El Dorado Maroma Trip Report: March 2-6, 2008

Dasha · 03-10-2008

Hello everyone, long time no chat! I posted on playa.info quite a bit several years ago when my then-fiance, Painterboy, and I were planning trips to Playa. We stayed at the Playa Maya in August 2004 and El Dorado Royale in February 2005 (for our honeymoon) and had a great time at both. Unfortunately, finances, work committments, and Painterboy starting law school kept us from returning to the area, which was a total hardship, I can tell you!

We weren't even planning on a trip this winter, but an especially cold winter here in Minnesota, a new job on my part that's quite stressful, law school stress, and a decent tax refund meant that we HAD to come back to Mexico.

Painterboy and I decided we really wanted to do an AI this time because all we wanted was sun, beach, drinks and good food. We didn't have the energy to have to make a lot of decisions on our trip. After looking around, we decided on El Dorado Maroma. We liked that it was small and intimate, it had gotten some good reviews on Trip Advisor, and we found a deal through Hobbit Travel/Funjet that gave us a swim-up jacuzzi suite for the same price as a Mi Hotelito room. We could only book for 4 nights due to our schedules, but we figured four nights were better than none, right?

I'm at work right now, but I'll be back, hopefully during my lunch hour, with a full review. I probably won't do a day-by-day report, because they'd all sound pretty much alike, "We laid out in the sun, we got some drinks at the swim up bar, etc." But I want to give a full review, both the good and the not-so-good of El Dorado Maroma to give you all a better picture of what it's like. I'll be back soon!

Here's a preview....

Tlyn · 03-10-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dasha

"We laid out in the sun, we got some drinks at the swim up bar, etc."

That sounds nice. Looking forward to reading the rest of your trip report.

akandal · 03-10-2008

I am looking forward to reading your review! Hubby and I are going to EDM in August and am looking forward to it...

Dasha · 03-10-2008

Lunchtime, more report! I'm hoping that Painterboy will also give his perspective to this report in the next few days.

We don't have many pictures. We went to EDM with the best of intentions and our digital camera and the complete, utter laziness took over. However, I will say that the photos people have posted to Trip Advisor are accurate.

Things were a bit rocky on the day of our departure...

First I want to start with a BIG warning for those folks from the Twin Cities. Do NOT, under any circumstances, use Twin Cities Airport Taxi to get to the airport. I called them the night before to book a cab for 4:00 a.m. (got to love those 6 a.m. Sun Country flights). The next morning we went down to the lobby of our apartment building to wait for the cab. My cell phone rang, it was the driver. "I'm on ___ Street and I can't find your place." Well, it turned out he was in downtown MINNEAPOLIS, not St. Paul. He insisted that I must have told the dispatcher Minneapolis. But then he promised he'd call the dispatcher and a different cab would be there at 4:10 a.m. Okay, no big deal. We only live 15 minutes from the airport. At 4:10 a.m. a different driver called and said, "I'm on Summit and Lexington. How do I get downtown?" Are you KIDDING me? I told him to forget the ride and we hustled into our car and drove to the airport.

Everything went smoothly at the airport. I even had time to hit Dunn Brothers for my caffeine fix. The flight was fine and I managed to nap. When we got to Cancun customs, we got the green light and thought we were home free. Not quite...

Our transfer to EDM was part of our package and through Lomas. We found the Lomas guys just fine but they couldn't find our names anywhere on the list. After about 10 minutes (time for a cigarette and some enjoyment of the nice warm weather), they found us on the list but had us down for Hotel Marina El Cid. Huh? I'd never even heard of the place. There was some excitable conversation but finally they just scratched off Marina El Cid and replaced it with EDM. I was mildly paranoid that our reservations might also be at the wrong resort.

We got to EDM and were ushered into the small, but elegant lobby. Check-in was just fine and we were listed there. It was about 11:30 a.m. but they told us our room wouldn't be ready for a few hours, so we had a tour of the property, went to lunch, and hung out in the sun with some drinks until they were ready at 3 p.m.

The trouble wasn't over yet. Like I mentioned before, we'd booked a swim-up jacuzzi suite. The guy who took us to the room didn't lead us to a first-floor room but up, and up, and up to a fourth floor room. It was an infinity pool suite, the top grade of room, but it was minus the infinity pool on the terrace. Instead of a pool, they'd thrown down some boards that looked a little cracked and unstable. We were not very happy.

My husband went down to the lobby and they told him that the travel agent had oversold the swim-up suites and that, actually, our room was an upgrade. Painterboy told them that it wasn't much of an upgrade if there was no pool in the infinity pool suite. They said there wasn't much they could do about it, but if a swim-up pool suite opened up, they'd let us know. Of course, we never heard from them. We could have pressed the issue (and should have) but we were a) lazy b) we did only pay for a Mi Hotelito room c) we decided we'd take it up with Hobbit Travel when we got home and d) aside from the fact that the room was on the 4th floor (no elevator) and didn't have a pool, it was a nice room.

Wow, so far this is a REALLY negative report.

There's good things to come, I promise! Will be back after I eat some lasagna.

