We stayed at the Hilton Cancun Mar Caribe All-Inclusive Resort for spring break this year. Full disclosure: we are not your typical all-inclusive resort guests. It’s not really our style of travel, which is why we haven’t stayed in one before. We don’t eat or drink a ton. We appreciate friendly staff and great service but are uncomfortable with anything individualized, like a private butler or concierge. We love a beautiful resort and well-appointed rooms but don’t need anything overly luxurious. And a day at a spa is my worst nightmare. 🙂
That being said, we think most things are worth trying once and you may end up surprising yourself when you try something new. Since we wanted a low-key trip that was easy to plan for spring break, this seemed like the time to try an all-inclusive.
There were things we liked about the Hilton Cancun Mar Caribe and things we didn’t. The overall experience was about what we expected – not really our cup of tea. But I’m glad we tried it! We had a relaxing trip and an overall good experience at the resort.
Since there are so many different aspects of all-inclusive resorts, I’ve broken out my review into different categories below.
Rooms
I’ll start with our favorite part – the room! We’ve come to the realization that with two teenage boys who are essentially adult sized, a single hotel room with two queen beds no longer fits our needs (or at least our comfort!). We aren’t necessarily ready to be in (or pay for) two separate rooms so we like to look for places that offer suites or multi-bedroom options.
We stayed in a Pool and Patio View Suite with one king bed and two murphy beds. It was fantastic! It had tons of space and was really cleverly designed. It also had some of the best storage of any hotel I have ever stayed in.
The main room in the suite had a dining area (featuring a table with six chairs, a sink, microwave, and mini-bar) and a living area (featuring a sofa, two armchairs, 4 end tables, a TV, and two Murphy beds). The Murphy beds were built into nice cabinets on either side of the television. They were closed when we arrived (and after every cleaning) but were fully made up and easy to pull down. The boys loved having their own beds and being in a separate room where they could stay up later (and not be subject to their father’s snoring). It was a great space. Even when the beds were down, we could sit on the couch comfortably and easily access the porch.
The bedroom with king bed was spacious and also had patio access. It had great storage space – plenty of hanging space and drawers and the many hooks came in handy for hanging wet bathing suits on. All of the beds were comfortable.
And the bathroom was great! It had a double vanity and a great garden tub. It also had a really clever setup where the right hand side of the bathroom had two individual rooms separated by heavily frosted glass, with the toilet on one side and the shower on the other. This allowed for plenty of privacy so that the main bathroom could still be accessed while someone was in the WC and/or shower. It was a great setup for a family!
And last but not least, we had a great patio. Being at ground level was wonderful because we could easily access the pools or go grab food right from the patio. It was super convenient, and although we were initially concerned that our specific location was directly across from the kids’ pool (which would have been amazing 12 years ago but not as ideal now), it turned out not to be an issue. The water park features shut down at 6pm and the noise never bothered us during the day.
I thought the room was one of the best features of this resort. We loved the extra space of the suite. The layout of the room was great and the storage was well thought out. The patio was a great space to relax and offered easy access to the rest of the resort. Overall we highly recommend this room type for a family of four.
Buildings and Grounds
The resort was well maintained. The staff was constantly working hard to keep the resort clean, wiping down the glass panels, picking up dirty dishes and cups, and scrubbing down the pool deck each night. I was really impressed with how clean everything was.
There wasn’t a ton of green space because the resorts in the Hotel Zone are pretty tightly packed together. When space is at a premium at resorts like this, pool and deck space tend to win out over landscaping. That being said, the minimal landscaping around the pools was well designed and well manicured. Palm trees dotted the area, bushes and plants filled potters lining the deck, and small grassy areas were interspersed throughout the main level. The largest and nicest grassy area was not accessible to standard guests but was part of the Enclave rooms that also featured private pools.
Pools
The pools were very nice but I thought the resort’s advertising was a little deceiving. Their website says they have 13 pools. While this is technically true, 5 of them were small whirlpools on the adults-only deck, and 4 of them were similarly sized plunge pools available only to Enclave guests at the Chala Sky Bar.
