My boyfriend and I spent a week at this resort in March. We are both 41 and traveled without children. It was our first time to Cabo and to a Riu resort. The food was fair; they offered the same choices everyday. I am a vegetarian and I survived on pizza and salad. My boyfriend is a meat eater and enjoyed the food much more than I did. We dined at all of the restaurants with no real favorite. The gourmet restaurant had the nicest decor, but not the best food. The Japanese restaurant was good, with fresh sushi. The Mexican restaurant had the best tasting food, but nothing to special. The Italian restaurant had buffet pasta that was sticky and dry. The daily buffet had a limited menu with mostly meat type dishes, but a nice salad bar.
Tips are expected at the restaurants. We tipped $1.00 for lunch and $3.00 at dinner and that seemed to be sufficient.

The reservation system is a mess. They have one person that sits by the lobby from 11-4 daily and takes hand written reservations for dinner, with a limit of two reservations per day. My suggestion is to make two each day until you have reservations for each night. You can always cancel them later, but there are no availabilities on the same day. The wines were below average, they poor reasonable liquor if you ask for it, Absolute was their top shelf vodka. Dinner is done in two seating’s 7 and 9, don't be late they move fast. For lunch try the Italian restaurant, it is a little less convenient than the main buffet, but the salad bar is better and they have real ice cream that you can scoop yourself. If you are willing to go to town for dinner, we had an amazing dinner in downtown Cabo at Lorenzillos . Fantastic fresh lobster and great service. It was a little pricy but well worth it. It is also great to see the town of Cabo. The dock is the largest I have ever seen with amazing yachts and hundreds of boat. Good shopping, bars, restaurants. We are not night life people so I can’t comment on the night club scene. Cabo Wabo is what everyone talked about, but during the day it is pretty quite. We went in for a token Sammy Hagar margarita and it was good. Don't order a regular margarita, order the Cabo Wabo one that is on the wall inside. It is blue and tasty.

The hotel was very clean and beautiful. Our room was a junior suite that had an ocean view that was spectacular. The room itself was small and the bathtub was tiny. No real TV available a few basic channels, no radio, no VCR, no DVD player. The fridge was well stocked with soda, beer, water. They kept our room very clean, but we did leave $2.00 daily on the bed. The hotel is very big 600+ rooms. We have stayed at smaller resorts in the past that we enjoyed more. They are doing construction on one side of the hotel that is very loud. If you make a reservation make sure you ask for a room on the other side of the construction.

Beach towels!! They give you a card at check in for one beach towel that you turn in to receive your towel and when you return your towel you get your card back. One towel was not enough. Bring another towel if you like to have more than one. I tried to ask nice, but no chance for the second towel.

Bar service was fine, but BRING YOUR OWN INSULATED CUPS FOR THE POOL/BEACH! We read this on a review site and found it strange, but brought them anyway. We were glad we took there advise because the bar glasses are very small, and your drink gets hot right away. Not to mention you have to return more often. We brought your basic insulted cups that kept our frozen drinks frozen and we only needed to refill a couple of times. The bartenders and waiters are expecting tips. We gave them $1.00 with each order and they seemed happy with that.

The beach was very pretty to look at, but not great for walking. The sand is hard on the feet, and the beach is angled so it is hard on the legs. The water was too rough to swim while we were there, so not much to do on the beach. If you are beach people not a good choice.

The pools are pretty and big. One pool is as warm as bath water and the other pool is FREEZING. No one swam in the cold pool which made it a great place to lounge if you like quit. The side with the hot pool was very crowded and loud if you like that.
If you are looking for the hot tub, good luck. They have multiple faux hot tubs in the pools but they are the same water from the pool just bubbly.

Finally I would just like to mention the highlight of our trip. We went deep sea fishing, that we set up through the concierge, with a group called top angler. Our guides were Jose and Servante. It was a first for both of us and we were very surprised to catch a 140 lb, 8 foot marlin!!! What a great experience. I would advise you to take Dramamine prior to leaving for the trip, even if you don't get sea sick, you have to just trust me on this one.