Dasha · 03-10-2008

Okay, I managed to shove some lasagna down my gullet. Now we'll get to the more general parts of the review and I can stop being completely negative.

ROOM: Aside from not being in the room category we wanted, the room was very nice. Quite large, very comfy four-poster bed, flat-screen TV with a nice selection of channels, huge bathroom with an even huger jacuzzi tub, indoor and outdoor shower and really nice smelling bath products. My only quibble was that there was no toilet paper holder in the toilet room and instead the paper was resting on the top of the toilet tank. The mini bar was stocked with Diet Coke, Coke, Sprite, mango juice, water and Tecate beer. Tecate isn't one of my favorites, but it's beer right? Beer is always good.

The terrace was huge (since there was no pool on it) and had two chairs and a little table and a lounging bed that was nice for late afternoon naps. The view was both good and bad. We had a sweeping ocean view, but we also had a less-than-attractive view of the roof of the Sabores restaurant and a hurricane-damaged mangrove swamp.

You can see the floorboards just sort of thrown over what must have once been the pool....

If you DO book a swim-up suite, some of them are so far back that I'm afraid all you will see is Sabores, and very little Caribbean. The best suites seem to be 201, 202, 301, 302, 401, and 402.

GROUNDS: The grounds are very nice here for the most part, with plenty of plants and flowers. They're still doing some work, such as installing a fountain, on the grounds, but the whole place is quite pretty and so small that you'll be navigating it like a champ after the first day.

BEACH: Very nice for the most part, although a little weedy in the water and not quite as crystal clear and blue as other parts of the area. They have beach loungers but no umbrellas or palapas for them, so it's a good idea to get a beach bed AND loungers so you can get out of the sun when you want to.

The beach beds on the left side of the resort (as you're facing the Caribbean) are much nicer than those on the right. The left side beds, as you can see, are in palapas and give a lovely treehouse feel. The right side is more crowded, with the beds closer together and they have simple wood roofs. Some people might like that side more because there's more "action" but we loved the rustic feel of the left side of the beach.

By the way, one thing I loved about EDM is there was no towel check-out or two towels issued to you in the room. There are stands of rolled-up towels around both pools and you can take as many as you'd like. You could create a towel fort out of towels and loungers!

There's drinks service on the beach and the woman who did most of the service was very attentive and sweet. (Needless to say, we're big believers in AI tipping.)

Some have wondered about noise from Maroma Marina.

I thought it to be pretty much a non-issue and we were very close to the marina every day. Every few hours a booze cruise boat would come in or go out and you could sort of hear music from it, but it wasn't disturbing. Once I heard a guy power-washing his boat for about 10 minutes. I heard the waves, the breeze and the birds much more than the marina.

Back with more later tonight....

Moxie · 03-10-2008

This is great! Keep it coming.

playadreaming · 03-10-2008

Great report! I always get lazy and sad when I get back from a trip, and never want to start the report. I appreciate your dedication

Dasha · 03-10-2008

Thanks, everyone for your sweet words!

If anyone has any questions, ask away!

POOLS: There are two pools, one big one with a fountain on the right side of the resort, next to Sabores and a smaller one on the left side. Both have swim-up bars. Woo hoo! We preferred the smaller one because it was quieter and nearer our beach bed. The small pool bar had a wonderful bartender, Arturo. Really nice guy. The drinks were not very strong, but that's fine with me. I'm a lightweight. I became quite the aficionado of the mango margarita. I also tried a tamarindo margarita and it was very tasty. The water in the pool was quite chilly but it felt good after baking in the sun.

FOOD: This is the big one for me. I love to cook, have worked in a number of restaurants, and love to eat most of all. I wasn't overly thrilled with the food at El Dorado Royale (except for the Italian restaurant) and was a little apprehensive about how EDM's food would be. There are three a la carte restaurants for dinner and no reservations are necessary for any of them. We never had to wait for a table for dinner.

Sabores is the Mexican-European restaurant. It's open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Breakfast and lunch offer a small buffet and a la carte items. We always ordered a la carte but would sometimes snag something off the buffet if it looked good, like fruit or salad. Breakfast was always fantastic, especially the Mexican breakfast items like chilaquiles and huevos divorciados. However, it always drove Painterboy nuts that the bloody mary/mimosa bar seemed to always be out of bloody mary mix. Lunch was almost always a hit at Sabores, too. I liked the seafood cocktail starter so much I ordered it every day and never got sick of it. The shrimp and mushroom quesadillas were awesome as was the perfectly done grilled fish. The only thing that bugged us about Sabores was that it seemed like there were a lot of officious manager-types swanning about with Bluetooth receivers in their ears while the poor waiters ran their butts off. As a former waitress, I hate that stuff. One manager took our breakfast orders and pretty much bullied me into ordering a particular dish, which I found irritating.

