Ocean Maya Royale, Playa del Carmen, Mexico

From last Saturday 'til today, I stayed at the Ocean Maya Royale, an adults only all-inclusive resort in Playa del Carmen.

Air Canada Vacations had a promotion for an east coast kitchen party for the week with three east coast Canada singers.  They played six times over five days and were excellent!

Sister Sarah and I went along with my pal and colleague, Trudy; Trudy's husband, Barry; and their friends Darlene, Steve and Dan.  In total, there were about 100 of us with the east coast kitchen party, which most flying out of Halifax.

Reception

The lobby

The lobby bar never closed!

I was in building 19, a short walk to the main building, pools, beach, etc.

Here was my room ...

The shower sometimes didn't have hot water and
I missed not having a tub

There were two pools.  One had a pool bar and the other was quieter.

The beach wasn't the greatest.  There was a lot of seaweed (which smelled), which employees would spend the day removing.  There were only a couple good beach days where the water was fairly calm.

There were lots of critters on the property that we would see daily.

Coatis ...

 Iguanas ...

Deer ...

Under my balcony

With Steve

 Monkeys ...

From my balcony

In addition to the buffet restaurants, there were four themed restaurants.  I ate in the Japanese and Italian for supper and both were very good.  The rest of the time I ate in the buffet restaurants ... the one near the pool had burgers, hot dogs, pizza, wings in addition to the usual buffet offerings for lunch.  One thing I found funny in the restaurants is that there were rarely any spoons and I'd have to ask for one when I had yogurt or cereal.

The hotel including the rooms have free WIFI.  For the most part, it was pretty good but I found it kicked out at times.  Also in the room was a mini fridge which was stocked daily with pop, water and a couple cans of beer.

During the day there activities like bingo, water polo, aerobics, etc. by the pool.  There was nightly entertainment.  From 9:30pm to 10:30pm, there was a different theme ... acrobats, fire dancers, magicians, mellow singers, etc.  from 10:30pm 'til midnight there was a lively band playing pop songs, etc.