I'd never been on this kind of vacation before, either to Mexico, this region, or a resort-type hotel. What a super place this turned out to be! We had a beautiful room (Jr.Patio) that was contemporary, elegant and quite large. As others have pointed out, the bathroom was fantastic, with dual rainfall showers and never a problem with hot water or water pressure. A very nice touch was the hot tub outside. Yes, you have to request it be filled, but we did and it was, no problem (and the bubble-bath one night was a nice treat!)
The concept of this resort is to be small in size (they said I think 128 rooms total) and I much prefer this to some of the extremely large multi-hotel complexes we saw. With the lack of crowds, large and beautiful rooms, and amazing staff, this felt much more exclusive, than the cattle-ranch with apartment-style small hotel rooms stacked one on top of the other I saw a few doors down the beach. In fact our room was single-story, which I highly recommend, and had a beautiful sense of privacy with the vegetation in front of the river (we had room 335). Although there was one shared wall, we never heard a sound from any other room during our stay.
When we started there were only 55 other guests, but this jumped upwards quickly as the days got closer to Christmas. Perhaps we got lucky starting out with fewer folks, but it really seemed like the staff got to know us, by name and where we were from, and it was quite touching, when we left, it seemed like a few of the restaurant staff in particular were genuinely sorry to see us go. Araceli, Daniel, Prisciliano, Roman and Cesar at Aguamarina, and Fernando and Omar at Ambar in particular tried so hard to make everything great, I couldn't imagine a more dedicated staff.
Never having been to Mexico before, I was a little anxious about some of the gang-violence one sees on the news, but as the bus-guide explained on the way in, this happens up on the border with the USA, and we were many thousands of km's away from that. At no time did anything feel weird, and in fact this resort seemed very compact and well supervised. My other concern reading reviews of resorts was room theft, but in fact, one time my boyfriend was in such a hurry to get to the beach, he left the room safe open. When I got back some time later, the cleaning staff had been in, alerted security, who had come by the room, locked the safe, and had to be paged to open it for us again. So they really seemed to take safeguarding us seriously! I noted that they sprayed in the evening to control mosquitos, and the only wildlife I saw were some beautiful and musical-sounding birds, and the occasional cute iguana in the distance.
I should mention that I'd never travelled as part of a gay couple before, and was also wondering how that would go over. Well, the staff seemed totally fine with this and were as friendly or more so to us as we observed them being with any of the other guests. We saw several other same-sex couples during our stay, so the word is obviously out that this is a welcoming hotel.
As many have already pointed out, another part of the concept of this hotel is for all the food to be a la carte. I have heard many bad things about recycled and stale buffet food, so this was a relief. The food at BD was generally very good; any of the Mexican dishes like fajitas were terrific, and the seafood-soup and shrimp brochettes were also winners. I had steak a number of times, and it was generally excellent, just once I had to send it back as it was far too overcooked to eat. But the staff was very accomodating about this, there was never any attitude and another dish was served up promptly. My bf found the one chicken dish he tried very salty, and so we stuck to the local dishes we'd had previous success with.
With 2 different restaurants to eat lunch at, and 2 for dinner, with different menus, we didn't tire of the choices. We enjoyed the local bubbly that was part of the general selection, and tended to have that most of the time, so we never needed to venture off into the extra-charge wine-list.
It should be noted that this an adults-only resort, and part of their concept seems to be to maintain as tranquil an environment as possible. If you're looking for wild night-life, best to take a cab into Playa del Carmen; there really isn't much going on at the resort. Again given what I've heard about out-of-control drunken revellers at all hours at the larger resorts, power to the Blue Diamond for creating a clear alternative for those of us that
I highly recommend the temazcal ceremony if you're up to a fair bit of heat before the end; Enrique, the young shaman who led us through this was terrific, combining a thorough knowledge of the background of the ritual with common-sense and everyday metaphors to help us relate to the specific concepts. A super optimistic and cheerful, but deeply thoughtful guy, that was a memorable experience. Be sure to book in advance, the hut can only hold 8-9 guests and it only happens twice a week (this is complimentary with your stay).
We didn't try the spa as the massage prices seemed a bit high, but the area did look beautifully-designed. As others have noted, it's about a 10 minute walk from the far end of the hotel to the beach, so you may want to reserve a pair of complimentary bikes as soon as you arrive, or even before if possible. We were told there was a waiting list, but then a pair appeared the same day, so no problem.
I'd also highly recommend taking the trip to Tulum to see the Mayan ruins there, it's only a half-day, unlike Chichen Itza, and the guide was very colourful and informed. Now I can (sort of) count in Mayan! You can book and pay for the tickets right onsite at the concierge station near the beach.
A couple of small things that the hotel could do to improve operations: 1) make sure that all the golf-carts using the main road at night have their headlights on, both passenger and maintenance.
2) as others have pointed out, it seemed like they use sewer/waste water to irrigate the lawns, which does create a bit of a stink. I don't know if there is another option, but the smell was strong.
3) a laminated plastic card with instructions for managing the two remotes for the TV would avoid the complaints I've seen in some of the reviews about getting the TV/DVD player to work (we did have to fiddle a bit, but the same at home!).
We may have gotten lucky, there was no heavy sales pitch at any time, just the mention from the concierge on the first day about a 'returning guests program' which we didn't do (I found out it's a guided tour through the different kinds of rooms).
So in summary, this was what the resort billed itself as: peaceful and relaxing, a great place for a couple to get away and unwind. Everything seemed classy, elegant and well-designed. As all have noted, the strongest of all the many selling-points is the incredibly-friendly and hard-working staff, I couldn’t imagine a better place to take a week off, and hope to return as soon as possible! Thanks Blue Diamond! Peter and Eric
