When we got to Sandos, we were tired after a 9 hour flight. We waited more than 35 minutes to be helped for check in. We were being by passed by other clients until I asked the receptionist why was she attending others before us if we were in line. She then told me she would be with me. After a while, she did it again, so I told my son to walk over to the next available receptionist before someone else, who was not in line, take over our spot. That's when my son got yelled at by a receptionist named "Ramses", he yelled at my son saying he was rude, when in actual it was Ramses being rude. It was horrible. Also, we were not able to eat at most of their all inclusive restaurants because we were not "elite" members. Also some pools and beach areas are also considered "elite" members only. The front desk needs more support and insure that they help check in customers in one section only and check out customers in another section.

This was my family's second time staying at this resort, both times for one week. We enjoyed it so much the first time that our family wanted to stay here again. However, this will be our last. The experience was a good bit different. Multiple restaurants had changed with quality down, the main pool by the beach was sand filled and for half of the week cloudy green, and the beach was unusable due to the mass amounts of seaweed that they did not seem in a rush to clean up as we only saw one small crew working at it with no dent being made as you had to walk through 10+ feet of 1 foot deep seaweed to get to the water, which was then still all seaweed for 20+ feet out. The biggest change this time was the service. Our room had three different issues (phone, safe, sliding door), which took three days to fix and three different maintenance people. Bamboo Island (biggest pool) is where we spent a ton of time both times, and the bartenders this time around were not friendly, to say the least. A night and day experience from our stay two years ago. The pool bar looked like there had not been any maintenance done since we were there last time, and tiles were coming off all over the place. Lastly, they had two trams with three carts attached each last time, but only one this time, making getting around the resort a nightmare with wait times. Overall, a decent stay, fun shows at night, and good service in the restaurants, but it has gone downhill enough to not be considered again.

The good: Room was decent and air conditioning worked well. Most staff were kind. Gym was okay. The burrito buffet was nice and open late. Shows were generally pretty good at night. The bad: Not quite as advertised, such as mini put, teen club and overall experience. Beach was horrible and they seemed to give up cleaning the seaweed. Food was not very good and several family members fell ill immediate after eating on a couple occasions. Resort prioritized their premium guests and seems to not really care too much about their average guests. Smoking area right below our balcony and in the kids area were not well placed and made enjoying the patio difficult. Service at restaurants and bars was very hit and miss. Often couldn’t get drinks made due to not having correct drinks/mixes stocked and bartenders were often rude. Some dinners I couldn’t even get a water refill until I was almost done my meal. At check in they were already pushing to upsell on their packages and we were asked 3 more times by different staff to take us on the “tour” to sell us this in the first 24 hours. The outside main sports bar was not well maintained and at one point a worker grabbed all the pool balls off our table saying we were done playing cause her shift was over (at 10:30pm). The inside sports bar which was formerly the teen club (that is still advertised as such) looked unfinished and desolate. No room service at all (recently removed). Room had almost no storage for clothes.

My family and I had the best time! All of the resort staff are friendly and helpful. The sargassum made the beach unpleasant, but that’s not the hotel’s fault. My kids loved the family pool and the nightly shows.

The food was awfully and I could not get a reservation to any of the restaurants they said all full and I found out they were half empty apparently unless your elite your restricted to a lot of areas they want you to pay for the membership . So unhappy with this trip

Needs a little coordination when it comes to checking in. No one was in line just everyone bunched up in front of the check in desk.

Room was clean but dated. The online app required to make reservations for dinner is difficult to use and dodgy in its ability to work. Is an extremely disappointing situation not being able to book dinners and finding that availability for dinners was most of the time full. A couple of nights we were unable to book dinners at the à la carte restaurants which are highly advertised and some were even closed. Will not stay here again, even though this was our second stay here.

The rooms were clean everyday, and the staff was great.

All but the front desk staff were excellent. The room was nice but so far from everything. When I asked to upgrade to another room closer to restaurants and beach and they told me it would be $2200 more on top of the 4k I had already spent. We didn't get to see or access half of the resort because you had to be platinum so that was a bummer. We could only get into 2 restaurants because they said there was no availability even though both restaurants we ate at were not even 50% full. We had to take a shuttle to get to even the buffet and they only ran 1 shuttle at a time so we had to wait 15-25 minutes everytine we wanted to eat or go to another pool/beach. This was very cumbersome and wasted a lot of time of our trip. Good things....food was good, waiters and servers were great, room was clean. Bad things....front desk staff were unhelpful, resort was super spread out and we're were in front not by any restaurants or the beach, had to take shuttles everywhere, pools were not clean and one was even green, ocean had sargassum everywhere and couldn't get in it, didn't get to see half the resort because we were not platinum, long wait times for shuttles, could only eat at 2 of the 8 restaurants. Been to Playa del Carmen numerous times and have stayed at nicer resorts. For the money this was not a good value. Unfortunately, my famiky and I will not stay here again

We had the worst experience. A wall frame fell on my face while I was sleeping, there was a HUGE spider in our clothes and our baby had bug bites all over his body. We told staff and just said “but are you guys okay”?