Our dinner at Sabores, on our last night, was probably the best meal of the whole trip. We both ordered caesar salads, which turned out to be these funky deconstructed salads (picture something you might see on Top Chef). They were really delicious. I ordered arrachera with cheese and epazote flautas and it was amazing--tender, extremely flavorful meat. Painterboy had mixiote with pork pibil, which was delicious, too. The flan was great. I only wish that they'd had tres leches cake, as that's my all-time favorite Latin American sweet.

We both really enjoyed Mio, the Italian restaurant. We started with tuna and beef carpaccios and then I had risotto milanese which was perfectly cooked (a rarity in restaurants) and Painterboy had squid stuffed with seafood. Dessert was a sampling of about six different sweets and they were all good, especially the tiramisu, which had little jellied coffee cubes. Sounds kind of gross, but it was yummy. By the way, EDM offers Chilean wine by the glass and while it's not the best wine on the planet, it's not bad and it gets the job done.

Kiyoko, the Asian restaurant, was a comedy of errors worthy of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares TV show. First of all, there only seemed to be one, poor overworked waiter working the room. Half of our drinks order and our sushi order were completely forgotten (perhaps that was for the best because when it did finally arrive, it tasted like supermarket sushi). My vegetable stir-fry (totally boring tasting, sort of like something from my college's cafeteria) came without rice and my husband's tempura was tough and not really tempura at all, more like batter-dipped shrimp from Long John Silver's. We like a leisurely meal, but three hours for this dinner was ridiculous.

We ordered room service twice, once for dinner (Painterboy had a cold) and also for breakfast the morning we left. There's a nice selection of breakfasts, but the lunch and dinner offerings are kind of slim, mostly sandwiches, plus a burrito, hamburgers, and hot dogs. Both times the food came almost ridiculously quickly (especially since the poor room service waiter had to schlep the food up to the fourth floor). Breakfast was great and dinner (sandwich for hubby, burrito for me) was just fine.

SERVICE: In general, everyone who worked at EDM was very friendly and accommodating, with the possible exception of the way the front desk staff handled the room issue. Unlike EDR, our room was always clean by the time we left the beach around 4 p.m. The mini fridge was always stocked with our favorites and the mini fridge guy wrote me a thank you after I tipped him. The only staff member who I truly didn't care for was the guy who must have been in charge of what few activities they have at EDM (the place is very mellow, which is just what I wanted). He kept coming by, nagging us to go to water aerobics or salsa lessons, which were were SO not interested in doing.

NIGHT LIFE: This wasn't really a priority for us this trip, between Painterboy's cold (by the way, he swears by the Argentinian cold medication they sell in the EDM store) and our general state of exhaustion. We always went back to our room after dinner and enjoyed the breeze and the lights of Cozumel from our balcony. However, I heard that Rick's, the martini bar, was fun at night, with dancing and entertainment on weekends.

SPA: We didn't make it to the spa this trip, but I heard nice things about the massages and pedicures from other guests. EDM has a massage pavilion over the water, which would be really nice at sunset. There's also morning yoga classes in the massage pavilion.

GUESTS: I loved the fact that the resort was so small (only 72 guests). No wristbands and very few, if any, lines. We knew most of the guests by sight after one day. Everyone was very friendly and happy to chit chat over drinks without wanting to be best friends forever. There was a range of ages from late 20s to 70s, with the average being late 40s or early 50s. Strangely enough, it seemed as if at least 2/3 of the guests were also from Minnesota. Are they sneaking in subliminal messages for EDM during KARE-11 news broadcasts? The rest of the guests seemed to be from all over the United States, some from Canada, and a few from Mexico (including the guy we called Cell Phone Guy because he and his wife had the beach bed next to us one day and he spent the WHOLE DAY yammering into his phone--dude, you're on VACATION!).

But alas, all too soon it was time to leave. The day before I checked in with Lomas on our shuttle and sure enough, we were still listed as being at Marina El Cid. Yikes! But it got straightened out and we got to the airport the next day just fine and landed at MSP on time. However, we got to the parking ramp and found that our battery was dead. We had to call my father to come and jump start the car. Not to mention the $60 we had to pay because the stupid cab didn't come on Sunday morning. Ah yes, welcome back to the frozen wasteland!

So, the real question is, would we stay at El Dorado Maroma again? I loved how small it was and how relaxed and friendly, but I don't think we'd book there again unless we were assured that the room overbooking wouldn't happen again. But I'm still glad we went and am VERY glad we got a small dose of Mexico to get us through the cold winter.

So that's my trip report. Hopefully Painterboy can amputate his nose from his law books and add his take, too. Again, feel free to ask any questions!

BigErn · 03-10-2008

Thanks for taking the time to post your review. You pretty much answered any questions I had about this resort.
Mike

Dasha · 03-11-2008

I thought I'd add just a few more pictures from our meager selection.

A view from our balcony of the lazy river the swim up suites are on (:::sniffle:: ) and the larger pool.

A better view of the building the swim up suites ad infinity pool suites are in.

