Grand Sirenis Riviera Maya

We stayed here for two weeks as a family of three. I have stayed at many different 5 star resorts around the world and this is an honest review of the hotel in my opinion. Please read this if you are considering booking. It’s a bit of a lengthier review but I think it’s accurate.

Pros to begin with: The grounds are beautiful and the wildlife is unreal. It was so good to see monkeys and coatis randomly wandering around. The hotel is situated in a jungle type setting and I was amazed by how close the racoons, monkeys and coatis get to you. If you stay here and you like animals, this will be a major highlight.

The food is excellent both in the main restaurants and the à la carte restaurants. You need to book the à la carte restaurants. There are plenty of them. The booking process isn’t straightforward and we had to ask different concierges to help us with bookings as they often appear to be fully booked on the app. In reality, they aren’t. The food at breakfast, lunch and dinner is of a high standard and can’t be faulted.

The night time shows are fantastic and were a real highlight of our holiday. The dancers are incredible and they deserve recognition for their talents. We had a great time watching the evening entertainment.

The two larger pools weren’t for me. In all honesty, it felt like a ‘Brits abroad’ type of scenario with people sitting and the swim up bars and just getting drunk. Not for me at all (other than the hot beats that they spin at full blast) This may be your thing though and it’s just my personal opinion.

There is a quieter pool which is huge and it’s lovely. The lazy river is also excellent and I spent several hours floating around. Lovely. We had no issues getting sun beds and sometimes we didn’t go to the pool till 11am.

The standard rooms are big and spacious. They could probably do with updating but the size of them is great.

Overall, the staff are really good and they work very hard. We had some good service throughout our stay.

The gym is average. We went daily. The air conditioning doesn’t work well in there and considering the size of the hotel and the amount of guests staying, it needs to be bigger. It has some good equipment though.

The negatives:

We were given a tour of the rooms that you can have access to if you pay the additional fees and subscriptions to their premium ULC service. These rooms are amazing. For me though, it had the opposite effect of what they wanted it to have. It annoyed me that we had payed over 7k for a 5 star luxury hotel but our rooms weren’t anywhere close to as nice to what they were.

The black shuttles that take people around the hotel are also for premium club members only. Whilst I appreciate that this is a perk of being a premium member, i don’t think it is right that they won’t pick you up if they are driving past, going the same direction that you are and there is nobody else using them. Ultimately, if you aren’t wearing a black band then they won’t even consider helping you.

Other people have also mentioned the fact that tables in the main restaurant aren’t cleared quickly enough. This is true. There simply aren’t enough staff employed in there to cope with the demand of changing tables at the speed that it needs to be done.

We also had an issue with the maid service a few times during our stay. We left the green light on for the room to be made up but it wasn’t so we had to ring several times to ask for them to change it.

Finally, the seating in the evening entertainment has dry bird poo all over it. This is such a shame as the theatre is beautiful and the chairs are really comfortable but I don’t think you should have to sit in dry bird poo and be looking for the seats that have the least amount of it on them.

I really don’t want to sound like I’m complaining over and over again but the fact is that this hotel is listed as a 5 star. Because of all of the above, in my opinion, it isn’t. I have stayed in 5 star resorts in Thailand and in other countries and they don’t compare. It has a lot of potential but I think at the very best it is a 4 star hotel.

These issues that we had didn’t spoil our holiday at all. We had a fantastic time. The excursions that you can do are great. I would recommend the cenotes, coco bongo, Isla Mujeres and Playa del Carmen. We have made some amazing memories and we are thankful to the staff for making us feel so welcome.

Love this place!!!! I always have such a magical experience! The staff is top notch and always want to brighten your day!!!