Quite simply the best holiday we've ever enjoyed and a major reason was the superb welcome at Moon Palace. It's a huge resort hotel with everything on a scale we hadn't previously experienced even in Vegas. The swimming pools for example would cover several football pitches, it was simplicity itself to lose the family when going to collect an ice cream or cool drink. The pools were in fact a major asset of the hotel having it seemed miles of interconnecting waterways that joined up the mammoth main areas.
Perversely the excellent pool areas are necessary because the only real drawback we encountered at Moon Palace was a substandard beach area. It gets strewn with seaweed and the water is far from the crystal clear turquoise you'd expect in Mexico. This is mitigated to some degree by the fact Moon Palace is part of a group of hotels in the Cancun area that have reciprocal agreements. Concessionary buses go between the hotels and allow you to eat and use the facilities at these sister resorts. All of the other hotels enjoyed superb beach facilities / environments as well as giving us the chance to enjoy a change of scene.
The dining is quite simply 10 out of 10 – the food is laid out exceptionally well in an array of restaurants. It's possible to eat at just about any time and in various guises from buffet to a la carte. And the snack bars around the pool areas allow for a change in style if you want something less formal.
The accommodation is equally top notch, how many hotels have you stayed in that have a huge jacuzzi in the middle of the room. Ours would have seated comfortably a family of six. The bathrooms were faultless and as you can imagine bathing was a total luxury, the fantastic towel sculptures only added to the experience.
Becasue the resort was so huge, hundreds of acres, it was impossible to simply walk off and enjoy the local attractions. But Moon Palace has it's own cinema, tennis courts, pool rooms, good sized shops, crazy golf and a host of other pursuits so on the odd days you decide to take life a bit easier, you're not without distractions whatever your age.
The staff are out-of-this-world. It's considered an honour to work for this chain and it shows, not all employees are treat so well in Mexico. The friendliness and attention to detail was almost too good. We joked that the waiters seemed to be telepathic, they guessed our needs in the dining area before we did ! I was told Moon Palace and it's sister hotels have one of the highest ratios of staff to guests in the Americas. I couldn't argue with that claim.
All in all a resort hotel I couldn't find fault with. Anything that wasn't 100% was beyond their control like a slightly out-of-the-way location (free buses provided to get around this) and a very average beach. The plus points certainly more than made up for that though.
Not the cheapest stay in the world, you wouldn't expect it to be the amount of extras they throw in and service they provide. But nevertheless, excellent value and thoroughly recommended. And Cancun itself has so much to offer.
