Dreams Riviera Cancun, Week of July 3, 2010

[olie20]

Looking for good or bad comments on Dreams Riviera Cancun. Stayed at the Barcelo Maya Palace last year and loved it. Hopefully Dreams will be equally as nice. Looking on comments about beach, snorkling, food, drinks, service, premium club, entertainment.

[Shammy]

Very nice hotel. I haven't been there myself but have had clients there recently. They also stayed at the Barcelo Palace and liked Dreams better.

Here are some comments from them:

The rooms were an open design and the bathroom area was much bigger than at the Barcelo. There are two sinks, Jacuzzi tub, walk in shower, and toilet area. The couch was much smaller than at the Barcelo again most likely because the room was odd shaped with the angled shape of the front leading to the porch and plunge pool. There was a nice sized desk in the room with the TV on part of it, but no table or chairs besides that. There was a table and chairs on the patio which I heard some people brought inside. I thought the two double beds were smaller than at the Barcelo, but the folks had a King room and that looked pretty nice. The quality of the beds were good. The room also had a dvd player, and a mini fridge which actually kept things cold. If you ran out of anything in the mini-fridge, you could just call and get more beverages or snacks in 15 minutes. Room serves was also available for free and on our last morning it was nice to be able to order breakfast in the room as we got everything packed up.

The size of the resort was nice. You could walk from one end to the other without much of an issue. We like the size, but with the smaller size there were less hang out places. During the day, there is a swim up pool bar, pool size bar, swing bar on the beach, and lobby bar. At night they had a bar near the pool open up and a small night club. I missed the cigar bar at the Barcelo, but you can’t have everything. Because of the kids, we didn’t hit any of the later evening entertainment, but I suspect the evening entertainment and nightlife was better at the Barcelo. It was much smaller and a few evening the Canadian hockey games pretty much took over the night club… no complaints from me, but I am sure a few people didn’t like this. Again the size of the resort didn’t leave for a lot of options particularly if it was too chilly down at the beach side bars at night.

The food was good with a number of restaurants. Usually one or two of the restaurants were closed every night. They had a couple different buffet dinners on different nights in the ballroom with a Caribbean theme and Mexican theme. This is when they closed the second restaurant because they anticipated more people would got to these. For families with small kids, it was important to get the restaurants early to get in on the first seating. The restaurants all opened at 6p so for the popular restaurants you needed to be there at 5:30 or so to ensure a table without waiting. The buffet restaurant was good and there was no wait for this.

They had top shelf liquor which was a nice change of pace from the Barcelo. It was nice to get a Abosult vodka, Havana club mojitos, Sapphire martini, reposado tequila, and even a decent cognac. The house wine both red and white was good in comparison to the Barcelo. The pool and beach side service was a nice plus. And the glass sizes were significantly larger than at the Barcelo so the two bubba kegs we brought down only got used for coffee. The coffee shop was nice with expresso drinks and frozen baily’s drinks.

This was definitely a family resort and I think a lot of couple looking for a romantic getaway may have felt a bit overrun by high energy kids.

The beach was great. The pools were great. Our daughter did miss the mini-waterpark at the Barcelo though. Although the heated kids pool was nice.

We didn’t use the spa or workout room (despite the early vacation talk of using it), but heard it was nice.