When our shared van (Best Day) pulled up at the resort, I thought I was in heaven! I had never seen such a beautiful resort (except maybe in Las Vegas)! The view of the infinity pool spilling into the glittering waters of the Carribean was truly breathtaking! It looked like a postcard!

We were assigned to room 515 which had an amazing ocean view! The bed was firm, but not uncomfortable as many people have suggested on this site.

Our minibar was never refilled unless I called the front desk and asked for more water, which you will definitely need and I would recommend bringing your own water to drink in the restaurants because I do not think the hotel makes ice from purified water (more on that later).

The beach is small, but beautiful! The water is calm and warm. You could always find a chair at any time of day and the drink service was consistent. However, there is NO shade and it gets very hot!

The pools are both beautiful! There is nowhere to sit around the quiet pool unless you get up at the crack of dawn and go put your towel on one of the only 6 or 8 sunbeds. There are plenty of other chairs and umbrellas around the other pool regardless of the time of day--although the towel game is rampant at this resort!

Food: Here is where I lost my love affair with RPLA. I work in a school so I would liken the food to that served for school lunch, maybe a step up to Furrs's Cafeteria for some entrees. There is a large selection, but nothing very tasty. I would agree with a previous reviewer who said that the food is left out in the blazing heat and humidity for hours and reserved for days on end. The desserts are not sweet and are actually barely edible! The ice cream is good though. One day I was so hungry for food that tasted good that I actually paid the $8 for a bag of doritos in the gift shop!

The ice in the drinks smells funny. I ordered 7up and it tasted like a sewer! No kidding. Finally I asked for it with no ice and it tasted fine. Then, I started bringing my own drinks from the minibar to meals, but it was too late. My husband and I both got violently ill on the third day of our vacation--we were up all night for 2 nights and never felt fine for the rest of our trip. We have been home for 2 days now and still are not better. Kind of sad to think that we paid $3500 to spend 3 days in the bathroom!

Also, if you are not into just baking in the sun for hours on end, there isnt much else to do. We ventured over to the mall across the street one evening and someone tried to sell us drugs. Once inside, we realized that the mall was pretty dirty and somewhat scary as well. If you take the bus to La Isla mall it is a lot nicer, but ver expensive!

