As with my previous reviews, I will first state that I have travelled to a handful of countries in Central America and the Caribbean, this is my second time in Mexico. My girlfriend has travelled around the Caribbean and Central America extensively. This is her 7th time in Mexico. I’ll attach photos here but have far more on our Instagram page @bananabeantravels. As a warning, my reviews are long. We stayed here for 2 weeks in February 2022. We flew from the UK with TUI. The flight took 10 hours. After arriving, customs took an hour, then we found the Xcaret rep and coach. The trip to the hotel took an hour and we were able to check in on the way. At the hotel, we simply had to go to the front desk to set our bracelets. We were given a bag with a Hotel Xcaret facemask and hand gel and got a cold face towel, drink and ice lolly. Check-in was so simple, even getting an upgrade. After check-in, you can meet with a concierge to arrange tours. We had booked the majority of these already and the process was very smooth. We were then guided to our room. The concierge did speak to us about buying membership or a timeshare, but we politely declined and that’s all that was mentioned. The rest of the review will be broken into sections: The room: We were given room 4610, however, we were able to upgrade. We spent 1 night in 4610, then moved to room 4141 (Casa Viento) for the remainder. The rooms are large, stunning and well decorated with traditional Mexican art. We received a king-size bed, although be aware that the bed type is not guaranteed (e.g. you may get two Queen-size beds instead). The contained a TV, bed, wooden desk with a minibar (containing water, soft drinks and beer), coffee machine and tray of Mexican sweets snacks. The walk-in shower was powerful and we adored the tiles used for decoration. We used the rosemary & mint shampoo, conditioner and body wash that was provided. There was a jacuzzi bath in one corner. We also had other amenities, including soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste. The bed was comfortable and we both slept very well, with only minor complaints (‘negatives’ section). There were sockets, with USB slots and US-style sockets. Room 4141 was secluded, with a hammock and little pool just outside the room and a path out towards the rivers and coves. The room was well-cleaned daily. The sweets, snacks, drinks and used amenities were refilled every day. At night, a turndown service prepared the bed and left some Mexican sweets in little baskets. This didn’t occur every night though (we got it 9 of 14 nights). The resort: In short, the resort is breathtaking. The hotel is surrounded by a lush jungle. From our room, our pool was surrounded by plants and greenery, with a path leading out to the coves. The coves are stunning and we spent ages exploring by walking and swimming around them, or hiring a free kayak/board. We recommend visiting the Xpiral tower. The views from the top are amazing, especially the sunrises. The hotel itself is a sea of green, with plants in just about every outside area. We encountered numerous animals around the resort and heard reports of others that we sadly missed. There were coatis, agouti, house geckos and lots of Mexican spiny-tailed iguanas, as well as lots of fish in the rivers. The animals that we missed included spider monkeys and even manatees. We did look for snakes around the hotel, as we are keen herpetologists and keep snakes at home. We sadly didn’t find any, which might bring comfort to some of you. There are a few pools around the hotel, as well as the Fuego pool, which is for Fuego guests only. The main pool we spent time at when not in the coves was the pool located next to the Traijinera restaurant. We never had issues getting sunbeds with shade, even when arriving at 11am. You’ll find fresh towels in each area, located in covered wagons. Used towels can also be returned to any of these wagons. There was no towel card system like in other resorts. The other pools are of varying sizes, including a kids pool, but we spent very little time in these. Around each pool and the coves, we were still being waited on and any time we asked for drinks, we quickly got exactly what we ordered. You’ll eventually learn your way around and discover which secret paths lead to hidden areas of the hotel, and which secret paths just lead into other blocks. You’ll also come across several unplanned events, such as a Mariachi band or a group of Mayans in full body paint. All the entertainment around the resort is authentic Mexican, including Spanish music, some of it played live, in the restaurants and around the hotel. We loved this, as the whole experience was refreshing, rather than having UK/US charttoppers played loudly around the pool. The restaurants: Some general info about the food and restaurants here then I’ll get to each restaurant. Firstly, I have a nut allergy. I was always asked for dietary requirements at every restaurant. Any allergies we informed them of were noted