The 3 main pools were essentially one very large pool that was separated by small pedestrian walkways that connected the different pool deck areas. The water in the pools was not connected under the bridges so technically they were separate pools, but they were all adjacent to each other and felt like one large pool. When I read that the resort had 13 pools, I had in mind that the pools would be in different areas of the resort and each would have its own vibe, but there simply wasn’t the space for that. That being said, the pools were very nice and large enough that they never felt crowded. The temperature seemed to vary a few degrees between the pools so you could find the one that best suited you. There was a swim up bar at the middle pool and activities held throughout the day at the North Pool. I think the main pools were all around 5 feet deep so difficult for smaller kids to stand in.
And the final pool was the kids’ splash pool. This was a great area where kids could wade and splash in the water, get sprayed under the arches, slide down the slides, and wait with great anticipation for the water bucket to fill up and tip over and dump water on their heads. (Even my teens loved the water bucket!)
There were plenty of chairs around the various pools. The first day when we arrived around 1:00, it was harder to find chairs in a prime location but we were still able to get two together. Every other day, we had no problem getting chairs in the morning after we ate breakfast.
All in all, the pools were not exactly what I anticipated but they were still great. They were clean, the temperature was comfortable, and they were large enough that they never felt crowded when you were in the water.
Beach
One of the things that the boys were most excited for was the beach and beautiful turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea. The color of the water lived up to the hype but the beach itself received mixed reviews.
The pool deck is built up above the beach, which made for some incredible views. But it also made for a long trek up and down 4 flights of stairs to access the beach. Not a huge deal but just not something we had thought about before we got there. (It all started to click when we realized that our “ground floor” room was actually the 4th floor.) There is an elevator available for those who need it.
The sand was soft and the water beautiful. There were plenty of beach chairs available at all times. There was always a great breeze and it was really comfortable sitting down there under an umbrella.
But the beach wasn’t quite as idyllic as it looked from the pool deck. There was a really steep bank to get into the water, making it almost impossible to walk along the shore with your feet in the ocean, no matter what level the tide was. And as the tide went out, it revealed huge rocks all along the bank, making it even more difficult to walk. My youngest son and I tried our hardest for a nice walk along the beach but it just didn’t work out in either direction from the hotel.
While the steep slope made walking difficult, both the heavy surf and the plentiful sargassum made swimming difficult. We were under red flag warning for about half the time we were there and nobody was allowed in the water. Ever when it was yellow, it seemed really rough. We only went in once for a quick swim, just to say we went in. It was a shame to have such beautiful water right there and not be able to swim in it.
And there was so much sargassum! I remember it being an issue in Belize too but the resort we stayed at there had a small beach and they constantly raked it. Here the beach was too big and there was way too much sargassum to even put a dent in it. There was a long line of it all the way down the beach and huge clumps of it floating in the water, making it impossible to get in at some points.
But despite the inhospitable sea conditions, it was still gorgeous to look at those amazing shades of blue. And the sunrises were amazing!
Food
While everything to this point weighed out to an above average experience, the food was what really brought it down for us. We had never been to an all-inclusive before and the idea of being able get food whenever we wanted was fascinating to us. What we failed to consider was that the food would be so mediocre that we wouldn’t really want to take advantage of its ready availability (except for maybe the gelato…).
There was a huge breakfast buffet every morning at Vela. There was always a wait for a table but it seemed to move relatively quickly. We never waited more than 10 minutes. The selection was super impressive but the execution wasn’t great overall. The omelet station was excellent and the fresh fruit was good, but nothing else stood out. The food was bland and even the pastries weren’t worth the calories. The donut wall looked amazing but the taste didn’t live up to the hype (and that’s not something I thought I’d ever hear out of my 15 year old’s mouth!).
My husband and I did do the sit-down breakfast at La Luce one morning, and it was a nice experience. The view was nice, the service was good, and the food came out quickly. It was a little bit better than the buffet but the portions were very small.