We had a wonderful relaxing time, but probably would not return.
Last year we went to Riviera Maya and stayed at Secrets Capri. It was such a beautiful place, the beach, the hotel, the people. Because of that trip we are a bit jaded. If you are looking for an amazing Mexican experience look there. Lisa from Chicago.

The Riu Palace at Cabo is beautiful and has some breathtaking views. However, after the chamber maids steal $1,000 cash from your room, you tend think the views aren't so great.

We arrived for an 8-day stay from Feb. 17th through the 24th, 2007. Just two days into our stay, the chamber maids searched our room while cleaning (the hotel can determine who was in your room by the room key usage), found the hidden key, and stole $1,000 cash from the room safe. The key was hidden at the bottom of a zipped carry-on bag. So never leave your safe key hidden in the room under any circumstances! The hotel will not take any responsibility because the key was hidden in the room (I'm not sure they would have even if we'd had the key with us). The maids denied everything, and you're just out of luck. The police don't speak English and don't want to be bothered.

We would also grade the service as average, and the food got pretty boring after a few days. I started to feel very insecure about staying in the room alone (all kinds of service people can enter your room at any time). The dead bolt from the inside can be opened with any key card--it does nothing. We will never go back.

I stayed at the Riu Palace with about 50 other people from February 28th through March 6th. Our stay was good and bad. The location and views of the hotel are wonderful. Great pool (one heated one not). The resort itself is wonderful to look at, however, there were issues. I'll explain and let you decide for yourself if you would go there.

1. We had dirty towels in our room when we arrived and no clean towels...the room didn't look like it was cleaned from the previous visitors. Our sheets were still dirty.

2. They didn't have our rooms cleaned until 4-5 p.m. so when your trying to get ready to go to dinner, etc. it was difficult. This could be because of the booked hotel but they need to get more staff to cover their rooms.

3. We had several people in our group have money and valuables stolen...even when they were in their safes. Kinda makes you wonder about how safe things really are in the rooms and the resort.

4. The food was so-so. We made reservations for the Steak House and Mexican resturants and neither were good. The breakfast buffet was probably the only thing that was good everyday. It all depends if you are a food person or not. We ended up going downtown a few times for dinner/lunch. The food in Cabo off the resort is GREAT!!!

5. The staff itself was horrible. You had to ask several times for things and most couldn't understand what you were saying to begin with. A couple in our group wanted a burger at lunch and when they asked the server if there was more (remember this is an all inclusive) for them the server stated there wasn't any left. The servers then looked at each other and stated words to the affect screw us we will get what they give us. Little did they know our friend knew how to speak spanish. A lot of that went on.

I would urge you to take advantage of the tours, etc. They were all great. Definately do the ATV tour. Great time...

I would never go back to this Riu location and do not recommend it to anyone. For the money you pay...everything should have been 100% perfect...but then again we don't live in a perfect world.

Use caution when booking here...

The pictures on the Riu website had me excited about staying there. We were there for 6 nights and it never improved. I have stayed at other all inclusive resorts in Mexico and this was far below the other stanbdards.
Our room was not near the construction, so we did not get that noise, but we got all other noises. The staff begins rolling carts down the halls at about 5 am abd the walls have no sound resistnace at all. It is one of the noisiest places I have ever stayed. Add to that the fact that a lot of people are returning to their rooms at 2, 3 or 4 am and it means you have a hard time getting a good nights sleep. If you go take ear plugs.
One pool is heated and one is not. That means you have to stake out a chair very early at the heated pool, since the place is huge. Housekeeping is very lax and if you expect your room cleaned before 4 pm, forget it. It doesn't even help to put the 'please clean my room" sign on the door. Also one day they can do it in 10 minutes and another may take an hour.
The food is not up to the standard of other all inclusive resorts. Much of it is tossed out and the resort would be better if they took the money from all the wasted food and prepared a higher grade of food. There would not be so much waste.
We were there 6 days and by the 3rd day wanted to leave and come home. We were tired of bad food, noise and drunks.