Kate Murray smith
Amazing place!
Great place for family’s, my twin boys wanted to try kids club but I was unsure.
We went and after meeting Ana I felt more than comfortable with leaving my children.
She kept me updated with messages and pictures throughout their time at kids club.
Amazing activities for the children to be involved in which they thoroughly enjoyed! They loved going, met friends and Ana was great! 😊
Aleisha Oliver-Griffiths
We had a fantastic family holiday at Grand Sirenis Riviera Maya. The resort is beautiful, with amazing wildlife, lovely pools, plenty of activities and excellent entertainment. We made some unforgettable memories here.
The staff were the standout. Marcial at The Park restaurant was always cheerful and attentive, Roberto our concierge was a fountain of knowledge and went above and beyond securing our restaurant bookings, Christian from the entertainment team made aqua aerobics one of the highlights of our holiday, and Cecilio Torres gave a brilliant bike tour packed with interesting information about the resort and local wildlife.
The à la carte restaurants were excellent, especially Butchers, where the steak and chicken were cooked to perfection. However, booking them was extremely difficult. The online reservation system rarely had availability, and even with Roberto’s help, the only times available were often 9:15 pm, which isn’t ideal with young children.
The biggest disappointment was the room (2227). While the resort itself was clean and well maintained, the room felt tired and grubby. We found someone else’s fingernail clippings and dark hairs on arrival, along with cracked tiles, damaged doors and a faulty hairdryer. The rooms really need refurbishment and improved housekeeping. This was the only thing that has made us hesitate about rebooking.
There are a few other areas that could be improved: more shaded areas around the pools, as shaded sunbeds were gone by around 6 am despite the no-reserving policy; easier access to drinks for guests not in the pool, as most bars are swim-up bars; clearer signage around the resort; and a simpler check-out process with better information about luggage collection.
Breakfast service was inconsistent, and the early breakfast at The Black Sheep was disappointing, with very limited choice. We also experienced one morning without running water across the resort, although fortunately we were out for the day, and our room key stopped working towards the end of the holiday, which was resolved quickly.
As a married couple, we were surprised to find our room had two double beds rather than a king-size bed. The sofa bed for our children was also extremely hard, heavily stained and hadn’t even been made up before our arrival. After a long day of travelling, having to arrange the children’s bed ourselves was the last thing we wanted. Ensuring family rooms are fully prepared before guests arrive would make for a much more welcoming start to the holiday.
Despite these points, we genuinely had a wonderful stay. The amazing staff, beautiful surroundings, wildlife, restaurants and entertainment far outweighed the negatives. If the rooms were refurbished and a few operational issues addressed, we would happily return.
Josh Berry
Had an amazing experience here and would recommend to anyone coming here. The rooms were lovely and room service was excellent. The location is perfect for a more chill vibe so perfect for us. Christian from the entertainment team was amazing and made the holiday 10x better for us, he is so bubble and easy to talk to. Montserrat was new but also on the same vibe as Christian, she was also amazing and easy to talk to considering it was her first day! She will be amazing and will add a great addition to the team.
Simon Gardiner
We have been here a week with a few more days to go. There are many positive points and I will mention them before I describe the one (but very big) negative point.
Lovely hotel spread out over several buildings. Nice room, kept very clean by staff. The hotel is literally built into the jungle so loads of wildlife including boa constrictors green vine snakes, iguanas (lots of them), coatis, agouti, monkeys and much more.
The food is excellent, there are several specialist restaurants (we have tried 3 as some are fully booked) but the buffet restaurant is brilliant.
Loads of bars with very friendly and professional bar staff, in fact all staff have been great. The pools are impressive, large and kids friendly.