and paid close attention to. When I ordered something that may have had nuts, the meal was altered for me. Even at Bio, the vegan restaurant where many of the meals used nuts, they were to accommodate my allergy. You’ll also find food carts that pop up in different areas of the resort. These offer a quick snack that you can just grab. We found a cart for pork pibil tacos and tortas, along with a corn cart, sweet potato and plantain cart, a soft drink and horchata cart, a marquesita stall and an ice cream cart. There is a huge range of food available and it was all amazing. We’re both adventurous eaters and we tried as much of it as we could. It was nice to see less common ingredients, such as beef sweetbread, grasshoppers and bone marrow. I highly recommend trying some of these dishes, as it’s not often you get to try them so well prepared. As well as this, I ate a large range of seafood, such as mussels, oysters, sushi and ceviche, but never felt ill or had an upset stomach. All of the food we ate was well spiced and flavoursome. This improved the whole experience as rather than catering towards everyone and making all the available food bland and mild, everything tasted delicious and authentic. The menus for every restaurant are in the form of QR codes and can be accessed on your phone. This also applies to drink and room service menus. We ate at every available restaurant, excluding; Fuego - exclusive to Casa Fuego guests, HA - an 8-course tasting menu designed by Mexico’s first Michelin-starred chef, but has a $150 per person additional fee and looked very fancy, but not substantial. Teatro del Río - a dinner and a show, but the menu looked limited to us and we could watch the show from the bar rather than having the meal. At non-show times, other large events were shown here, such as the Superbowl. The other restaurants are reviewed below: Mercado de la Merced: Mercado de la Merced, or simply Mercado, is the main buffet. It is beautifully designed to look like a Mexican market and has a range of food available. It is open for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. We only ate here three times however and weren’t huge fans. Due to COVID, Mercado has changed from a self-serve buffet to an assisted buffet. Every food station must be served by a member of staff. However, we found that many of the serving stations were run by the chefs, who had to juggle serving multiple stations as well as cooking food to order. This led to queues at many stations, issues with other people pushing in the queue and people ordering vast amounts of food for their family and friends. We found this quite a stressful experience. This generally put us off Mercado but could be easily resolved by employing more serving staff to help the chefs. This will also resolve once it becomes a full self-service buffet once again after COVID. Despite this, the food we eat here was all very tasty and found it was less busy to go very late in the evening. Chibali: Chibali is also a buffet, but smaller than Mercado. We’ve seen it get ignored as a kid’s restaurant due to its proximity to the kid’s pool, but we enjoyed all of the food here. It is open for Breakfast, as an assisted service buffet, and Lunch, where it’s a la carte. The service here is better as it’s smaller and easier for the chefs to manage each station while still cooking. We ate at Chibali often. Breakfast has the usual choice of omelettes, cheeses, meats, cereal, fruit and more. We really enjoyed the Conchita pibil, conchas bread, granola pots and omelettes. At lunch, the menu contains a range of pizzas, burgers, salads and pasta. We really enjoyed the four-cheese pizza, the shrimp pizza and the sweetcorn side. There’s also an ice cream and sweet station, full of assorted Mexican sweets/candy. We tried all the sweets and a range of ice cream, of which our favourites were the cajeta (caramel), lemon and corn flavours. Corn ice cream sounds odd but was very good! Bio Bio is a refreshing change from the usual eateries. It is a vegan restaurant but don’t let that put you off. There is an array of dishes available, including pancakes, tofu scrambles, fruit and nut bowls. Bio is open for Breakfast and Lunch and is beautifully set within an open cave overlooking the rivers and coves. If you’re planning on visiting Bio, there are only 12 tables, so there can be a bit of a queue. While waiting you can visit the Bio bar and get a smoothie. These were nice and refreshing. Our favourite meals from here were the papaszules, banana pancakes and the acai bowl. La Trajinera This is an a la carte restaurant, right next to the main pool and is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We only ate here for Breakfast, so can only judge that, but the selection of food available was nice with a range of Mexican and non-Mexican dishes. The view over the pool and further out to sea was very nice, especially to start the day. Watch out for anyone splashing too close to you in the pool, however, the lifeguards were very