Review of the El Dorado Seaside Palms, Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Stayed Dec 30 2022 to Jan 9 2023 This is an all-inclusive adults-only resort on the ocean in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, about an hour and 20 minutes south of the Cancun airport. We have been to a number of resorts like this, in Mexico, Dominican Republic and other places. Here’s our take on this place. WHAT’S WORKING: In a word, pretty much everything. This is a sizable resort, with probably a dozen or more buildings with rooms, about a dozen restaurants, at least that many bars, pools pretty much everywhere (including in front of some rooms), a variety of activities like classes, ball games, a giant chess board, ping pong etc. The place is very pretty and much of it is jungle, home to Coatis, squirrels, raccoons, birds, an occasional snake and lots of lizards, nature’s insecticide. Other places we’ve stayed control insects by spraying. Those places were sterile. This place is not, and it’s a joy to actually see some wildlife enjoying their home. There are hundreds of employees working on landscaping, mechanics, rooms, food and beverage service, etc. They are all very friendly, greeting everyone with a smile and an “Hola.” In other resorts we’ve seen lots of evidence of delayed maintenance, perhaps indicative of cash flow problems. A place this big, with this many amenities, in a tropical climate, is bound to have areas that need a little attention. But nothing serious. This place is very well cared for and almost surgically clean. The grounds, in particular, are just plain gorgeous, no other way to describe it. The food is quite good so far. We’ve been to the two buffet service restaurants and all four sit-down reservation-required restaurants with table service. All the food has been excellent and there is a good selection of it. Ditto for the bars. They are serving good booze! The beaches are quite nice and there are dozens of lounge chairs and little “huts” (for lack of a better term) all over the place to camp in. Our room has an ocean view over the tops of the trees and the room itself is large and well-equipped: big balcony, safe, coffee maker, mini-fridge, iron and ironing board, bathroom scale, big dresser and closet, huge walk-in shower plus a big tub, double sinks in the bathroom, two double beds (although see note below on the beds). The folks who tend to our room are friendly, super efficient. Periodically someone comes by to offer more of the stuff that’s always available in the mini-fridge – water, soft drinks, beer, snacks etc. The wifi seems quite good and available all over the resort….except in our bathroom. But it really is solid everywhere else. This is a pretty big place and sometimes the walk from this point to that one gets a bit long. Fortunately there are regular shuttles running between major points; a nice touch. And workers going to and fro in their electric carts often stop to offer rides to the guests, another friendly gesture. There are hundreds of coconut palm trees here and instead of just trashing the coconuts they have made a game of them – they run classes every day where you can paint them – faces, numbers, greetings, logos etc. Then they place these painted coconuts along the edges of the paths and sidewalks! There are hundreds of them all over. What a fun, creative, environmentally sound idea! There was entertainment of various sorts nearly every night of our 10-night stay: a violinist, a female singer, a mariachi band, a couple of guitarists, a fire show, a few others. They were all quite good and drew a crowd. And we were very fortunate to get to participate in a Mayan ceremony on the beach to welcome the New Year. WHAT NEEDS WORK: In a word, not much. There are tiny idiosyncrasies here and there: - Unanticipated steps up or down when entering/leaving a room or location. We have to step down out of our room when leaving, down on to our balcony. Why can’t the room be simply level with both the hallway and the balcony? - The public men’s rooms are frigid cold, with temps much like a walk-in cooler. Is that really necessary? - The map of the resort is an eye test. The brochure we were given when we arrived is a 3-page gatefold, an 8-1/2 x 11 sheet folded sideways into thirds. The resort map uses the top one third of two of these pages. The map is barely legible. Key numbers given below the map – 01 Welcome Lounge. 23 La Cantina. 