Beautiful resort for the whole family

[Anne]

By Ardegy (posted with permission)

We spent at week at the Grand Palladium Colonial in November 2015 with our whole family (a party of 15, ages 4 – 75), and loved the place.

The grounds are beautiful and very well maintained. There were always staff pruning trees and shrubs, sweeping sidewalks, and scrubbing. The setting is in what is almost tropical rainforest-type vegetation so there are always branches and leaves that need to be picked up, and they did a fantastic job. We were surprised at the lack of ‘unpleasant’ bugs – among our whole group, I believe only 3 people got a mosquito bite.

The rooms were large, clean, and well-equipped, complete with a mini-fridge with soft drinks and beer (which were replenished daily). The housekeeping staff made up the beds and tidied the rooms daily, and changed the linens in mid-week. Everyday there was a new ‘creature’ made from folded towels decorating our bed (I don’t believe every room got that treatment!! We wondered if ours got it because there was very little cleanup to do in our room, so the attendant had a bit more time for little frills like that. In any case, it was appreciated.)

The food was very good, both at the buffets and the restaurants. The food at the buffets was presented very nicely, and the food was tasty, although after a few days of overeating we were getting a bit less enthusiastic about it – but that wasn’t the food’s or the resort’s fault. The staff at the buffets (and everywhere else) were excellent, attentive and cheerful.
We ate at 3 of the restaurants and were very satisfied with all of them.
Our favourite was the Mexican one: excellent tasty food, nicely presented.
The steak one was also very good and probably would have been my favourite if I’d ordered the filet mignon instead of the steak which I got.
The seafood one was also very nice – it had the nicest setting as far as we were concerned, right on the shore. The occasional raccoon would wander by our table, but never stopped to pester us. A neighboring table made the mistake of offering one of them bits of food, and as a result it ‘adopted’ them for the evening and was a bit of a pest. The staff do their best to keep them away, but when guests feed them, it makes the job difficult. We enjoyed seeing them around – but I know not everyone is appreciative of their presence.

We needed reservations only at the seafood restaurant. For the others, we always went for dinner about 6:00 or 6:30, and were able to get in without delay. Some members of our group ate at a 4th one, the suchi one, and reported that it, too, was very good.

The pools were beautiful, and very well-maintained. Lots of lounge chairs, many of them in the shade of thatched roofed umbrellas.
There were sailboards, catamarans, kayaks, snorkel gear, and other water activity equipment available. The beach was generally quite clean – keeping seaweed cleaned up is a never-ending task, but they do an excellent job of it. There were lots of lounge chairs at the beach as well. Lots of swimmers, and the snorkelling was reasonably good.

The children’s programs and activities were excellent. Our grandchildren, ages 4-12, really enjoyed them. The programs consisted of a variety of arts, crafts, games and pool activities. Every day, they would have some type of performing activities, and then in the evening, they would put on a show involving all the participating children at the resort theatre. The girls who run the program do an excellent job of keeping everyone involved and having fun.

We participated in only a couple of the scheduled adult activities: archery and rifle shooting. These were quite enjoyable.
There is an interesting array of wildlife at the resort: coatis, agoutis, raccoons, the occasional monkey, numerous birds, etc. wandered the grounds at will. There was a pond with flamingos, and an enclosure with crocodiles.
There are many excursions that you can take from the resort. We went to Tulum and snorkelling – an interesting trip.

And there is much more that could be said about this beautiful resort, but in conclusion I would say that there was nothing about it that we could find fault with or want to change, and we heartily recommend it.

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