quick to stop anyone from being too disturbing. Our favourites were the French toast, castacán, huitlacoche omelette and the panucho. Las Cuevas Our favourite restaurant, Las Cuevas is a rodizio restaurant that is in one of the caves in the resort. It can be found near Casa Fuego and opposite Bio. You may see online that Las Cuevas requires reservations, but no reservations were required for us. The restaurant itself is stunning, with tables spanning a few candlelit cave. The dining is split into two stages. First, help yourself to the handful of stations around the restaurant, which have salads, cheeses, shrimp and more. There’s also a station outside, in the “smoke cenote” that has meat cuts, cooked to order including suckling pig, Brazilian ribs and bone marrow. At your table, you’ll find a green/red spinner. Red means no food, green means all food. When green, waiters with meat on swords will stop at your table and ask if you want any. There are around 20 options including steaks, sweetbreads, pork ribs, chorizo, chicken and cinnamon pineapple. No favourites here as we loved them all! Once, done, turn your spinner to red. You’ll then be offered dessert. Our favourites were the chocolate volcano and the mango & passionfruit bavarois. Xin Gao Xin Gao is an Asian restaurant, offering three different types of dining, a Hibachi (Teppanyaki) show table, fusion and sushi. It’s located under the main lobby area, near Mercado. This restaurant requires a reservation. Each type of dining requires a separate reservation. The show table was fun, but if you’ve been too similar at another hotel, you’ll have no surprises. You have a choice of beef, chicken, salmon or prawns (or a mix of these), which are cooked in front of you, while the chef does a show. This show includes fire, catching food and utensil spinning. The food was tasty and well cooked. The fusion menu was a lot more interesting and included a range of dishes that are ordered a la carte. There’s a fair range of Asian inspired dishes, including plenty of sushi, curries and spring rolls. There are also interesting skewers, like colossal shrimp and beef heart, along with chicken breast and steak. La Cantina Los Faroles The Mexican style diner, La Cantina Los Faroles is the place to go for dinner with music. It’s located under the main lobby, right next to Xin Gao and Ha. A variety of local bands start playing at around 9pm, including the Xcaret Adelitas who were very entertaining. It’s also the main restaurant for nightlife, with the bar upstairs inside the Cantina staying open into the early hours. The food was very nice, with a range of Mexican dishes on offer. Our favourites were the Oaxacan Appetiser, pork ribs and duck tacos. Las Playas Las Playas is a seafood restaurant, located under the main pool, near the coves. The setting was nice and breezy, overlooking a small beach area. We only ate here a couple of times, as while all the food we had was very good, we felt the menu was a little limited and didn’t have lots of options jumping out at us to try (whereas other restaurants did). Our favourites were the tuna steak, catch of the day (mahi-mahi) and ribeye steak. Room Service We ordered room service for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The ordering process is simple, hit the room service button on the phone and call, confirm you room number, the number of people eating, any dietary requirements and then order. When we ordered a meal unplanned, the food came in 30-45 minutes as promised. When we preordered breakfast for the following morning, the food came on time. The order was correct each time and was still hot. The food is decent and included pizza, pasta and burgers for lunch/dinner, then eggs, pastries and fruit for breakfast, along with much more. Drinks: Unsurprisingly, we ended up drinking a fair bit over the two weeks. There are at least two pool bars and the main lobby bar. You’ll also find a couple hidden away around the cove areas. These bars all serve similar drinks and have a wide range of cocktails and spirits available, our only complaint here is the lack of drinks menus. There were plenty of premium spirits although be aware that some of the very top end spirits did have an additional charge. Our favourite drinks were Mango Tango, Riviera Maya, Havana Lights, Cuba Libre and Long Island Ice Teas. In terms of spirits, we really enjoyed the Flor de Caña rums, Ojo de Tigre mezcal and 1800 Blanco tequila. There are a lot of interesting spirits available to try too, such as Xtabentún, Nixta, and Siete Rayas, The people: Mexico is what it is because of its people and Hotel Xcaret Mexico is no exception. They are some of the nicest people I’ve met and cannot fault anyone working at the hotel. From the moment you arrive at the hotel, everyone is friendly, helpful and attentive. Everyone we walked past said hello or said hello back if we said it first and were constantly working. While all the people we met were amazing, there were several that stood out. First