More beach. I miss the beach! Wish we were going back to Mexico next week!

akandal · 03-11-2008

Thank you so much for taking the time to write your reviews! I know it is kind of a drag to do that after coming home but we really appreciate it. Hubby is a huge beach v-ball fan, do you recall seeing a net (I too love it but due to my back I can only really play after being very well "lubricated" -

)? Of course we understand that due to the size it may not be possible to have a daily afternoon game, but a few would be fun! How about snorkeling just off the resort, did you partake or talk to any other who did?
Thanks again!

Moxie · 03-11-2008

Was there a long strip of beach to walk on? How close was the next resort? What kinds of beer do they have? How about brand name liquors?
It's a lot of questions, but we're thinking about trying this resort out for next February. We had orginally thought about trying a summer trip here, but the offer of free tickets to Hawaii was too good to pass up!

Dasha · 03-11-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moxie

Was there a long strip of beach to walk on? How close was the next resort? What kinds of beer do they have? How about brand name liquors?

It's a lot of questions, but we're thinking about trying this resort out for next February.

It's not a lot of questions!

You can walk pretty far on the beach to the North, past the Maroma Marina. It's supposed to be a nice walk, but due to our aforementioned laziness, we never made it. I'm not sure how close the nearest resort is. We couldn't see one, which is nice.

As for beer, there was Tecate in the mini fridges in the rooms and Dos Equis on tap in the bars. I'm not sure if they had anything else. They had most of the big brand name liquors--Absolut, Tanqueray, Stoli, Jck Daniels, Patron, Crown Royal, etc.

Dasha · 03-11-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by akandal

Thank you so much for taking the time to write your reviews! I know it is kind of a drag to do that after coming home but we really appreciate it. Hubby is a huge beach v-ball fan, do you recall seeing a net (I too love it but due to my back I can only really play after being very well "lubricated" -

)? Of course we understand that due to the size it may not be possible to have a daily afternoon game, but a few would be fun! How about snorkeling just off the resort, did you partake or talk to any other who did?
Thanks again!

You are welcome. It was lost of fun to revisit the trip in my mind!

You're in luck, there IS a beach volleyball net and I saw at least one game while I was there.

We didn't snorkel at the resort (again, muy lazy) because we heard from some others that there isn't much to see. I've heard you can book some pretty great snorkeling trips that leave right from Maroma Marina.

PainterBoy · 03-11-2008

Heya folks,
re: vollyball - they do have a net and I did see a few folks out playing, but I don't know that it really reached a critical mass of organization given the smallish guest population and demographic cross section... that was down at the southern end of the resort near where the beach kind of ends and the shore gets rocky and mangrovy... plus at that end they had speakers set up pumping out the dance tunes, we avoided that scene and stayed up at the northern end towards the marina... the marina seemed to cause less annoying noise than the blaring music and aqua-arobics caterwauling.
--

re: snorkling - we didn't do any. The near in-shore waters did not look like they'd make for interesting or plesant snorking... a little seaweedy and relatively flat sandy bottom ... however, out a ways, past the sandbags, there looked to be sand bars and/or reefs that MIGHT be of interest... also, south of the resort, off-shore from the mangroves looked like it could have potential... but that's just a guess, and odds are that if snorking is what yer looking for, this probably wouldn't be a prime location
--
re: beers & liquors ... I can only confirm Tecate (and its lite) and DosEquis. I did not see anyone with any other kind and I didn't ask for any other than XX. As for name brand liquors, I saw many of the usual suspects at the pool bars. Neither Dasha nor I really put them to the test as far as asking for brands, so I'd be hard pressed to say whether or not they have any major gaps in coverage. It is my understanding that their more upscale bar (Rick's Bar) is oriented toward the premium cocktail type drinker, but we chose to stay outside by the pools and stick to the frosty generic stuff. The music I heard coming out of Rick's kinda made me keep my distance, but to each their own (think of the Eagles and Big Lebowski).
--
While the beach pretty much ended at the south end of the resort, it looked very nice to the north on the other side of the marina. I believe there is a hotel/rsteraunt at the marina right next to EDM, but I din't know about how far it is until the next resort northwards.... because I was a bit under the weather for the first half of the trip, and because we felt so darn content just laying out on the beach and on the beachbed, we didn't venture that way, but some of the folks we spoke with said it was a nice walk.

I'd echo Dasha's praise for the waiters, bartenders, and other support staff... very helpful and friendly... the upper level folk however need some work. They're polite enough, but I would have prefered some strait talk about the overbooking before we were taken to the room. A sh!+eating grin is not really a substitute for upfront candor.
--

I liked the food for the most part, but I wish they would let more Mexico in and ease off the faux-fancy stuff a bit. We love food, including fine gormet cusine, but I felt a good deal of what EDM offers is more like simulated gormet... or what gormet food is like in the mind of a rube. They could stand to fuss a little less on froufrou presentation and expand the flavor profiles. Sabores shows the potential for including real Mexican dishes, but even so it's a bit more tarted up than is needed. The Asian place got some good word-of-mouth from other guests we talked with, but when we went it was just a joke... the only good thing was the sashimi, which they didn't really have to do anything to. As Dasha said, the room service menu seems oddly limited... I think one could ask for dishes from the restraunt menus, but since those menues were not printed or posted anywhere conveinient to find, it would be guesswork.
--
I kept getting the feeling like EDM wasn't really ready to be open... like we were there a week or two before they were ready. The thing is, I don't know if it would feel the same 2 weeks from now...2 months... etc... others will have to weigh in

I did enjoy myself, and I'm sure as heck glad we went... but I'm not sure I would recomend EDM in its current state.