Had great food. Clean pools and great environment overall.

Tha AC kept leaking we reported it thru out out stay it didn't get fixed. We were only able to make 1 reservation for 1 restaurant.we try renting the bikes and we had to wear tennis shoes which was not listed on the app were you get the information.

Las mejores vacaciones

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY COMING TO THIS RESORT. Choose any of the RIU properties in Playacar and you'll be better off. I guess I'll start with the few good things about this resort. The family rooms are very spacious and clean. The location is very good as it is beachfront and within walking distance to shops and a short taxi ride to Quinta Avenida. It has multiple pools including slides for the children. There's an app to make reservations for restaurants. Now for the bad: The check-in process is super slow, there were only 2 employees doing check ins and would take at least 10-15 minutes with each group. The whole resort feels very dated and navigating throughout is complicated. While there's several restaurants listed in the app, it is nearly impossible to make reservations for them (and several were closed). The food in the buffet restaurant is terrible both for lunch and dinner. The desserts were the only decent food there. The breakfast food was ok but nothing extraordinary. The few "stations" they had for omelettes or pasta or ceviche were slow and mediocre food at best. We managed to get a reservation at the El Gaucho and the steaks were average. The restaurant itself is very dated. The food sucks basically. While there are several pools, the water is hot and not enjoyable unless you're just there to get drunk. For the pool bars there's usually only one bartender and very limited options. At some point they ran out of ice and didn't bother restocking.

Many areas like bars and restaurants are closed. Rooms are a bit dated. Beach is very far from family section. Only one buffet is open. Couldn’t get any reservations for the a la cart restaurants. Lobby staff wasn’t the best.

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room was always clean and tidy. very well kept. family friendly

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The resort itself is quite beautiful but is let down by numerous things. While we were staying in June into July many facilities we’re closed or not available. The lobby bar was closed so there was nowhere to go for a drink before dinner in air conditioning. The pool bars only served drinks from the poolside in the family riviera section. You couldn’t get a drink from the ‘dry side’ of the bar and just sit poolside with it. You had to go to the swim up in the pool. Not great if you have small children with you. Now the drinks…. Absolutely awful! The nastiest, cheapest mixes for the cocktails with low shelf liquor all served in recycled plastic cups. No straws for frozen drinks, which spoils the experience of a poolside cocktail. If you want wine, be prepared for it to be served tepid in the same style hideous plastic beaker. I tried a ‘champagne’ (cheap cava) and it was served in a plastic beaker with ice, as the bottles weren’t cold. It tasted disgusting! The ‘entertainment’ at the pool was basic and the constant loud music at the ‘family’ pool was often full of explicit language. Really inappropriate! I’m assuming they don’t know what the lyrics mean but most rap isn’t really suitable for a family situation. We visited the kids club one morning for the ‘family hour’ with our nearly 2 yr old and our 4 year old. The place was filthy with grime on the toys and rat/mice droppings on the tables and floor. Disgusting! I can’t believe anyone leaves their children there.

The walking distances are a major inconvenience. It’s about a 5-minute walk each way to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and around 10 minutes to the beach. The transportation only runs every 15 minutes, and the shuttles are almost always full, so relying on them isn’t very practical. It’s also nearly impossible to get reservations at the restaurants. However, there are people walking around selling bottles of liquor who will suddenly “find” you a table if you buy from them. So clearly, tables are available—they just seem more interested in getting extra money from guests. There also aren’t many places to hang out. The pool bars have very limited drink options, yet there are constantly vendors selling premium tequilas and rums. Once again, it feels like they’re more focused on getting you to spend more money than on providing a good all-inclusive experience. La Chayita was excellent and one of the highlights of our stay. Being open until 2:00 a.m. was very convenient. Unfortunately, our room was not cleaned on the first day of our stay. We requested towels at 7:00 p.m., but only two were delivered even though there were four people staying in our room. As for Expedia, we spent 25 minutes on the phone requesting to cancel one of our rooms while keeping the same number of guests. I received an email confirming that the room had been canceled, but when we arrived, we were still charged for two people in that room. At no point was I informed that this would happen. We even checked