Outdoor shower leaked into room, no cold water, only hot water in shower, large lizard in room, shower broke on 2nd day, both my friend and I had intestinal bug for 3 days (food?), rained first 3 days, pictures of room looked much better than actual, mangroves were being sprayed while we were eating in the outdoor restaurant, the wait for food at restaurants and room service makes you not want to wait for seconds or even a 2nd bottle of water. I can go on and on.

Terrible !!

My fiance and I just got back from a 5 day weekend at El Dorado Royale. It was just what we needed! This place is so beautiful and relaxing that I never wanted to leave.
My impressions:
-Food! It was so good. I'm a huge food lover and when I eat out I usually go to upscale places...food is the one thing I spend lots of money on. And let me tell you, the food I ate at El Dorado was on par with some of the best restarunats in the nation. I love the multi corse dinning style and enjoy when a meal is an event that takes some time. I don't know why people are so upset with this, as nothing sounds better to me than an evening of good food and wine and conversation that lasts for a few hours.

-The room! We stayed in a Casita room and it was perfect. I'm so glad we paid the extra money for it as I never once had a complaint. It was complete luxury. The outdoor shower was a great little romantic perk (under the stars!) and the jacuzzi and balcony provided more than enough relaxing options when I got sick of being in the sun. Plus it was great to have priority reservations for dinner. Big perk!

-The resort! Grounds were clean and everything you would hope for in a Mexican getaway. I liked that it was so large and that you could go for a walk without running into too many people. We didn't come on vacation to make friends or party, so we loved the solitary feeling of the paths for our daily morning walk together.

To sum up....this place is perfect for those couples who want some escape from their lives and a little romance too. And the improtant thing to remember is that it is Mexico and there are things that are different there(the tree smell, the people, the weather, the pace of life) So if those things bother you...stay in the US and go to Disney World. I prefer to take the exotic and intersting (with all of it's quirks). I would highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for the same.

My husband and I selected the El Dorado Royale for our honeymoon based on the recommendation of a travel agent and the allure of the brochures. We'd never been to Mexico or the Caribbean, but it seemed like a nice (and cheap) alternative to the West Indies.

I guess you get what you pay for. After months of reading five-star reviews of the El Dorado Royale on this very website, we were expecting the time of our lives. Instead we got annoyance after inconvenience. We were unaware of the need to make reservations for dinner each night, and were forced to make reservations three days in advance literally minutes after arriving (and with no knowledge of which restaurants were better). The front desk clerk who checked us in acted as if he was doing us a big favor by giving us what he termed a "better" room than the one we had; not knowing any better, we accepted his offer. As it happened, he moved us from a quiet, secluded area of the resort to a room near the nightclub, which meant we were treated to throbbing music (and drunks walking up and down the sidewalk in front of our room) until 2 am each night. As an added bonus, there was resort construction going on outside behind our room (the bulldozers and hammers often kicked in at 8 am) AND more construction started later in the week right in front of our room. The final cherry on the cake was some sort of damage to the room right next door to ours, which meant brutally loud hammering starting at 10 am the last two days of our stay.

The food in all restaurants was surprisingly mediocre, with the exception of La Cabana, the poolside grill, which had the best pizza I'd ever tasted. Many if not most of the waitstaff, including bartenders, waiters and bellboys, spoke little or no English, and those that did were certainly not fluent. I found the language barrier especially disconcerting in the restaurants, where it was next to impossible to ask questions about the menu, much less make a special request. The "main" pool was run down and in seriously need of a paint job. If you aren't up at the crack of dawn to let housekeeping into your room to clean up, be prepared to wait as late as 4 or 5 pm before they can bother to get back to you. And don't believe the "gratuities included" hype; I saw people tipping all over the place, and we quickly figured out, particularly at the bars, that the service was bad or nonexistant unless you tipped.

On the plus side, the rooms were nice, and our room did look out on a little wading pool that we took advantage of. For the most part we met very nice people and had a great time hanging out at the pool or on the beach. And I will say that the beach bar had the best bartender ever, a friendly guy named Pedro who worked nights there and took very good care of my husband and myself (once we figured out that tips were not only encouraged but expected). All that said, I wouldn't recommend this place to anyone except people looking for a cheap alternative to the Caribbean who don't mind bad food and 24-hour noise disturbances. And don't forget to bring tip money - you're lost without it.

Beached whales---a turn off.

The food and service were great.I took this trip with my husband, sister and brother-in-law. We enjoyed ourselves, however we were all a little dissappoineted with the whales, you really could not get away from them. They were along the entire beach of the hotel. There were some waves which helped, but too many rocks and coral on the beach to actually go in the water without aqua shoes. The beach chairs and palapas were easy to get any time of the day.

The restaurants had great food , but the meals would take at leas 1-2 hours to get through--there is very little else to do at the resort anyway so the few hours for dinner was okay.

Breakfast was the best at cocotal.

Shows were entertaining ---we enjoyed karoake night.

We were worried about the weather because the weather channel was forecasting rain all 3 days we were going to be there, however it was clear skies and sunny everyday.

The swimming pool was also a turn off-- it needed to be repainted and cleaned.

The rooms were nice, AC worked great and water was always hot.

Overall we accomplished what we wanted---which was relaxing, but we will probably not return to EDR primarily for the dissappointing beach.