Hi, we made it to Cancun!
And where are we going, Donna?
The Riu Palace Costa Mujeres.
On a brand-new beach. Yeah, new resort. Looks really nice!
It just opened up three weeks ago. It's looks like a lot of fun, and we're gonna go
check it out. I'm excited! Yeah, I'm excited!
And the lobby is very nice-looking. It's got a lot of clean lines,
looks very modern.
And Donna said it kind of reminds her of IKEA. As if IKEA furnished the whole
resort. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's a positive thing, I think.
It's December, so there's Christmas trees they've got it decorated.
This is the check-in desk. And there's the bracelet you get when you check in.
And our first impression is very good.
And this is looking out the front of the hotel
It's all glass.
And there's several seating areas out here.
And here's the
other end of the lobby as you come in.
There's lounge 24. Lounge 24 is open 24 hours a day.
There's TV's. There's computers. And a printer.
Drinks. There's fruit, and there's meats
and cheeses.
And there's an ATM in here, too.
And from the lobby, you have this
beautiful walkway as you go out these doors.
Surrounded on either side by water.
And you get out into this big courtyard with
all the trees and plants and the rooms around it. And it's just very pretty.
How many rooms are there, Donna? 600 rooms.
We're kind of in the middle section of
rooms, just off the lobby.
And all the buildings have four floors. These all
have the Garden View. And all the rooms have balconies, so that's nice. So lots of
rooms, lots of space.
And here's our first view of the beach.
And there's actually, I believe, five pools on this property.
It's kind of the quiet end down there. And then a
swim-up bar and then more pools over that way, but we'll check those out.
And right at the end of the walkway that comes out from the main lobby, is a
directory that kind of shows you where everything's at. The restaurants, RiuLand, RiuArt,
Gym, Spa, RiuFit, pools and the beach.
The layout of the
resort is pretty straightforward. Here's where you enter in the lobby.
Rooms in the front and on either side. There's the walkway. And there's the
beach. And the restaurants are just lined up all along in a line here.
And there's five separate pools. And besides the five pools, they also have a water park,
Splash Water World.
What are we looking for right now, Donna? Lunch!
I think it's a restaurant called, "Tastes".
Okay, and that's a buffet.
There's a big open-air eating area here.
This is "Spaces".
And over here is the one they call, "Tastes".
It looks like a pretty good-sized buffet.
And there's the Italian restaurant, "Roma".
You can order off the menu, or they have a buffet also. You can have both.
Just above the quiet pool area on the second floor is the "Zarape" restaurant.
The Mexican restaurant. And that looks very nice inside.
Just to the left of "Zerape",
is the Japan restaurant, Japanese food. Then to the left of the
Japan restaurant is "Krystal".
It's a Fusion restaurant.
This is their open-air theater. That looks like the
bandshell, where a band would play.
And over here is a stage where they could
have some other kind of entertainment. And places where you can just sit and
eat, and drink while you're taking in the shows.
Yeah, lots of seating up here and a
great view.
They look like they would be oceanfront rooms with like a private pool.
There's a couple of massage beds out on the beach.
This is the quiet pool.
It's the furthest one that is away from the Dunamar. Which is way over there by the water park.
Okay, here's another pool.
And there's a swim-up bar right there. So this one has a little bit louder music.
Yeah, there's like the poles right there that you can do water volleyball with.
That's right next to the Tequila bar. Yep, which is over here. So that's
three. Let's go see if we can find the others.
This is pool number four. You could
just swim laps if you want. And here's where people can get in right here, or
there's like a zero entry, where you can just walk right into the pool.
And here's the last one. And it has a swim-up bar.
And here's the loungers in it.
So we're taking one of the walkways down to the beach area. There's lots of trees
down on the beach, so there should be plenty of shade. And there's lots of chairs.
They keep everything so clean. They're like constantly cleaning. Yeah, it's a very
clean looking resort, inside and out.
And the sand on this beach is really nice.
It's very fine-grain. It's kind of just like powder.
They're doing some work on
this side of the beach under the trees.
Down here it's kind of opened up. And you
can see straight through without any tape or lines in front of you.
And here's
a look at the property from the beach side. The restaurants, the lobby, some of
the pools, some of the rooms over there. So it's really nicely laid out.
There's some buoys out there where I imagine you're not supposed to go beyond.
That's where they do their watersports.
They've been working on the beach area a
little bit. They're putting in, looks like some irrigation lines right around the trees.
