My wife and I and our 4-year old daughter stayed @ the RIU from Dec. 16-23 this year.

First off, I tend to be one of those people who are usually baffled by some of the negative reviews I read on this site as I am a beleiver in the 20% rule that 20% of the people willa ways look for the negatives regardless of the positives. Anyway, the RIU is just a BEAUTIFUL resort. Let's look at the

positives:
-Beautiful, clean rooms with spectacular views, gret maid service, and GREAT mini-bar service!
-Good bar service regardless of whether you tip (I know that on several of our visits to other all-inclusives, this is NOT the case...)
-VERY helpful front desk personnel
-Pools were pretty clean for such a large resort (I recommend using the 'less popular' poll as it is VERY relaxing with about 1/10th of the crowd)
-Lots of kids club activities for the little ones with friendly staff. Out 4-year old just LOVED the mini-disco every night!

Negatives:
-had to ask for a change of rooms to get the 'deluxe ocean view' that we paid for in spite of the fact that the resort seemed to not be very full
-No cans or bottles of beer at any bars...only corona and modelo negro beer on tap...poured into nasty re-useable plastic cups (sort of creeped me out a bit)
-Buffets seemed to have the exact same foods everyday at every meal
-Impossible to get reservations at any of the gourmet restaurants during our week stay.
-Gym is WAY too small and poorly designed for a resort of this size and elegance. If you want to get on the treadmill it AINT going to happen folks.
-Smell at night of sewage...It is known all around town that the RIU has this problem. I told a local in town one night where we were staying and he said 'how do you like the smell' with a big grin on his face. Just close the sliding door and turn on the AC at night....

Not a knock on the resort but....
-Everything you see about the El Medano beach bars (office, mangos, biligans etc.) being 300-400 meters walk down the beach are SEVERELY exaggerated. I would guess it's closer to a mile so take a cab especially if you have family with you.

Anyway, as you can see the negatives are ticky-tack at best...I have had much worse problems even on cruises! The RIU is a great place especially for the price of an all-inclusive. I will be back here for 3 nights in June for my 40th birthday bash WITHOUT kids so it will be a WHOLE different experience...can't wait! ; - )

We stayed at the Riu Palace from Dec 8 - 13 for our honeymoon - it was paradise!!!

First off, we booked an oceanfront suite, and got (in my opinion) the best room in the entire resort. Room 3030 was a beautiful oceanfront jacquzzi suite with not one, but two terraces!! The "upper terrace" was private for tanning and had an outdoor hot tub.

The food is pretty average - above average in taste, but as far as variety, you will see many of the same things being served here. Breakfast at the El Medano is truly yummy though, and worth it to get up early.

As far as drinks goes, i didn't feel as if the waitstaff was too accomodating with refills without asking. I have been at other all-inclusives where the waitstaff automatically refills your drinks, and I didn't see too much of it here unless they were tipped first. Not a huge deal, but an observation.

Overall, our room really made our honeymoon so worthwhile. We truly felt like royalty.

My husband and I stayed at the RIU for 7 days and it was our first all-inclusive resort experience. Our room overlooked the pools and the Sea of Cortez we thought it couldn't be more perfect. Unfortunatley it is hard to enjoy the beauty of the environment when your room smells of sewage. I am not talking about a little foul smelling air, I mean raw sewage. Several times at night the smell became so grotesque that it woke me from a deep sleep! The RIU is an engineering nightmare. The sewage vents were not placed high enough or correctly, so the entire hotel is inundated with the most digusting smell of raw sewage lasting up to a couple hours at a time. The first night I thought it was just our room, or maybe our floor, but after talking to other guest over the next 7 days we discovered that everyone was blessed with the same aroma.

This "Palace" is falling apart and it has only been open for 7 months. Entire sections of the 4 level structure are literally tilting, cracking, and splitting. Workers were constantly repairing the beautiful tile floors which were also cracking and splitting from the shifting of the entire structure.

Also don't expect to get much use out of the gym. It is way too small to accomodate a hotel this large.

Most people who choose an all-inclusive are expecting to get value from the food they are paying for as well. Another sour dissapointment. Breakfasts were good, but it is hard to screw up breakfast, no? Lunch is started at 12:30 and you had better get there early before it is covered with flies and bees. The food was like cafeteria food compared to the cruise buffets we had enjoyed on Royal Carribean and Princess Cruises.

And avoid the San Jose Mexican restaurant for dinner. The service was terrible even though the restaurant was only 50% full. It took most people 45 minuts to 1 hour to get there meals. And the food was then dissapointing even though we were quite hungry. Other guests were having the same experience.

Also the Japanese restuarant, Misaki, was a shameful example of Japanese food. On a positive note, the service at Misaki was great!

By the end of our stay we felt that our money would have been much better spent elsewhere. In order to get the value out of the "Palace" you have to eat there, which greatly restricts you from going to and enjoying truly good cuisine throughout Los Cabos area.

Everything I have written about the smells and the faulty engineering are well known by the people of San Lucas. Now top that off with poor food and service and you too will feel a little cheated out of your hard earned dollars as well.

My wife and I stayed at the RIU 12/13 - 12/19 and were a little surprised that this RIU hotel has the "Palace" name. As some background, my wife and I have stayed at some of the best (and worst) hotels all over the world as we travel extensively. In addition, I also have done a lot of travel on business all over the world, so we feel we are in a good position to review hotels. We have stayed at several RIU properties in the past, both Palaces and regular RIU's, and this RIU does not live up to the Palace name. There is a definite management problem at this hotel since there are a lot of issues with service in general, specialty restaurant reservations, room cleaning (floor to our room had hairs and dust everywhere), consistent food quality, and the nightly entertainment was of less than "Palace" quality. As an example, we were told the day that we arrived that the gourmet restaurant was booked for the whole week. We have never been to a Riu resort that you could book a reservation for a specialty restaurant more that one day in advance. I think corruption is rampant at this hotel since the specialty restaurants were never full on any of the nights that we were there. I have a feeling that if we had slipped someone a twenty dollar bill we could have gotten reservation at any of the restaurants. Ironically, Geraldo gave us the best service and he was trained at one of the RIU resorts in Cancun. Again, THIS HOTEL NEEDS NEW MANAGEMENT! They are giving the whole Riu hotel chain a bad reputation since the RIU resorts are generally very nice.
Having said all this, the hotel is beautiful and the views from the hotel are even better. The Cabo natives are very friendly and fun to be around. Cabo is a terrific vacation destination and I would certainly recommend the Cabo area for a "beach type" destination but just not at the Riu. The reviews on the Hilton are much more positive and some people we met at the airport had stayed at the Hilton and commented that the Hilton was great.