03-10-2008	#1 (permalink)
Dasha into ruins Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: The Frozen Wasteland aka MN Posts: 78	El Dorado Maroma Trip Report: March 2-6, 2008 Hello everyone, long time no chat! I posted on playa.info quite a bit several years ago when my then-fiance, Painterboy, and I were planning trips to Playa. We stayed at the Playa Maya in August 2004 and El Dorado Royale in February 2005 (for our honeymoon) and had a great time at both. Unfortunately, finances, work committments, and Painterboy starting law school kept us from returning to the area, which was a total hardship, I can tell you! We weren't even planning on a trip this winter, but an especially cold winter here in Minnesota, a new job on my part that's quite stressful, law school stress, and a decent tax refund meant that we HAD to come back to Mexico. Painterboy and I decided we really wanted to do an AI this time because all we wanted was sun, beach, drinks and good food. We didn't have the energy to have to make a lot of decisions on our trip. After looking around, we decided on El Dorado Maroma. We liked that it was small and intimate, it had gotten some good reviews on Trip Advisor, and we found a deal through Hobbit Travel/Funjet that gave us a swim-up jacuzzi suite for the same price as a Mi Hotelito room. We could only book for 4 nights due to our schedules, but we figured four nights were better than none, right? I'm at work right now, but I'll be back, hopefully during my lunch hour, with a full review. I probably won't do a day-by-day report, because they'd all sound pretty much alike, "We laid out in the sun, we got some drinks at the swim up bar, etc." But I want to give a full review, both the good and the not-so-good of El Dorado Maroma to give you all a better picture of what it's like. I'll be back soon! Here's a preview....

03-10-2008	#5 (permalink)
Dasha into ruins Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: The Frozen Wasteland aka MN Posts: 78	Okay, I managed to shove some lasagna down my gullet. Now we'll get to the more general parts of the review and I can stop being completely negative. ROOM: Aside from not being in the room category we wanted, the room was very nice. Quite large, very comfy four-poster bed, flat-screen TV with a nice selection of channels, huge bathroom with an even huger jacuzzi tub, indoor and outdoor shower and really nice smelling bath products. My only quibble was that there was no toilet paper holder in the toilet room and instead the paper was resting on the top of the toilet tank. The mini bar was stocked with Diet Coke, Coke, Sprite, mango juice, water and Tecate beer. Tecate isn't one of my favorites, but it's beer right? Beer is always good. The terrace was huge (since there was no pool on it) and had two chairs and a little table and a lounging bed that was nice for late afternoon naps. The view was both good and bad. We had a sweeping ocean view, but we also had a less-than-attractive view of the roof of the Sabores restaurant and a hurricane-damaged mangrove swamp. You can see the floorboards just sort of thrown over what must have once been the pool.... If you DO book a swim-up suite, some of them are so far back that I'm afraid all you will see is Sabores, and very little Caribbean. The best suites seem to be 201, 202, 301, 302, 401, and 402. GROUNDS: The grounds are very nice here for the most part, with plenty of plants and flowers. They're still doing some work, such as installing a fountain, on the grounds, but the whole place is quite pretty and so small that you'll be navigating it like a champ after the first day. BEACH: Very nice for the most part, although a little weedy in the water and not quite as crystal clear and blue as other parts of the area. They have beach loungers but no umbrellas or palapas for them, so it's a good idea to get a beach bed AND loungers so you can get out of the sun when you want to. The beach beds on the left side of the resort (as you're facing the Caribbean) are much nicer than those on the right. The left side beds, as you can see, are in palapas and give a lovely treehouse feel. The right side is more crowded, with the beds closer together and they have simple wood roofs. Some people might like that side more because there's more "action" but we loved the rustic feel of the left side of the beach. By the way, one thing I loved about EDM is there was no towel check-out or two towels issued to you in the room. There are stands of rolled-up towels around both pools and you can take as many as you'd like. You could create a towel fort out of towels and loungers! There's drinks service on the beach and the woman who did most of the service was very attentive and sweet. (Needless to say, we're big believers in AI tipping.) Some have wondered about noise from Maroma Marina. I thought it to be pretty much a non-issue and we were very close to the marina every day. Every few hours a booze cruise boat would come in or go out and you could sort of hear music from it, but it wasn't disturbing. Once I heard a guy power-washing his boat for about 10 minutes. I heard the waves, the breeze and the birds much more than the marina. Back with more later tonight.... Last edited by Dasha; 03-11-2008 at 07:44 AM..

