RSY – Best trip yet by Drew Knight

[Anne]

Delightfully personal service made us feel truly welcome and valued”
5 of 5 starsReviewed 2 days agoNEW
We booked the Grand Palladium Royal Suites Yucatan for a special anniversary trip through our go-to travel agency, ResortVacationsToGo.com (not a plug specifically, but they always come through for us with good rates and good packages). We’ve been very happy with family trips to the Grand Sunset Princess over the past several years, and would have gladly gone there again, but decided to branch out and try something new. Boy, are we glad we did.

The Royal Suites Yucatan is a small resort embedded in a much larger Palladium complex encompassing a total of five resorts (the Katenah, Colonial, White Sands and Riviera are the other four). The Royal Suites stands out for a higher level of service, but it is also the farthest out from the epicenter of beach life; you pays your money and you takes your choice. For us, the couples-only atmosphere and wonderful, personalized service were exactly what we needed.

We booked a room in the Royal Mayan Suites, a series of small stand-alone casitas along the small lagoon looping through the complex. During our visit, the lagoon was under construction, a bit murky, and inaccessible — ordinarily you can canoe from your room through the complex. That would have been very nice. The truth is, everything else was so close to perfect, it would never have occurred to us to grumble about the construction.

Our room consisted of a large, almost circular main room with a very comfortable (especially by Yucatan standards) king bed, a large bathroom area (including a jacuzzi tub, which we never found time to use, and a bidet), and a very private outdoor “Mayan” shower, which felt very decadent and at once comfortable. The fixtures in the room are all a step up from the average Riviera Maya fare, and the air conditioning was notably overachieving. This was a relief compared to many resorts, where the AC struggles to keep up with the humidity. There is a minibar with the customary soft drinks and beers, and four bottles of top-shelf liquor in your room for your enjoyment (you just can’t take them with you). The room also includes a large flat-screen TV and a DVD player, though it’s not clear to me how you’d find time to watch movies here.

As comfortable and decadent as the room felt, it was nothing compared to the level of service offered at the Royal Suites. From checkin, where we were greeted by a pleasant young American woman fresh out of hospitality school (Ana, who only needs to relax to be great; she was three weeks into her stint and already had a great grasp of the facilities), to the nightly turn-down service, to the warm greeting you received at the Royal Suites restaurant, El Jardin at each meal, the staff go out of their way to make you sincerely feel welcome. It is a relaxed, genuine kind of service that, we hope, reflected the staff being both well trained and well treated.

We ate most of our meals at El Jardin, the restaurant in the Royal Suites area of the resort. At breakfast, they offer a small but well provided buffet or a la carte specialties. Most mornings we enjoyed the a la carte selections because, frankly, they provided both very flavorful options, and better portion control. El Jardin is open for lunch (we never got there), and every night for dinner with a standing core menu of steaks, chicken, pork and fondue, and a rotating international menu each night. On Wednesday, with reservations, we were able to enjoy the Chef’s special dinner, prepared with a menu selected by the resort’s head chef. It was truly a good meal. Then again, I’d have to say that everything we had at El Jardin, from steaks to pasta prepared table-side, was very good.

We had much more limited experience with the a la carte restaurants in the other resorts, and only went to the buffets a couple times — but everything was very good, and the service was consistently high everywhere we went.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the extraordinary lengths the turn-down staff went to on several different nights, decorating our room with rose petals, candles, and on the night of our anniversary, a bottle of sparkling wine. It was just amazingly romantic, and felt very spontaneous. Even on “regular” nights, our room was always prepared while we were out at dinner. We felt lucky and cared-for and truly valued.

The Royal Suites is a small resort tucked away at the southern end of a very large resort, but it manages to feel sequestered, calm, and relatively quiet at all times. You can slip between the Royal Suites and the Riviera resort through the back door of the El Jardin restaurant, or you can take advantage of the free, exclusive and relatively convenient shuttle cars available to Royal Suites customers. You can also walk along the water’s edge via a lovely if somewhat uneven path along the wilder shoreline (a coral rock path between the mangroves and the jagged rocks making up the southernmost head of land in the resort till you connect up with the salt water pool and the beach proper. It takes about 20 minutes to walk from the Royal Suites to the “Royal Beach”, an exclusive, roped-off area for Royal Suites guests with a dozen or so “beach beds” and lounger pods under palapas and stick roofs. In between, you pass several beach-front bars and snack restaurants.

The Royal Beach area is pleasantly shaded by a small palm grove and conveniently located by a pair of restrooms and a bar. Most mornings during our visit, we were attended by an amazingly friendly young man who would bring towels and set up the beach bed for a day of reading and relaxing. We were also very grateful for the friendly ministrations of Fernanda, the server who brings drinks and snacks to her guests. Her English is nearly perfect (much better than our Spanish, though we spoke both with her) and she seems to genuinely delight in making her guests feel comfortable and at home (this isn’t idle speculation, we actually talked for a long time one showery afternoon). Most of the time, we relaxed and read books in the shade, but at least once a day, we swam off the sandy beach, where the gradual drop-off made for relaxed wading in the warm, clear waters. We’ve heard that the entire Yucatan had a problem with sargasso weed washing ashore this summer, and in the middle of the week, after several days of wind and showers had churned up the sea, there were minor rafts of seaweed in the wave-wash, but the resort stayed on top of it and it was never a problem.

One of the small wonders at this resort, we discovered by accident on our first afternoon. Late in the day, we went into the water and were standing just over waist-deep in the sea, when I felt a gentle brush on my back. Moments later, my wife was bumped on the leg, and soon we found ourselves being gently swarmed by a school of permit (think a fast-moving, muscular angel fish, with long dorsal and pectoral fins). I had an inkling that they expected to be fed, so the next day we brought rolls from from breakfast and waded out, and were surrounded within minutes. We had fun feeding the permit each afternoon, including one day when several very large (25 inches and probably 20 pounds) older permit joined the fun. Note that permit have no teeth to speak of, and they will snatch bread right out of your hands… but it takes a few minutes to convince yourself you’re not going to come back a few digits short, especially with the big ones.

About the only “negative” in our entire experience was bizarre soundtrack of soft-rock remakes that played in a continuous loop all around the resort. It covered the waterfront from Phil Collins to the Beatles, all played in a somnolent minor key and at about half-speed. The absolute worst moment came around every 90 minutes or so, when Michael Jackson’s Thriller would come back on, sounding for all the world like what MJ might have performed moments before he bade this world goodbye under the influence of a toxic dose of propofol. Though never loud and easily enough blocked out… when you heard it, it was maddening.

The only other travel note, and it has nothing to do with the resort itself, is be mindful of choosing your transfers carefully. Because the Grand Palladium is well south of Cancun (between Playa del Carmen and Tulum), you’re in for an hour on a shuttle at a minimum. We booked our transfers through Lomas Travel, and had to wait out numerous stops to unload other passengers (and shared the bus with some pretty determined partiers who took advantage to each stop to jump out, smoke, and go to the restroom, no doubt fueled by the 2-for-$5 beers on the bus). It made the trip seem even longer than it was.

Our experience at the Grand Palladium Royal Suites was uniformly positive: great food, very nice facilities, and above all, warm, impeccable service at every turn. We’ve had a great many happy vacation experiences in the Riviera Maya, but this was unquestionably the best yet.

Room Tip: The Royal Mayan Suites, small free-standing casitas, are truly decadent
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Stayed October 2015, traveled as a couple

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