Cancun

The Royalton collection was recently brought into the Marriott chain. We stayed at the Royalton Chic, an adults only all-inclusive that was fairly recently renovated. As part of Z’s loyalty we got upgraded to their Diamond Club which gave us a special check-in service, a personal butler, and a designated beach area with buffet lunch service, and pool with pool bar serving more premium alcohol than the other bars. You get a discrete wrist bracelet that doubles as your room key which was really cool because now we didn't have to always make sure we had our key with us. After awhile though we seriously started thinking it tripled as a tracker device because our butler, Sergio, would randomly show up where we were at times to check in on how we were doing. The one time that made us really suspect this was while we were sitting in the hallway by the elevator waiting for our room to finish being cleaned and he just popped out of the elevator asked if everything was OK and then left when we said yes. Outside of that strange encounter, Sergio was great in helping us book things, making sure we had everything we needed and even surprised us on our last night with a special treat to celebrate our anniversary, even though it was his day off. 

We booked an ocean front room with balcony. The room was quite large, with a king sized bed, seating area with couch, and a pretty awesome rain shower. The ocean view from the room was  amazing and at night, when all the day time noise was gone, you could hear the waves crashing the shoreline; such a calming sound. As part of the Diamond Club you receive a complementary bottle of alcohol, which turned out to be a bottle of Canadian Club (rum), which we thought was quite funny considering Mexico is known for tequila. We also had a very nice bottle of Spanish Chardonnay and a plate of fresh fruit waiting for us when we arrived. It’s possible this additional welcome surprise had a little to do with us mentioning we were celebrating a milestone anniversary. But, I guess we'll never know...

The weather was a bit hit and miss during our stay at this hotel, but we usually got a few hours of uninterrupted sunshine each day. The sun usually dried things up pretty quick after the rain showers, and even went it rained it was still warm outside. 

Cancun is known for its party atmosphere and this hotel certainly catered to that with a themed party event every day. Typical of an all-inclusive hotel, there were plenty of activities to partake in if you wanted to. We enjoyed a few beach volleyball games, but mostly ended up chillin' on the beach or cooling off in the ocean. We checked out the evening entertainment each night, which often involved local talent and ended up as a dance party. On our last evening here, the weather finally cooperated for the evening entertainment outside and they brought in a very talented cover band. The staff did a great job in ensuring guests enjoyed themselves. It's here that we discovered that in addition to tequila, Mexico also produces wine. We did a wine tasting and got to sample a couple Mexican wines which blew us away; we had no idea. As we learned more about their wine production, it started to make a lot of sense given the climate in Baja California, their wine country. If only they marketed or exported this little gem a bit more. 

While we certainly made the most of the all-inclusive drinks, we also enjoyed the different restaurants on site. First, the breakfast buffet...OK, I was a bit hesitant with the whole buffet idea during Covid, but they did a really good job with it. Guests were required to wear a mask when getting their food (which we both think should be a requirement permanently at any buffet), they regularly swapped out the serving utensils, and had a lot of staff serving at different stations which reduced touch points. They served a wide variety of foods here, from your typical 'American style' breakfast items to traditional Mexican dishes. The fresh fruit was amazingly tasty and like always I couldn't get enough of the papaya. That and beans with rice were the staples on my plate each morning. Each evening we tried one of the four different a la carte restaurants: Agave (Mexican); Jade (Asian); Grazie Italian Trattoria (Italian), and Hunter Steakhouse. I think we agreed that all but Jade had really good food. As part of Grazie, they had a take-away pizza window which we discovered where they baked fresh made pizza to order. 

The beach at this hotel by far was the beach of all the different beaches on this trip. It's exactly the type of beach you envision when dreaming of the Caribbean.The fine white sand was soft, clean, and never got too hot to walk on, and the turquoise water was crystal clear and always warm. The water was fairly shallow for a long ways out here, which made it easier for me to navigate the waves. It was great for bobbing without getting toppled over by crashing waves. We were quite lucky with the timing of this trip because we missed the seaweed problem that has been plaguing the Yucatán coastline in recent years. 

If we're ever back in Cancun, this is certainly a hotel to consider again, not only because of the adults only nature, but the atmosphere, the food, and the beach being the topper to it all.