Courtney GAll-Inclusive resorts are slightly new territory for me. If you’ve read any of my cruise blog posts, I’ve mentioned at least once that cruising is my favorite way to travel. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy other forms of travel, but all-inclusives are something I’m less familiar with.
When I take a land trip, I’m usually staying at a regular hotel in the city and go out on different tours or activities.
I’ve been to two all-inclusive resorts in my life, neither of which were trips I planned for myself. The first was for a family trip in the Dominican Republic. The most recent one was from last week for my cousin’s destination wedding in Cancún, Mexico.
Lomas Hospitality Properties
I had a 3-night stay at El Dorado Royale, an adult-only resort and one of the three properties grouped together along the River Maya coast. The other properties were El Dorado Casitas Royale – another adult-only resort, and Generations River Maya – a family resort.
The resort is about a 30-minute drive from Cancún International Airport. We arrived via a private transfer with Lomas Travel which I found out later was also the brand company for all three resorts.
All the wedding-related events took place at Generations where you could either do a 20-minute walk or catch a shuttle via a large golf cart.
El Dorado Royale
Visuals
The property is beautiful. It has a lot of foliage, flowers, and fountains that are all well-maintained. I loved walking around to view everything, even in the heat. You will see a stray cat or Mexican racoon here and there but that didn’t detract anything for me.
The main grounds are gorgeous, but the beach leaves a little something to be desired.
While you could still sunbathe in stylish lounge chairs or cabanas, there weren’t many places where you could get in the water at the beach due to these large boulders that had holes in them. I think they were there to calm the incoming tide. It’s there for safety but not great for swimming or pictures.
The rooms are decent but I’m not sure I’d call them luxury (despite their names). For El Dorado Royale I was able to see their options of luxury jr. suites and swim-up luxury jr. suites. Some Generations rooms had their own infinity pools and those were pretty nice.
With that being said, my overall rating for the visuals of the properties is 8.5 of 10
Service
The staff was friendly for the most part.
When you check-in and have your assigned room, the bell hops will take you and your luggage all the way to your room using the shuttle car. This was nice so we didn’t have to fumble with carrying all of our items.
When we checked-in, my mom and I were given a key to a single bed when we requested two double beds. When we relayed this to our bellhop, Ivan, he’d driven us back to the lobby and went straight to the supervisor at the time, Ernesto, for us to get a quicker response versus us waiting back in line. I really appreciated this.
Ernesto was very kind and apologetic about the situation and while we couldn’t get the room changed that day, he made sure we’d got it changed before the wedding the next day.
Fransisco was another bellhop/shuttle driver who we encountered a few times that had a great personality. He drove us from Generations back to El Dorado Royale and even waited for us while my mom and other family members took pictures at one of buildings in between the two properties before continuing to drive us the rest of the way.
If you encounter Ernesto, Ivan, or Fransisco, you’re in good hands.
The rest of the staff were friendly as well, most of them greeting you as they passed by.
My overall rating for the service is 9 out of 10.
Food
I’ll be honest the food was just okay but most of the meals I had were a pre-set menu for the wedding or the rehearsal dinner. I wish I had more time to try more restaurants. This is what I could try:
- La Isla – Mexican Cuisine Buffet
- Palms – Caribbean Cuisine (I had a preset menu)
- La Cabana Pizzeria – Pizza, Wings, Tacos, etc.
- Wedding Preset Menu (I think also from Palms).
- Chef’s Market – Buffet
- D’Italia Casitas – Italian Cuisine
The best meals I had were at D’Italia Casitas and La Cabana Pizzeria.
One thing I wish the restaurants and bars had was a drink menu. I’m not a huge drinker so without a menu I don’t know what to order besides a piña coloda or a Bahama mama (more often than not virgin).
Drinks aside, if I had to rate the food overall, I’d give it a 6.8 out of 10.
Final Thoughts
I enjoyed my brief stay at El Dorado Royale minus the room mess up. To my surprise, I regret not staying a day or two more but at the same time I felt like I was missing something.
I’m still a cruise enthusiast but I’m willing to try another all-inclusive. Maybe I just haven’t found the right one to change my mind.