There's Pepe's Food. You can get some snacks and other food here.
And right across from that are some more bathrooms. And that's by this Tequila bar pool.
The Wi-Fi is pretty strong at the resort and around the pools, and it gets a little
weaker as you get down to the beach. But you can still get the Wi-Fi down there,
while you're sitting in your lounge chair and just enjoying the sound of the waves.
They do have Beach Waiters that'll come out and bring you drinks, so that's
nice too. You don't even have to leave your chair.
This looks like a place where you could get a swimsuit if you got to forgot to
bring your swimsuit. Boardwalk Gift and Premium Shops.
Looks like it has some nice clothes in here.
Looks like 1298 pesos.
I guess, $59.00 USD.
You can buy sandals, slip-ons, hats, shoes.
Lots of sunglasses if you forgot yours.
Oakley, Ray-Ban - some good names.
Cigars.
And an alligator...or a crocodile!
This ceiling kind of reminds me of the movie, "Coco".
Some over-the-counter
medicines.
And there's plenty of sunscreen, because there's plenty of sun here.
So, on the bottom level just before you get down to the pools, and then down
to the beach, is the Boardwalk Shops and also the spa area. The spa and gym area.
And this is the gym area.
They've got some different equipment that you can work on.
Free weights. Pilates balls. A bench.
You can do bicep curls and tricep pushdowns.
You can do some treadmills or some ellipticals, or bike while you're looking at
the beach and the pools.
So that side is the gym and this side is the spa.
This is the window you look out of when you're in the gym.
So you've got a pretty good view.
You can see the pools, and then off in the distance, the water.
This is RiuArt. It's next to the gym and spa. You can actually create
your own personal art here. They'll show you how to do it. You can create your own paintings.
This is RiuFit. Looks a little more like
CrossFit, and different things going on here.
There's different times of the day when they do scheduled things.
Circuit training. Just relax and stretch. There's RiuMba. Latin Fit.
There's a ping-pong table there. It's kind of indoor, sort of, to keep it our fo the wind.
And there's stairs up by
the quiet pool. Close to where the gym and spa are, that takes you over to where the
theater is.
This is the Capuchino bar area.
Capuchino has some really good drinks that they'll fix you. And some great pastries
and desserts. We tried about four different desserts,
and they were all good.
This is the Square Garden over there.
It's a bar.
This is the piano bar.
There's a good view out these big windows of the beach and
the water.
In the lobby they have an interactive screen where you can check
the schedule. And it shows everything that's going on.
It's showing Wednesday through next Tuesday right now. And it shows you all
the different things that are going on. The times that they're going on. You can
also click on different things and it'll tell you what's going on there. Like RiuLand.
They have diverse programs and theme days for two different age groups.
4-7 and 8-12. So there's definitely organized
activities for kids here.
And as it gets a darker outside the lobby looks even better.
There's some pretty cool and fun furniture in here. I'm gonna do a 360
degree shot. Here we go. Oh, boy, getting dizzy!
Today's our last day. We're going home, leaving the Riu Palace Costa Mujeres.
Hope I said that right. We've been struggling with that the whole entire
time. I just, yeah I've said it about four or five different ways. We apologize if
we offend anybody. We don't know what we're doing.
But what did you think of
the resort and our stay here? I would give it a 9 out of 10. Yeah it was very good. That's a high rating.
I tend to really like the Riu's though. I'm a picky eater. I like to have a good
buffet. I liked the bed. Some people say they're hard. We stayed in another Riu,
the Riu Cancun, and I thought the beds were harder there definitely. That was a few
years ago, but I thought these were comfortable beds. Yeah. A little firm.
And the room was always really cool. Yeah, the air conditioning worked great.
It had ceiling fans, too, so I loved that.
The place is very clean. We always see people out
cleaning, even the smallest details. Oh my gosh, they even like polished the
banisters going down to the beach. People touch those constantly.
Yeah, so they're
always busy, always picking things up, and cleaning things.
And then like you could never, like this morning, like I finished my orange juice
and he was right back there with another one. Like they don't even ask, they're
just like all about service. They have really good food and lots of it. And the
beach is just amazing. You know this resort will be known for their beach
and for like total relaxation. If you want a place to get away and just relax,
rooms from points that Donna earned, so we didn't pay for our rooms.
She earned them through working though, and it has not influenced our review of the
resort. We really loved it!
Goodbye! Yeah we've got to finish packing.
Bye - gotta go!