38 El Dorado Activities Pool, etc. - correspond to numbers on the map….and those map numbers are teeny and very hard to read! BIG HINT: copy the map and its key numbers onto a much bigger sheet, please. - The floor numbering in our big building is odd. It has six floors, but our elevator is keyed PB-1-2-3-4-5. We are on the 5th floor, and to get to it we punch 4. Huh? And what does PB mean? - There are dozens of large and small electric golf carts running around, hauling workers, guests, equipment. You can’t really hear them, but during the day it doesn’t matter much. At night, however, they are still blasting around the campus….and most of them don’t have their lights on! The medical facility here is probably quite good….but we don’t really want to experience it. Get those headlights on!! - Our room has two double beds that are decently comfortable. But one is noticeably higher than the other and requires you to literally stand on your tip toes to get in it. Getting out in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom is also a test. We’ve never seen a bed this high. Did this room once house professional basketball players? Tomorrow is our last day (Jan 9, 2023) and we will be very sad to leave. This is quite likely the very nicest all-inclusive resort we have ever stayed in. Does it have a few minor flaws here and there? Sure. But overall it is first class in every way. We’ll be back to visit. You should too. Mike Doolin & Ann Tippett Rochester NY USA

This was our first visit to Mexico so we have nothing to compare with, but for us we felt we had made an excellent choice. We upgraded to a premium room which had a sea view so got the beautiful sunrise every morning complete with the dawn chorus from the exotic birds. This hotel literally sits with the jungle one side and the sea the other. It’s underneath a canopy of coconut palm trees. Our room was spotless, cleaned every day and turned down every evening. The mini bar was plentiful and replenished daily. Towels were changed daily, sometimes twice. The room is one of the biggest we have stayed in, a massive bed, very comfortable. A lounge area. A large bathroom. Plenty of storage and safe in the room too. Balcony overlooking the pool with 2 chairs and a double bed. By 7am all the sun beds had been reserved so we never got to use the pool which was dedicated to us with its swim up bar etc so that was a shame. We do prefer the beach but as others have mentioned you need to be early to get a bed there too. Only the broken ones left by 8am. We did notice staff bringing beds down so I think you only have to ask. My only gripe was people putting towels on the Bali beds and taking 2 sun beds as well, very selfish. The beach was kept clean by staff removing any seaweed, stones etc daily. Lovely soft white sand. Staff will come and bring you your drinks, although if further up the beach away from the bar area you could wait a while before someone appears and then a while before you get it, but on the whole they do a good job remembering your usual tipple. The friendly staff work really hard throughout this hotel keeping it clean for us to enjoy and really can’t do enough to help you. We found our Tui guide around the hotel led by Stephanie very useful as it’s quite spacious, would highly recommend it as helped us find our bearings with lots of interesting information along the way. The concierge team are there to make your holiday run smoothly, you need to make bookings with them for 2 of the restaurants throughout your stay. Nothing is too much trouble, we had a problem with our shower pressure, we mentioned it in the morning and it was sorted by the afternoon. We ate in all the restaurants by one during our stay. You would not be disappointed with any of them, all to a very high standard. Our favourite has to be the gourmet pub, this does get very busy so would advise to go early as unable to book. There are a few themed evenings throughout the week too, all very good with some excellent performers/ singers. If you want a relaxing holiday, in beautiful surroundings, in glorious sunshine sheltered under a canopy of palm trees, lovely food and cocktails, you will find it all here..... it’s paradise. Our first taste of Mexico did not disappoint and we would love to return one day and would most definitely stay at this hotel again without a doubt.

We stayed for 1 week, we were in the palms section, in the premium section. The ground floor had swim up pools, we had a second floor room, with a big balcony. Over on the infinity side they all have swim up pools. Our room was big with a large whirlpool bath and walk in shower, each day the rooms mini bar was filled up. Our room was kept very clean, although could do with some updating. We weren't sure whether we had a turn down service or not as we only had it on 3 nights. The pool adjacent to our room was probably the best but it was too much in the shade, so we went to the beach, on the Palm side the loungers could definitely do with some TLC. By accident we found the beach on the infinity side although the same beds the up keepnwas much better. There are probably too many Bali beds as most people seemed to have 2 loungers as well which seemed unfair. The food was amazing whether the a la carte or the self service. We preferred the seaside market restaurant as it was bigger and seemed to have a better choice and was also less busy. The concierge were really helpful, we always managed to get the restaurant we wanted at more or less the time we wanted. If I had 1 criticism that would be the room safe. It was literally a lock and key, the key we carried around with us, apparently 150 us $ if you lost it. A more usual safe where you pick your code would have been easier. A brilliant holiday, although the weather was on the cool side for our first couple of days, it soon warmed up