03-10-2008	#8 (permalink)
Dasha into ruins Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: The Frozen Wasteland aka MN Posts: 78	Thanks, everyone for your sweet words! If anyone has any questions, ask away! POOLS: There are two pools, one big one with a fountain on the right side of the resort, next to Sabores and a smaller one on the left side. Both have swim-up bars. Woo hoo! We preferred the smaller one because it was quieter and nearer our beach bed. The small pool bar had a wonderful bartender, Arturo. Really nice guy. The drinks were not very strong, but that's fine with me. I'm a lightweight. I became quite the aficionado of the mango margarita. I also tried a tamarindo margarita and it was very tasty. The water in the pool was quite chilly but it felt good after baking in the sun. FOOD: This is the big one for me. I love to cook, have worked in a number of restaurants, and love to eat most of all. I wasn't overly thrilled with the food at El Dorado Royale (except for the Italian restaurant) and was a little apprehensive about how EDM's food would be. There are three a la carte restaurants for dinner and no reservations are necessary for any of them. We never had to wait for a table for dinner. Sabores is the Mexican-European restaurant. It's open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Breakfast and lunch offer a small buffet and a la carte items. We always ordered a la carte but would sometimes snag something off the buffet if it looked good, like fruit or salad. Breakfast was always fantastic, especially the Mexican breakfast items like chilaquiles and huevos divorciados. However, it always drove Painterboy nuts that the bloody mary/mimosa bar seemed to always be out of bloody mary mix. Lunch was almost always a hit at Sabores, too. I liked the seafood cocktail starter so much I ordered it every day and never got sick of it. The shrimp and mushroom quesadillas were awesome as was the perfectly done grilled fish. The only thing that bugged us about Sabores was that it seemed like there were a lot of officious manager-types swanning about with Bluetooth receivers in their ears while the poor waiters ran their butts off. As a former waitress, I hate that stuff. One manager took our breakfast orders and pretty much bullied me into ordering a particular dish, which I found irritating. Our dinner at Sabores, on our last night, was probably the best meal of the whole trip. We both ordered caesar salads, which turned out to be these funky deconstructed salads (picture something you might see on Top Chef). They were really delicious. I ordered arrachera with cheese and epazote flautas and it was amazing--tender, extremely flavorful meat. Painterboy had mixiote with pork pibil, which was delicious, too. The flan was great. I only wish that they'd had tres leches cake, as that's my all-time favorite Latin American sweet. We both really enjoyed Mio, the Italian restaurant. We started with tuna and beef carpaccios and then I had risotto milanese which was perfectly cooked (a rarity in restaurants) and Painterboy had squid stuffed with seafood. Dessert was a sampling of about six different sweets and they were all good, especially the tiramisu, which had little jellied coffee cubes. Sounds kind of gross, but it was yummy. By the way, EDM offers Chilean wine by the glass and while it's not the best wine on the planet, it's not bad and it gets the job done. Kiyoko, the Asian restaurant, was a comedy of errors worthy of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares TV show. First of all, there only seemed to be one, poor overworked waiter working the room. Half of our drinks order and our sushi order were completely forgotten (perhaps that was for the best because when it did finally arrive, it tasted like supermarket sushi). My vegetable stir-fry (totally boring tasting, sort of like something from my college's cafeteria) came without rice and my husband's tempura was tough and not really tempura at all, more like batter-dipped shrimp from Long John Silver's. We like a leisurely meal, but three hours for this dinner was ridiculous. We ordered room service twice, once for dinner (Painterboy had a cold) and also for breakfast the morning we left. There's a nice selection of breakfasts, but the lunch and dinner offerings are kind of slim, mostly sandwiches, plus a burrito, hamburgers, and hot dogs. Both times the food came almost ridiculously quickly (especially since the poor room service waiter had to schlep the food up to the fourth floor). Breakfast was great and dinner (sandwich for hubby, burrito for me) was just fine. SERVICE: In general, everyone who worked at EDM was very friendly and accommodating, with the possible exception of the way the front desk staff handled the room issue. Unlike EDR, our room was always clean by the time we left the beach around 4 p.m. The mini fridge was always stocked with our favorites and the mini fridge guy wrote me a thank you after I tipped him. The only staff member who I truly didn't care for was the guy who must have been in charge of what few activities they have at EDM (the place is very mellow, which is just what I wanted). He kept coming by, nagging us to go to water aerobics or salsa lessons, which were were SO not interested in doing. NIGHT LIFE: This wasn't really a priority for us this trip, between Painterboy's cold (by the way, he swears by the Argentinian cold medication they sell in the EDM store) and our general state of exhaustion. We always went back to our room after dinner and enjoyed the breeze and the lights of Cozumel from our balcony. However, I heard that Rick's, the martini bar, was fun at night, with dancing and entertainment on weekends. SPA: We didn't make it to the spa this trip, but I heard nice things about the massages and pedicures from other guests. EDM has a massage pavilion over the water, which would be really nice at sunset. There's also morning yoga classes in the massage pavilion. GUESTS: I loved the fact that the resort was so small (only 72 guests). No wristbands and very few, if any, lines. We knew most of the guests by sight after one day. Everyone was very friendly and happy to chit chat over drinks without wanting to be best friends forever. There was a range of ages from late 20s to 70s, with the average being late 40s or early 50s. Strangely enough, it seemed as if at least 2/3 of the guests were also from Minnesota. Are they sneaking in subliminal messages for EDM during KARE-11 news broadcasts? The rest of the guests seemed to be from all over the United States, some from Canada, and a few from Mexico (including the guy we called Cell Phone Guy because he and his wife had the beach bed next to us one day and he spent the WHOLE DAY yammering into his phone--dude, you're on VACATION!). But alas, all too soon it was time to leave. The day before I checked in with Lomas on our shuttle and sure enough, we were still listed as being at Marina El Cid. Yikes! But it got straightened out and we got to the airport the next day just fine and landed at MSP on time. However, we got to the parking ramp and found that our battery was dead. We had to call my father to come and jump start the car. Not to mention the $60 we had to pay because the stupid cab didn't come on Sunday morning. Ah yes, welcome back to the frozen wasteland! So, the real question is, would we stay at El Dorado Maroma again? I loved how small it was and how relaxed and friendly, but I don't think we'd book there again unless we were assured that the room overbooking wouldn't happen again. But I'm still glad we went and am VERY glad we got a small dose of Mexico to get us through the cold winter. So that's my trip report. Hopefully Painterboy can amputate his nose from his law books and add his take, too. Again, feel free to ask any questions! Last edited by Dasha; 03-11-2008 at 07:48 AM.. Reason: Because my brain is broken tonight...

