Just came back last Thursday from a week at the GCP, my wife and I as well as my brother-in-law and his girlfriend. We are in our late 20's and early 30's.

The hotel itself was great, the perfect place to relax, and a smaller hotel. It was very clean everywhere including the rooms. Sure the beds were kinda hard and we got a lagoon view room but big deal (I don't go to Cancun to spend time in the room). The service was outstanding, especially at the Tiki bar where they would make anything you wanted. The staff works very long and hard and always have a smile on their faces. Remember to tip them even though they already give outstanding service.

You can always get food at the GCP, which I found everything I tried tasted great. The 3 restaurants (no reservations needed) are open evenings, the buffet is open only until 4pm and the Snack Bar is open until 6am. At the Old Barn the steaks, wings, ribs and fillet mignon were great (the T-bone was huge). I also heard the fish was excellent though I never tried it. Remember to order starters and other extras (like a few shrimp skewers) with your meal so you fill up. Pier 12 was very good as well but we only ate their once (try the clam chowder). The Shangrila had great food (and filling to, remeber its a 5 course dinner so order starters, soups, salads, entree's and deserts) but we waited 1 1/2 hours to get in, and it kind spoiled everyone's beer buzz. The burgers at the snack bar were awesome, we also order breakfast to our room once which was a huge portion. Don't listen to any other reviews saying the food was bad, it was great and you could eat 24 hours a day.

The hotel is very quiet and relaxing, not really much of a night life in the late evenings. You would have to go to the clubs for that. I think this was because everything was spaced so far apart. The Beer Gardens (like an upscale lounge with pool tables) was in a seperate area as was the theatre (which are both indoors by the way) and the Tiki bar. This really seperated the people who were there and made things kinda inactive at night. The entertainment was on for an hour a night starting at 10pm and was good from what we saw. We may have missed some of the better shows, the ones we saw were pretty similar (dancing & lip-synching).

All in all, a great resort with no real complaints. The weather was pretty good though I think I will go to Cancun a few weeks later next year (it got kinda chilly when the sun went behind the clouds). The water was super rough and red flags were up allot for swimming. Allot of the beach looked washed away, but their was still some there. The outdoor hot tub was a great place to hang out but the water was only luke warm. Never really tried anything in the spa, though someone said the water in the spa's hot tub wasn't very hot either. We met a few really fun couples - Wally & Linda from the UK (who are still there for another week) and fellow Manitoban's Dan & Kathleen. Remember to go scuba diving on "the Jungle Tour" and go for a night out on the "Pirate Cruise" both were awesome. Chin Itza is a must see as well but rent a car and go on your own, it is faster and cheaper. If your a partier, hit the clubs as the GCP is quite in the evenings.

First and foremost I love this site! Some of the postings give excellent tips and insights. I just got back from The GCP Spa a few days ago with my girlfriend after a 5 day stay. I guess that the biggest question I asked myself at the end was " Did I get my bucks worth ? " The answer is YES to the 10th power! We got an oceanview room by being amicable with the front desk( Not complaining) . Could be that we were just lucky! The room was nice . No suite at the Trump Towers or The Borgata but it was confy! It smelled a little stuffy . That's because walls are cement not sheetrock. Just vent the room and you'll be fine. I've heard some negative things about all inclusives but this place did'nt seem to skimp on a thing. The buffet had variety . What really blew me away was the Shangri-la . We went there every night for dinner. The menu was different every day. The food was very good and here I go again with the math. I've paid over $ 100.00 a person for comparable 5 course meals at A.City or Manhattan. And lets not forget the required 20% tip on top of that. I would say this hotel is a great deal . The ocean view is priceless and the serene atmosphere at this hotel is commendable. By that I mean no drunk college kids and no small children running around making a bunch of noise while their parents get tanned or drink at the bar enjoying their 10 minutes of tranquility while the rest of us suffer! I also loved the service across the board . From the waiters to the bartenders and the room cleaners. Unless they were giving an Oscar performance .It came across to me that these people really took pride in their job and also that they really wanted to make my stay a pleasant one. That's why I always tipped. The only negative was the public restrooms. Since they were labeled W.C (water closet) some people did'nt know what or where they were. I saw one guy walk straight into the woman's room . Unless he was drunk the guy was clueless! Yes GCP Spa Ill be back next year with earplugs on at the airport for the amigos who approach me with timeshare deals!Viva Mejico and the Mayan Kiss!

We utilized this site for much of our planning of this trip, so I thought it only fair and helpful to write my own when we got back. My boyfriend and I are 25 and 26, this was our first trip to Cancun. We stayed from Tuesday January 18 until Saturday, January 22.
I thought it was helpful that a previous reviewer wrote about the bad and the good separately, so I will do the same.