BUT there is one negative issue that is a real problem for us, it’s seaweed. This might seem trivial, but it is not!! There are literally tons of seaweed on the beach or just off shore. It appears Sargassum seaweed can undergo “blooms” and this has been an increasing problem for the last 15 years! Now the hotel is doing its best to combat this with screening nets out in the ocean and tractors that tow big raking units behind them to try and clear the seaweed from the beach. This probably helps but when the wind and currents are in the wrong direction the seaweeds swamps these measures. In addition to the physical mass on the beach and the sea, the smell is awful (actually exacerbated by the raking process). Since we have been here, the beach by the main beach bar has been unusable. If you walk along the beach (a few hundred meters) there are clearer areas and you can get into the sea (on a good day!!).
Now I know this is not the hotels fault and they are trying to mitigate the issue but I am miffed TIU made no mention of this issue in their literature (well they do but in my opinion, they greatly understate its significance). When I spoke to the TUI rep she stated “ you can go to other beaches”. Well I picked this resort so I wouldn’t have to!
All I can say is, if you choose to come here, research the seaweed bloom risk for the period your intended stay if the beach is important to your holiday.
Relle Nicolle
12 nights stay, 4 adults 4 kids. Lovely hotel, wildlife is pretty cool monkeys just walking or swinging about🤣 Lots of Iguanas, Coati's (basically like a fox and will take any food left about!) Racoon's and other wildlife animals too.
The main lobby is huge and has a bar but as its all open aired no AC so can't really relax by the bar in the evenings as its still really warm.
Hotel is massive so be prepared to do lots of walking! Was doing over 10k steps a day without having to try! They also have buggy's which are great to get around in if you don't feel like walking!
Rooms were clean, good standard, were cleaned daily and mini bar restocked regularly. Lovely jacuzzi bath tub and walk in shower.
The staff were friendly, we had particularly good experiences with ANA from the kids club. She was great with the kids, very welcoming and kept the kids entertained. She even practiced a bit of Spanish with me!
JHARYS our concierge on block 1700 was excellent, very friendly, knowledgeable and had frequent chats with us whenever we passed by. She Got us booked in all the A la Carte restaurants we wanted which was great as the evening buffet was the same every night so it got quite repetative. Sadly we didn't get to say bye to her before we left, we looked but she wasnt there☹️
Butchers and the street food restaurants were particular favourites and we managed to go to each twice. I do like that there are no limits on how many times you can visit the A La Carte restaurants.
Breakfast and lunch buffets were great, good selection, freshly cooked and quickly replenished. Only suggestion would be to seat guests as it could take a while to find a clean table and we'd often have to walk around to find our own table then flag down a waiter and wait for a table to be cleaned.
Black Sheep Sports bar had good food, tasty burgers and really nice buffalo wings!
Pools were great, good size with 2 having swim up bars, service was often a little slow as only ever 2 bartenders working at very busy pools. Good poolside entertainment.
Sunbed Olympics was annoying as people were out as early as 6am putting towels down... and If you can't beat them... you join them! Otherwise you end up with no bed at all. I know it happens in lots of places but would be nice if there was a way of preventing this.
Bike tour was great! Took about 1.5 hours. CECILIO was entertaining and took us to areas of the resort we wouldn't have seen by ourselves.
Lazy river was great! Nice perk of the hotel, takes around 10mins to go round and is very relaxing. Can get busy at times but more often than not we manged to get rings or we used our own.
We Did get roped into the Ultra membership plan talk, told it would take 90mins... 4hrs later we were still sat there. Breakfast followed by a tour followed by a video and then the sales pitch. We had an initial rep, followed by his manager, followed by his manager, all 3 trying to convince us to buy the £15k plan. It was very long and even though we got a spa visit out of it I'd have preferred if we knew how long it would really take upfront. I will say the suite tour was great, the rooms are amazing!
Went to the theatre once, seats covered in what I assume was bird poo and when finding a seat in the dark you dont realise until you sit in it. Its only when I used my phone light I realised what it was on multiple chairs. Chairs should all be cleaned before opening to guests for the evening show.
Overall a great holiday, disappointed about the beach being covered in seaweed but not the hotels fault. Just something to consider if you want a lovely beach holiday, Cancun may be better for that.
