One of the nicer, but still wallet friendly, options in Cancun, the Riu all-inclusive chain offers a lot for a reasonable rate. The Riu Palace Las Americas property is located well outside of downtown Cancun, roughly a 30 minute shuttle ride from the airport.
This adults-only all-inclusive chain has 5 restaurants (including one buffet), 4 bars (one of which is 24 hours), and 3 pools. Despite the fact that one is called a ‘jacuzzi’, there’s no hot water involved, which was a bit of a letdown. There are a few things you should know before you check in, little tips and tricks that will help enhance the quality of your stay:
– You have to put your room key into a slot on the wall for the lights to work. That’s no big deal, unless you want to charge your phone or tablet while you’re gone. As it turns out, however, your towel card will also work for this. So you can leave the room with the lights on with the room key safely in your pocket.
– The pool bar closes at 6:00P, and the pools close at 7:00P. They claim it’s for cleaning and maintenance, but I didn’t see much of that while we were there.
– They use a green/ yellow/ red flag system to denote how the ocean is behaving, and when the red flag is up, you can’t take out any of the water equipment. One day the waves were pretty rough, but another day was much calmer and nicer, but the red flag remained up. I asked one of the staff members and he said that the red flag had been up for the past week and would probably be up for another few days at least. It may be their way of reducing risk, but it also reduces the wear and tear on their equipment, but still allows them to claim that these things are offered. I stayed at a place in Jamaica that did the same thing.
– To the east, there’s another Riu property. If you walk along the beach, you’ll run into it, and your wristband will give you access to their food and drink. Or so we were told; we didn’t actually try it.
– People seem to get to the pool very early to reserve chairs and then disappear for the day. We got to the pool around 10:00A, and all of the chairs were taken. There were maybe 20 people actually in the chairs, and nobody in the pool, so where was everyone? Who knows, who cares. Either way, they were hogging the chairs.
The Riu Palace Las Americas was a great little property and nicely priced for a long weekend getaway. I doubt I’d go back, but that’s not due to any major deficiency in that property, but rather because it didn’t stand out in any exceptional way and because there are so many other places to check out.