03-11-2008	#10 (permalink)
Dasha into ruins Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: The Frozen Wasteland aka MN Posts: 78	I thought I'd add just a few more pictures from our meager selection. A view from our balcony of the lazy river the swim up suites are on (:::sniffle:: ) and the larger pool. A better view of the building the swim up suites ad infinity pool suites are in. More beach. I miss the beach! Wish we were going back to Mexico next week! Last edited by Dasha; 03-11-2008 at 08:09 AM..

03-10-2008	#3 (permalink)
akandal beachaholic Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Huntsville, AL Posts: 259	I am looking forward to reading your review! Hubby and I are going to EDM in August and am looking forward to it...

03-10-2008	#4 (permalink)
Dasha into ruins Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: The Frozen Wasteland aka MN Posts: 78	Lunchtime, more report! I'm hoping that Painterboy will also give his perspective to this report in the next few days. We don't have many pictures. We went to EDM with the best of intentions and our digital camera and the complete, utter laziness took over. However, I will say that the photos people have posted to Trip Advisor are accurate. Things were a bit rocky on the day of our departure... First I want to start with a BIG warning for those folks from the Twin Cities. Do NOT, under any circumstances, use Twin Cities Airport Taxi to get to the airport. I called them the night before to book a cab for 4:00 a.m. (got to love those 6 a.m. Sun Country flights). The next morning we went down to the lobby of our apartment building to wait for the cab. My cell phone rang, it was the driver. "I'm on ___ Street and I can't find your place." Well, it turned out he was in downtown MINNEAPOLIS, not St. Paul. He insisted that I must have told the dispatcher Minneapolis. But then he promised he'd call the dispatcher and a different cab would be there at 4:10 a.m. Okay, no big deal. We only live 15 minutes from the airport. At 4:10 a.m. a different driver called and said, "I'm on Summit and Lexington. How do I get downtown?" Are you KIDDING me? I told him to forget the ride and we hustled into our car and drove to the airport. Everything went smoothly at the airport. I even had time to hit Dunn Brothers for my caffeine fix. The flight was fine and I managed to nap. When we got to Cancun customs, we got the green light and thought we were home free. Not quite... Our transfer to EDM was part of our package and through Lomas. We found the Lomas guys just fine but they couldn't find our names anywhere on the list. After about 10 minutes (time for a cigarette and some enjoyment of the nice warm weather), they found us on the list but had us down for Hotel Marina El Cid. Huh? I'd never even heard of the place. There was some excitable conversation but finally they just scratched off Marina El Cid and replaced it with EDM. I was mildly paranoid that our reservations might also be at the wrong resort. We got to EDM and were ushered into the small, but elegant lobby. Check-in was just fine and we were listed there. It was about 11:30 a.m. but they told us our room wouldn't be ready for a few hours, so we had a tour of the property, went to lunch, and hung out in the sun with some drinks until they were ready at 3 p.m. The trouble wasn't over yet. Like I mentioned before, we'd booked a swim-up jacuzzi suite. The guy who took us to the room didn't lead us to a first-floor room but up, and up, and up to a fourth floor room. It was an infinity pool suite, the top grade of room, but it was minus the infinity pool on the terrace. Instead of a pool, they'd thrown down some boards that looked a little cracked and unstable. We were not very happy. My husband went down to the lobby and they told him that the travel agent had oversold the swim-up suites and that, actually, our room was an upgrade. Painterboy told them that it wasn't much of an upgrade if there was no pool in the infinity pool suite. They said there wasn't much they could do about it, but if a swim-up pool suite opened up, they'd let us know. Of course, we never heard from them. We could have pressed the issue (and should have) but we were a) lazy b) we did only pay for a Mi Hotelito room c) we decided we'd take it up with Hobbit Travel when we got home and d) aside from the fact that the room was on the 4th floor (no elevator) and didn't have a pool, it was a nice room. Wow, so far this is a REALLY negative report. There's good things to come, I promise! Will be back after I eat some lasagna.