My husband and I have just returned from a 6 night/7 day stay at the Riu Palace Las Americas. I cannot say enough about the FRIENDLY staff. Our flight was delayed so we arrived much later than we had planned. They were very accomodating (understanding we were exhausted and ready to settle in) - they had everything ready and sent us straight up to our beautiful ocean view room even though we didn't pay for it! The buffet and restaurants were very good even though I'm slightly picky. They serve breakfast for a LONG time - so lunch isn't started until 12:30. We found the food was better the earlier you came.
BE PREPARED FOR THESE THINGS:
ROCKS - when getting into the ocean but very gentle and pretty water
NO CHAIRS in the shade or otherwise unless you put your towels down before 9 or so.
RIDICULOUS MEANS of making dinner reservations. Beginning at 12:00 on the dot, find the woman on the patio right outside the indoor bar area. You have to stand in line to make ONLY 3 nights reservations at a time. And guess what, tonight AND tomorrow night are going to be BOOKED already! They have like 3 different seating times and do not fill the restaurant to capacity at any of those times. Anyways, we were only able to eat at the Steak House, Japanese, and Brazilian ones. DO e-mail a day or two before you arrive and they will allow you to make one reservation ahead of time! On a good note, the buffet is actually VERY good - many people we talked to didn't even bother with reservations because they were so pleased with buffet. We had reservations for the Gourmet one but missed it because of the UNprofessional Photo Shop people. Here's the deal on that - right outside the gift shop there is a table set up advertising beautiful pictures. It cost $100 and you get 10 pics printed and many more on CD. I convinced my husband to sign up for 6:15 on Saturday even though we had dinner reservations at 6:30. It was the only day available during our stay. She said we could easily be finished in 15 minutes. So, we arrive at 6:10 and wait for the photographer to show up - haha, over an HOUR later (after being promised a discount) we're told that we can go out to the beach and a different "Prof. photographer" would take our pics. A very nice lady did take several very good pics- even though the sun was already going down by this point (NOT as many as promised) and they assured us that if we WAITED until Monday to pick them out, they could photo shop some people out and stuff and have them printed the same day - PLENTY of time before we LEAVE on TUESDAY. Well, we picked out the pics Monday even though they hadn't been photo shopped and the RUDE RUDE RUDE skinny girl told us we could pick them up right after 6. We started hanging out in the lobby checking every few minutes from about 5:45 until dinner at 6:45 - NO ONE WAS EVER THERE! AH! So finally on Tuesday we found the girl around 9:30 and she was like, I don't have them, I thought you got them! AHHHH! So we started getting upset and she started being all fake nice saying, I'll find them, I'll find them - come back at 11:30 (check out is 12:00). So finally she comes out with the pics and we ask how much since we had been promised a discount. HAHAHA, of course she had to go "call someone else" because she had not been told of this and could not authorize it herself. She finally came back and only took off $20! Oh well, I really wanted the stupid pics so we paid it, but I vowed to tell my story so that atleast others might be prepared for such a mess.
ALSO, be warned that excursions are expensive with everyone you talk to - and I think they even go up by the day!!
My husband and I used American Express to book a private snorkel trip - we had a couple of issues - first, the rep told us to walk down the beach to the marina at Coral Beach Hotel - we tried - it's all blocked off by BIG waves and HUGE rocks. So we tried to cut through the hotel and they treated us like criminals but wouldn't tell us another way to get out there! - they finally walked us down! We finally get there and they are about to put us on a boat with 3 other folks, when we clearly paid extra for private ($72 for the two of us)
So we basically acted like jerks and ended up getting our own boat after having to stand around for 20 minutes listening to a bunch of Mexicans argue and try to work it out! We finally got on the boat and it was VERY NICE. Our driver and guide were AWESOME, our guide was a shorter older man who was very eager to help with every single little thing. He made us feel quite special. The snorkeling was not so good, the current was VERY strong so instead of staying in the water an HOUR, we were only in about 20 minutes - so the driver took us on a FANTASTIC boat ride! We were both pleased except for getting a bit sun burnt. Bring your sunscreen!!
We also rode the bus down to the Ferry entrance. Ask the hotel for the ferry schedule.It cost about $2.00 each to ride the bus - and $15 each roundtrip to ride the ferry. We went to Isla Mujeres and rented a golfcart ($30 for two hours) and we just drove around all over the island. It was SO neat! There are villages, locals, shops, restaurants, all of it! Oh, and the Ferry ride is beautiful! Definitely a highlight!
Back to the hotel - my ONLY complaint would be that they don't have confined areas for smokers - like, I expect to smell it at the bar, but NOT ALL OVER the lobby :( The wireless internet only works in the lobby also.
Again, I can't say enough about the beauty of the place, or the friendliness of the staff. Alan the head waiter around the lobby/bar is AWESOME! There were several very good waitresses but I cannot remember their names. Alex - the darker skinned gentleman around 20 years old was WONDERFUL at the steak house. There is a comedian waiter in the Brazilian that was VERY good as well. He will tell you that each meat is something crazy like elephant or his former pet iguana. Overall our trip was very good - we spent a lot of time laying around the beach and pool. Everything was always very clean - and there were times when it was faster to get drinks by just going to the bar instead of waiting for someone to ask you. There were also times that 5 people would ask if they could get you something without about 10 minutes...The maids are excellent and friendly as well. We left some quarters on the bed one day and got two towel heart swan thingies that were kissing -with real rose petals on the bed! Another day we got a cute little towel fish! Note about flying - if having to land in Miami beware - I HATE Miami - first off the "weather" there delayed our take off and land from Atlanta. THEN we RAN through the entire airport only to realize they let our connection leave with us and about 6 other people that we know of. We were only a few minutes late - but then they tried to put us on a flight that was SEVEN hours way - I was very upset so they changed it to one that was TWO hours away - which of course got MORE delayed! Oh, and THEN, we FINALLY get on the stupid plane and guess what, they sit and WAIT on several passengers so that our plane gets BUMPED out of line for departure and we end up riding around WITHOUT air for OVER AN HOUR!! Oh, but that's not all! Guess what MIAMI airport did to us on the way HOME - they didn't put one of our bags on the PLANE!!!! You should have seen the people from our flight behind us in line with NO luggage! So, like I said, avoid Miami airport - it's nothing but disaster! (although I guess I should be thankful that we were atleast safe.) STILL waiting on airline to call us and say they found our bag :(
Sorry I rambled - hope you found this slightly helpful - enjoy your stay. Oh, and the bar tenders will work with ya a bit on the drink selection!

This was our second time to Cancun both hotels were very nice first one was for our honeymoon three years ago at Cancun Palace this time we stayed here. Both were very nice hotels the staff at the Riu was VERY nice did not have to look very far at all if you needed some help. The only thing that we didn't like was the rocks on the beach and the waves are not big at all, but for kids and familys or people that are not looking for waves this would be a very nice beach. The bar did do better service if you tipped but there were a couple of the bartenders that were always very good. We enjoyed our stay here and would recommend this hotel to anyone.

I spent many hours reviwing all Cancun All-Inclusives and the Riu Palace Las Americas was perfect. Any negivite reviews you read about this place, just take with a grain of salt. They must have been written by very hard to please people. We were treated like royality. The food was great. Staff did way more than was expected. I only wish they have a greater slection of beer. All they offer is Corona. But you can get all kinds of mixed and specialty drinks. Its more adult oriented but the kids I did see were having fun. Highly recommend.
Dennis