The Bad:
We originally tried to book a Crown Club room (with jacuzzi and mini-fridge, bar, etc.) and were told by our travel agent they were all booked and to try when we got there to get one. Well, when we got there we were also told they were all booked, as were ocean-view rooms. They told us to come back the next morning to check. I went back every morning of our trip at 9 am like I was instructed and I was told they were all out EVERY morning. I didn't throw money around like some people said to do. I never saw anyone else do this and it didn't seem at all appropriate. Overall the front desk people are somewhat rude and not very helpful.
Our room was nice, but the beds are hard. We stayed in room 305 the whole trip, it is lagoon view (not a totally bad view, just of the parking lot and tennis court. The lagoon is in the distance.) and the bathrooms were large enough for the two of us to move around in. The water pressure is awful!! And trying to find the happy medium between scalding yourself and freezing is tricky, but we figured it out.
The TV is also very bad. We figured that with the majority of people staying there being English speaking that the TV would be mostly in
English, not so. It is 90% Spanish or with subtitles, only about 3 or 4 channels are totally in English. This was humorous to us as we had never imagined The Flintstones, Southpark, or The Simpson's in Spanish.
The rooms are somewhat noisy. You constantly hear the chairs scraping in the room above, or someone out in the hall talking, not very quiet.
The hotel does die right around 10:00 or so. The Beer Garden bar is open until late, but we only saw about five other people in there at any given time and it is not very entertaining.
The food was decent for the first day or so. Then the menus get redundant. I never got sick, but my boyfriend did have stomach issues for the majority of the trip, but nothing major. We did go and eat outside of the hotel twice because we couldn't stand to eat there one more time. The restaurants were alright. The snack bar by the pool was nice for a quick bite, and we went to the lunch and breakfast buffets every day. Good breakfast. Overall, the food is not of the highest quality and we thought most things to be very similar in taste and quality, which was okay. Just okay though.
The water is all purified so no worries about getting sick, but it all tastes horrible...like well water. Even the bottled water is tinged with aftertaste that isn't quite right.

The Good
The beach here is asolutely phenomenal!!! Beautiful. They do have lots of towels and many chairs for you to lay out on. We didn't spend any time by the pool, but it also looked very nice. The beach was the place to be. We went into the water every day and we went about 70-90 feet out safely and it was gorgeous.
The maid service is very good. You can put out your "clean room please" sign at any time until early afternoon (2:00 or so) and they will give you your privacy and still come back and give you fresh towels and clean up. Very clean place.
The staff and service workers are all very friendly and helpful. They are very polite and really strive to make your visit pleasant.
The drinks were good. We drink mostly beer so we didn't bring travel cups. These would have been helpful so I do suggest it. But we didn't mind the short walk to the bar. There is a tiki bar near the pool and another down by the beach(very easy to miss, though). We did tire of drinking only corona, so if you do drink beer, i hope you like corona. They also are quite creative with shots and fruity frozen drinks, which we also had our fair share of. Overall the drinks were good.
Room service is something that i seldom saw reviewed previously, so I thought that i would mention it. It is included with your all-inclusive package and they go all night. The food choices were a little better and somewhat different from the rest available so we got breakfast one morning, latenight snacks another night and then desserts our last night there. Every time they were accurate and brought up quickly and the servers bringing it were very nice.

The things we really liked aobut the trip were not things that were controlled by our hotel. They were the beach, the sunset/sunrise, weather, etc. The Golden Crown was alright. We probably won't stay there again because there are many others to choose from. But it was by no means horrible. We just felt like we got lost in the shuffle at times. They are a bit impersonable at times, like you are just one more traveler. This was our first trip to Cancun and our first all-inclusive, so we really don't have any experiences to measure up to. Overall, I thought the resort earned an average rating.

P.S. some extra tips... do bring lots of singles, we tipped everyone that made us a drink, helped us with our meals,brought up our bags, room service, even the guy who cooks the eggs in the morning!
we never had any problems with theft and we never felt unsafe, we were just smart with our things and used the in room lockbox.
the flea markets (black coral, especially) are rough. the people working there are sooooo pushy and very rude, also the prices are not the best. go to the plazas ( like mini malls) to shop...i think plaza caracol was the name of the one that we liked best. the prices are better here without the super-strange sellers at the flea market, with the same products.

hope this was helpful...have a great trip no matter where you stay!!!

We were there for 2 weeks from January 3-17. In general, this hotel is excellent, service is superb and friendly. The rooms are spacious and air conditioning system works well. I think I prefer Puerto vallarta better, as the sun sets over the ocean there and therefore stays brighter and warmer longer...here, the sun went away by about 4:30 by the pool...and it would get quite windy. I also prefer a resort where you can eat outside (or at least partly covered.

The food was very good, much better than I expected and much better than the resort we had always gone to in Vallarta. My only real criticism is the smoking everywehre, especailly within the confines on the indoor bars (particularly the Beer Garden). It was impossible to get away from the chain smokers--by the pool, in the bars, even in the buffet restaurant which was supposed to be non-smoking. Also, the theatre (which again is an enclosed space) is full of smoke. This became more of a problem as the time went on as both my husband and I ended up with colds (not the hotel'S fault!) but which were made more difficult by the smoke. We met many people outside who did not go to the bars in the evening because they could not stand the smoke..I think an attempt to make at least one of the bars and theatre non-smoking should be attempted.

Be very careful on the beach, someone drowned while we were there and several people needed to be rescued by the lifeguards

Service is terrific, especially Alfonso and Christina by the pool...overall a great place. Adults only was definitely a plus!