an hour then the masses showed up and we left but we had a great hour romping around by ourselves.

Buffet restaurant was decent and as an earlier poster mentioned it is a Mexican/European style buffet not American. So the foods are a little differently prepared and have different items than what you would see at home, however it is decent food. We found that before 9am the buffet breakfast wasn't too crowded and you did not have to wait for fresh omelets etc. after 9am it become more crowded. Dinner was quieter in the buffet restaurant if you went right when it opened or 8:30 or later.

The alacarte restaurant reservation process is really stupid. You have to line up every day to get a reservation for that day. It opened at 9am, some people would start lining up at 8am. We ate at the Steak house and the Japanese restaurant and enjoyed both meals. We chose not to line up but if we happened by the location (it was enroute to our room from the buffet restaurant after breakfast) and the line was short and moving well we jumped in and were willing to take whatever reservations they had - if you want a specific restaurant at a specific time then you may have to line up but to me that was wasting my time. We ended up with later reservations so we just ate a snack at 4pm at the outdoor restaurant near the pools to help tide us over until dinner.

The lunch at the Italian Restaurant (it was a Mexican restaurant at night) was quite good, the outdoor buffet lunch was fine if you wanted burger, hot dog or nachos - they also though on our last 3 days did an absolutely unbelievable fresh Paella with tons of seafood at the out door buffet.

There was a real mix of people, couples, lots of families with kids, older couples etc.

We didn't bother with the shows as that is not our thing but heard they were cute - don't expect anything spectacular.

We really enjoyed going for drinks after dinner in the lobby bar which is a beautiful open air bar with lovely views and great breezes.

The TVs in the rooms get lots of channels (you have to type the numbers in and not scroll up) but most of the channels are Spanish but hey who is there to watch TV.

Service was decent, still have a few growing pains but everyone is really trying and is really nice (as long as you are) so go with the flow and don't get up tight if a drink takes a little long to arrive, just order two next time.

Check in and out went smooth.

Maid service was good, our room was always cleaned very well (we also left the maid $2USD every day).

The hotel is lovely and the grounds are immaculate.

We saw only a couple bees while there (re:earlier reviews about a bee problem), no more than you would see on a sunny day at a park at home and like others have posted don't sit near garbage cans and don't leave half finished foods and drinks nearby where you are sitting and you won't attract bees or flies.


The disappointments we had were:
- unlike some other hotels where it was cheap, laundry service here is really, really pricey as I unfortunately found out the hard way
- I had a pedicure and although the lady who did the treatement was very nice and the pedicure was decent the room was awful and a traffic route for everyone to get a storage closet and they did not have proper pedicure chairs
- shampoo and conditioner in the rooms is awful so bring your own if you don't usually
- reservation process for ala carte restaurants is really dumb
- they said they had a playground in the promo material and they don't
- kids pool sucked but the grown up one worked fine for kids
- the safe locks are a pain in the butt, big and clunky (but use the safes don't leave valuables out to tempt)
- people who couldn't figure out to gently close their room door to stop it from slamming (we have had this at many Mexican resorts)
- guests who smoked on the beach and put out and left their butts in the sand for me to walk in and my daughter to dig through!!!!!
- cappucinos were too weak!

That is it. Overall we had a great holiday at the Riu Palace.