is Alejandro, who worked around the Trajinera pool. We met Alejandro in our second week and he made a huge difference to our holiday. We spoke with him almost every day after meeting and discussed lots like the differences between English and American English and life in Mexico, along with so much more. On our last day, he got us some Mexican snacks to try out. It was a real pleasure to meet him. The others who had a big impact are Cecelia and Carolina, both of whom are concierges and helped us after an incident with our tours (see below). Celeste from guest services/relations was also amazing after this incident. Ariadna from guest services was helpful when initially booking our tours for the holiday. Fabian at the front desk/reception was helpful with mistaken charges on our account after the tour incident. He made the checkout process smooth and simple. Samuel, one of the waiters at Las Cuevas, really went above and beyond when he served us and first recommended Ojo de Tigre (thank you!). Finally, three of the teams that ran our tours were incredible. They truly made the trips unforgettable and wouldn’t have been the same without them. These are: Silvestre (Rambo), Eli, Ramon from Xichen, Noé from Xenotes and Benjamin and Lauder from Xochimilco. Excursions/All Fun Inclusive: One of the main reasons we wanted to book this hotel when we first saw it was the All Fun Inclusive concept. 30 days before we were due to check in, I emailed guest services to book our tours and restaurants. Within a day, Ariadna had got back to me and had booked everything for us. Every tour was booked with no issues except Xichen, which we booked on arrival.I won’t review each of the parks and tours here due to space. The first week of tours were well organised and a lot of fun. At the end of the first week, we switched a planned tour, changing Xel-Ha/Tulum for Xoximilco. The process of changing the tour seemingly went smoothly. The next morning, we woke up early for the Xichen tour. This was our most anticipated tour. When we got coach queue, we were told our names weren’t on the list, even though we had the paper booking as proof. After a few calls, we were told that we had cancelled the tour ourselves and they had no space for us. Understandably, we were very upset by this. My girlfriend ended up crying as it felt like no one was willing to help us after being accused of cancelling. We spoke with a concierge, to find that every remaining tour we’d booked had been cancelled, not just Xichen. The concierge couldn’t book get us on the tour that day and we were asked to go to our room and await a call from guest services to rearrange everything. We sat in the room for an hour and heard nothing. Not wanting to waste time sitting around, we returned to the concierge who summoned Celeste from guest services. she confirmed that we could do Xichen the next day. We could fit this in, but it meant we had a few busy days, which was tiring. Celeste was helpful, reassuring and personally ensured everything was rebooked. She also gave us her phone number for if there were any issues. She kindly arranged a special treat in the room of wine, cake and a rose petal bath when we returned from Xichen. Once this was sorted, we had no other major issues for the rest of the holiday. Upon check out, we did find we had been charged twice for entry into Xichen and a no-show fee. However, upon discussing this with Fabian at reception, these charges were removed without issue. Negatives: There are sadly some negatives of Hotel Xcaret. They are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things but had an impact on our holiday. Our biggest complaint is that the door to every room slams loudly any time it shuts. The rooms themselves are soundproof, but the doors are not. We heard very disruptive door slamming late at night and in the early hours. At multiple times, one or both of us were woken by a door slamming along the corridor or loud conversations. Another negative is that lots of weddings take place here. This would be fine, but it often led to large sections of beach and hotel being shut off. Luckily, none of the restaurants were shut. There was also a party that happened in the area outside of our room. The loud music started in the afternoon and continued until around 12am. This kind of event only occurred once. Having all our tours cancelled was a negative, however, I have already covered that. Conclusions: In conclusion, Hotel Xcaret Mexico is incredible. The setting and design of the hotel is gorgeous, all the food is delicious and the people working there are a credit to the hotel. All-Fun Inclusive is what makes the hotel stand out from all the others, and almost provides too much to choose from. All the tours were a lot of fun and I highly recommend them all. All in all, we would return to Hotel Xcaret Mexico in the future and would love to return with friends to make even more use of the tours and hotel facilities.…
This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.