TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

Love the Grand! Can’t wait to go back! This was our 3rd time staying here. Well worth it. Staff is great, loved everything about it! Great pools, food, entertainment, and rooms! It makes it always so hard to leave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very friendly staff. They go out of their way to provide excellent service. There are different restaurants to choose from. Water park is nice addition to the activities. Food is very good. On the whole, highly recommended for families with Kids.

The food and the service were incredible. We have stayed for years at other resorts in Cancun. Sometimes the service requests don’t happen… you have to ask more than once. They were on the ball here! They would bring everything asked! There is an exceptional app for mini bar requests, room service, room cleaning, etc. Really helpful! One word of caution: double check your arrival date… when we arrived they had our reservation set for Friday- Friday, and not Saturday- Saturday. We had to pay more for the last night and had to pay for a night we didn’t use. We plan a lot of trips… this was not our issue. We didn’t let it ruin the trip, but it did cost us an extra $2000.

We had an amazing experience at Moon Palace- The Grand. Cecilia was helping us as part of our VIP experience and made everything easy for us. All staff were great, Alicia and Bryan from activity pool were amazing at motivating us to participate on all the games and group exercise. We highly recommend this hotel!!

Here is a start to finish review: The transfer Cancun airport can be a bit of a shock if you’ve not visited before with trying to find out how you take the transfer being tricky. This isn’t Palace Resorts fault, it’s just how the airport operates particularly when the roads are busy. So if you only have a group transfer they can be a bit of a free for all. So first tip is take up the option of a private transfer when booking, it will be worth it! Reception/ arrival We’ve had varying experiences of the reception queues. I know from other reviews some people have had a long wait. We’ve been lucky so far, but do be prepared at busy times or when a coaches arrive at the same time for a wait. I’m not sure what they can do about that to be fair. The complex The Moon Palace complex consists of three hotels: Sunrise, Nizuc and The Grand. The Grand is the most exclusive (and expensive) of the three and in theory you can’t visit from the other two without buying a day pass. We’d brought our extended family to Nizuc before and 18 months later we’d ‘upgraded’ to The Grand. The rooms Rooms are spacious and of a high standard and even the lowest category appears to have a large jacuzzi bath. The pools, beach and waterpark The beach is well maintained especially given the sea tends to wash a lot of detritus up. Most people sit around the pool, but if you do sit on the beach you can get service. The waterpark is the big draw for a lot of families, so can be somewhat noisy if you have a room nearby. But it closes reasonably early and there are plenty of other pools to hang out away from the waterpark. Like most hotel pools there are people who leave their towels early and hog the best areas. The pool staff do a pretty good job at policing this without upsetting anyone. There are areas reserved for their various membership classes but there seemed plenty of space for everyone. Service, food and drink Like Nizuc the staff work very hard and we have always had good experiences with service at the pools and restaurants. I’m somewhat surprised by some of the negative comments on the food because we have always been satisfied especially given it’s all inclusive. Entertainment Each evening there is entertainment laid on and if you are staying at The Grand you can choose to go to the other ‘lower’ cost resorts to sample their food and drink and their entertainment. My experience of the entertainment is that it is aimed at families and is of the holiday camp type style. But the people performing are all very enthusiastic so if you go with the right attitude you will enjoy. Golf We’d actually received an inclusive round golf as part of our offer. We were bused to a pretty run down all inclusive golf club instead of the rather plusher courses on site. It was about a 20 minute transfer and we had to wait a while to be taken back. So worth checking if you do take advantage of the ‘inclusive’ offer that you are playing on a course at the Moon Palace complex or elsewhere. To be fair the other course staff could not have been more friendly and the course was adequate. I’d recommend catching the free carts/ buggies out to the golf complex even if you aren’t playing. It’s a fun journey and it’s like a sanctuary out there by comparison and the bar and restaurants are still inclusive and you can use resort credits if you did to buy some golf stuff. Perfect place to get some rest from the hubbub of the main resort areas. Other facilities Fortunately, we didn’t need it this time, but on our last visit one of our party (a young girl) was unwell. There is an on-site doctor who visited her on several occasions and medicine was brought in for us. I am not sure whether they have to have someone on site, but either way this was very reassuring. The breakfast sales pitch I’ve included this as if you have ever been to a Palace Resort in Cancun you will certainly have been asked to attend one of the breakfast sales pitches to try and upsell the membership scheme, which is essentially a type of timeshare. In fact, they were somewhat surprised given we’d been before that we had managed to avoid attending. It’s a two-hour process which starts at breakfast. It’s clearly a well-oiled machine, with involves over a 100 people taking people through the process simultaneously. You go through a series of sales pitches. As you decline one, a new sales person greets you and offers a deal which is for less commitment from you and less cost. Eventually if you decline all the offers you are then sent to a desk to confirm you details so the resort credits you are offered for attending the pitches can be processed. Be aware though the sales pitch hasn’t ended, and this is where the sales process which has been professional to this point is let down. You are shown an iPad screen with “one last offer” which the Sales Rep says is a 4 day/ 5-night stay in a Palace Resort to be taken within the next 18 months at a cost of $299. It is explained that they want you to come again but that extra days are at additional cost and there are some black out days around Christmas and certain holidays. We paid the $299 on credit card as it seemed a fair offer. In all likelihood we’d do more that 4 days, but we knew that was at more cost, so fair enough (or so we thought). Using voucher for future stay A few months later we started to plan our trip. However, when trying to use the voucher we discovered that our chosen 4-day trip wasn't free it was $1260. So, we contacted the reservations team to try and understand why this was the case assuming it was a technical error. We were then told that the $299 wasn't to cover the 4 days, it was only to enable us to get a 'special' discount on the standard price and referred us to clause 3 in the terms and conditions small print (which wasn't mentioned when we were sold to and paid our money). Given the 'standard' price on-line was $1686 without the voucher. This is a difference of $424 and if you take off the $299 you have already paid you are left with a saving of $125. So you are paying $299 to save $125 on a $1686 holiday that you have to take within the next 18 months. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the deal then I can assure you and as I also assured the person in the complaints team at Palace Resorts that it is not being positioned like that! As I stated to Palace Resorts in our correspondence at no point did the person who sold to us point out the terms and conditions. Even reading the terms and conditions it is not clear what this means. At no point in the terms and conditions or in the main body of the email they follow up when you are sent the voucher, does it mention that this is an offer to receive a higher level of discount. In my opinion the offer is deliberately misleading and the sales person in Cancun exploited that. It is also worth pointing out that the Complaints Team accept that even their terms and conditions are misleading and I quote from the complaints team email "..we regret that the terms were unclear and might have caused a misunderstanding of how the certificate works." They went on to say "We have escalated with Palace Resorts Management for quality purposes as we strive to provide the best possible service to our clients, and your feedback is highly appreciated." Summary If Palace Resorts are not trying to deliberately misrepresent the offer then surely a sensible course of action to restore confidence to myself and future visitors would be: 1. Having accepted in writing that their T&Cs are misleading Palace Resorts wouldn't it be sensible to commit to rewriting the T&C's so that other customers are not in the same situation. 2. Having also said in writing that they will escalate to Palace Resorts Management, that they commit to re-training their sales staff in all resorts not to mis-represent these kinds of deal. Palace Resorts make the selling of their membership an integral part of the holiday experience. Given they have decided to do that then I think it’s perfectly reasonable to include a review as others have done as part of judging the overall experience. Maybe the simple recommendation is don’t attend the breakfast briefings. It’s such a shame as it ruins an otherwise excellent experience.