03-10-2008	#6 (permalink)
Moxie ruined Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Providence, RI Posts: 93	This is great! Keep it coming.

03-10-2008	#7 (permalink)
playadreaming way into it Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: near Tulsa Posts: 231	Great report! I always get lazy and sad when I get back from a trip, and never want to start the report. I appreciate your dedication

03-10-2008	#9 (permalink)
BigErn very sparkly Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Bloomingdale Il. Posts: 39	Thanks for taking the time to post your review. You pretty much answered any questions I had about this resort. Mike

03-11-2008	#11 (permalink)
akandal beachaholic Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Huntsville, AL Posts: 259	Thank you so much for taking the time to write your reviews! I know it is kind of a drag to do that after coming home but we really appreciate it. Hubby is a huge beach v-ball fan, do you recall seeing a net (I too love it but due to my back I can only really play after being very well "lubricated" - )? Of course we understand that due to the size it may not be possible to have a daily afternoon game, but a few would be fun! How about snorkeling just off the resort, did you partake or talk to any other who did? Thanks again!

03-11-2008	#12 (permalink)
Moxie ruined Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Providence, RI Posts: 93	Was there a long strip of beach to walk on? How close was the next resort? What kinds of beer do they have? How about brand name liquors? It's a lot of questions, but we're thinking about trying this resort out for next February. We had orginally thought about trying a summer trip here, but the offer of free tickets to Hawaii was too good to pass up!

03-11-2008	#15 (permalink)
PainterBoy very sparkly Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Minnesota Posts: 25	Heya folks, re: vollyball - they do have a net and I did see a few folks out playing, but I don't know that it really reached a critical mass of organization given the smallish guest population and demographic cross section... that was down at the southern end of the resort near where the beach kind of ends and the shore gets rocky and mangrovy... plus at that end they had speakers set up pumping out the dance tunes, we avoided that scene and stayed up at the northern end towards the marina... the marina seemed to cause less annoying noise than the blaring music and aqua-arobics caterwauling. -- re: snorkling - we didn't do any. The near in-shore waters did not look like they'd make for interesting or plesant snorking... a little seaweedy and relatively flat sandy bottom ... however, out a ways, past the sandbags, there looked to be sand bars and/or reefs that MIGHT be of interest... also, south of the resort, off-shore from the mangroves looked like it could have potential... but that's just a guess, and odds are that if snorking is what yer looking for, this probably wouldn't be a prime location -- re: beers & liquors ... I can only confirm Tecate (and its lite) and DosEquis. I did not see anyone with any other kind and I didn't ask for any other than XX. As for name brand liquors, I saw many of the usual suspects at the pool bars. Neither Dasha nor I really put them to the test as far as asking for brands, so I'd be hard pressed to say whether or not they have any major gaps in coverage. It is my understanding that their more upscale bar (Rick's Bar) is oriented toward the premium cocktail type drinker, but we chose to stay outside by the pools and stick to the frosty generic stuff. The music I heard coming out of Rick's kinda made me keep my distance, but to each their own (think of the Eagles and Big Lebowski). -- While the beach pretty much ended at the south end of the resort, it looked very nice to the north on the other side of the marina. I believe there is a hotel/rsteraunt at the marina right next to EDM, but I din't know about how far it is until the next resort northwards.... because I was a bit under the weather for the first half of the trip, and because we felt so darn content just laying out on the beach and on the beachbed, we didn't venture that way, but some of the folks we spoke with said it was a nice walk. I'd echo Dasha's praise for the waiters, bartenders, and other support staff... very helpful and friendly... the upper level folk however need some work. They're polite enough, but I would have prefered some strait talk about the overbooking before we were taken to the room. A sh!+eating grin is not really a substitute for upfront candor. -- I liked the food for the most part, but I wish they would let more Mexico in and ease off the faux-fancy stuff a bit. We love food, including fine gormet cusine, but I felt a good deal of what EDM offers is more like simulated gormet... or what gormet food is like in the mind of a rube. They could stand to fuss a little less on froufrou presentation and expand the flavor profiles. Sabores shows the potential for including real Mexican dishes, but even so it's a bit more tarted up than is needed. The Asian place got some good word-of-mouth from other guests we talked with, but when we went it was just a joke... the only good thing was the sashimi, which they didn't really have to do anything to. As Dasha said, the room service menu seems oddly limited... I think one could ask for dishes from the restraunt menus, but since those menues were not printed or posted anywhere conveinient to find, it would be guesswork. -- I kept getting the feeling like EDM wasn't really ready to be open... like we were there a week or two before they were ready. The thing is, I don't know if it would feel the same 2 weeks from now...2 months... etc... others will have to weigh in I did enjoy myself, and I'm sure as heck glad we went... but I'm not sure I would recomend EDM in its current state.

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