Lunch was similarly underwhelming. The options were to go back to Vela, get a grab and go sandwich from Azulinda Cafe, or eat at Sea Salt, the poolside restaurant and bar. We ate at Sea Salt, mostly sticking to the pizzas or burgers. I had heard rumors of poolside tacos but never stumbled across them. (We only saw a popup poolside grill serving burgers and hot dogs). I did get a latte every morning from the cafe, and we made frequent trips there for the gelato.
Dinner was the most complicated part of our stay. Aside from the Vela buffet, the resort has 4 sit-down restaurants – Noriku (Asian), Flama (Steakhouse), Maxal (Mexican), and La Luce (Italian). All of the restaurants are open from 6pm – 11 pm and require reservations. We were excited because we had 4 nights there and could (theoretically) go to each of the 4 restaurants. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy.
We checked in on Monday at around 1:00 and went to the Reservations desk shortly after that. For non-Enclave guests, reservations are open each day for the current night and the next night. Unfortunately, by this time the only reservations available for either night were at 9:30. Unsure what else to do, we booked them – Noriku for our first night and La Luce for our second, both at 9:30 pm.
The woman at reservations said that we could book through the app starting two nights before. But when we logged in just after 6pm on Monday to try to get a Wednesday reservation, it wasn’t showing Wednesday as an available day to book. We tried again later and it still wasn’t available so we decided we’d have to go back to the reservations desk in the morning to book for Wednesday. I was second in line the next morning but this time she didn’t even have any 9:30 reservations left. Not willing to eat dinner at 10:30, we decided we’d have to eat at the buffet that night. I had heard about “Rodizio Nights” at Vela where they serve cut meats tableside and figured it would be fun to try that too. And for our last night, we were able to book through the app and get a 6:00 reservation at Maxal. That seemed like a major victory!
And in the end, all of the restaurants were just ok. We had a handful of things that were great (my steak at La Luce was wonderful) and some things that were pretty bad, but most were solidly in the 4-5 out of 10 range. And our experience at Vela was so disappointing – they never came around to the table with the meat and a waiter never came to the table to take a drink order or even fill our water glasses.
The subpar food really made the “all-inclusive” aspect feel like it wasn’t such a great deal. If the food had been amazing – or even pretty good – we probably would have eaten more of it. But none of us had any urge to overindulge. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely made me feel like we overpaid. I’d rather pay a la carte for great food than have unlimited access to subpar food.
Miscellaneous
The resort had activities both during the day and in the evening. During the day, there was a full calendar of activities, from stretching to trivia to beach volleyball. Most of them weren’t really our thing, but my husband and younger son did enjoy joining one of the beach volleyball games.
In the evening, there was a different themed event every night at the Chala Sky Bar. I was super disappointed that we wouldn’t be there on a Friday night for the Fire Show, and again disappointed when our 9:30 dinner reservation conflicted with the Mexican Night. We popped up to see the Glow Party and the Silent Party but didn’t stay for either.
There is also a kid’s club (ages 4-12) and a Teen Club, both offering age-appropriate games and activities. The boys stopped by Sandbar Social a few times to try to play ping pong but it was always occupied.
There are a few beach activities that you can book from the resort at the water sports desk, including parasailing that leaves right from the hotel beach. There are also agents from Thomas More Travel Agency onsite who can help you book everything from tours of Mayan Ruins to airport transportation. One of their agents spent a good bit of time with us going over the different cenote tours available. We did ultimately end up booking through them and had a great tour.
Summary
Overall we had a great time at the Hilton Cancun Mar Caribe. The resort itself is really nice – the rooms are spacious and well designed, the pools and deck area are large and really well maintained, the views of the water are gorgeous, and the staff is friendly and helpful. The beach itself was a little disappointing. The color of the water is stunning and flat part of the beach is lovely, but the sargassum, steep bank into the water, large rocks, and rough surf made it less idyllic. But the food was the biggest miss for us. It was average at best and we found ourselves struggling to find things to eat that were appealing to us.
