Barcelo Costa Cancun Reviews

I am the biggest Barcelo Fan in the world. However i cannot even begin to tell you how bitterly disapointed i was with their hotel in Costa Cancun. This was my holiday of a life time and i was gutted with my accomodation. the room was old, dated, damaged. The fridge wasn't cold. The bed linen was old and warn. The pation was so small we couldn't all sit on it. The bathroom was old and horrible. Even the smell to the room was horrible. One morning i could here a hammering the back of my head i lay there for a while trying to work out what it was, i looked at the clock and it was 0615AM. In my pyjamas I opened the door to my room and there was a maintenance man with no teeth knock the rendering from the wall to replace it. I said to him Do you mind it is 0615 in the morning and we are on holiday He just laughed at me and carried on. That was how all the hotel staff treated you, just like 2nd class citizens. Its a massive hotel but the 3 lifts around our room were out of order for the duration of our 2 week stay. The pool table and football game for the kids were out of order for the duration of our stay. The key to our room stopped working at least twice everyday. As you can imagine with no lifts you then had to climb up 6 flights of steps to reception. When my husband complained they simply called security. It was very intimidating. The hotel is located outside of Costa Cancun its a good 45 min walk into Cancun centre. We also had a constant battle with the cleaner for towels and water for the free all inclusive mini bar. They felt that 2 adults and a 14 year old could all shower with 2 towels.... After complaining for a whole week we got 3 but the 3rd was never changed 5 days out of the 14 our water was not refilled in the mini bar and the bar would not give you bottled water. When you call to reception and tell them they just say housekeeping has now gone home. Its also a very noisy hotel through the night. Full of Americans a you would expect, but they are so noisy when they return at 5am from a night out in Cancun. As for the food if you like Mash you will be fine. I am quite a plain eater but my family aren't. We all struggled to find meals that we could eat. And for all my fellow Barcelo fans who will disagree with e slating a Barcelo, i have been trying to make my complaints heard by Barcelo since i went in March 2008. The air conditioning in the rooms is shocking, very noisy and you cannot tell it is on.

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Hi, My wife and I went for our first long haul holiday and we decided we wanted to go to Mexico, someone told us that Cancun was great so we decided to book, but first we had to find a hotel, and of course there was only one place to look, Holidays Uncovered as always, thank god for this site, this is the first time I have written a review on this site and I'm sure it won't be the last. I started checking the hotel reviews and chose the Gran Costa Real and Spa, the reason was that all the reviews for this hotel I read said Excellent, but for other hotels the reviews said good, average, very good, poor, below average, and one for the Costa had an email address and said we could emal to find out more, so I did, and they said it was the best holiday they had had, and that it was because they had picked the right hotel.

All I can say is all the hotel reviews for this hotel are spot on. The sheets and towels were changed every day and the rooms were kept spotless, the bar staff were excellent as were all the staff at this hotel, I could not fault them in anyway, the food was great in all 4 restaurants. I met people on the plane, and met them later, and they said in their hotels they could only eat in each of their a la carte restaurants once a week, at the Costa we could eat in any of the a la carte restaurants everyday plus the buffet, and you could have breakfast and lunch in 2 of the a la carte restaurants as well as the buffet.

When your on the beach you can order drinks and food to be bought to your sun lounger, and the staff that serve you have to walk up and down the hot beach all day in the sun, and still have a smile on their face, they are great, and by the way the sand is always cool, I'll let you discover why.

I could go on for hours but I won't, all I can say is my wife and I are so happy we chose this hotel after hearing about the others from their guests.

Just some last words, beach towels are supplied as is shampoo, soap, body lotion, hair dryer and shower caps, so you don't need to take them, which will save room in your luggage.

And last of all please tip the staff, no matter how little, as they don't earn much in Mexico and they work hard to make you happy. If you go to the Costa Real I hope you enjoy the holiday and hotel as much as my wife and I did, we WILL BE GOING BACK TO THIS HOTEL, FOR SURE.

Just arrived back from two weeks at the Barcelo Costa Real.

Overall had a great holiday - Cancun is excellent with so much to do. This was our second year on the trot and we would definately visit again. However the Barcelo Costa was good but not as good as last year when it was owned and operated by the Real Resorts group. The new chain have made a few little changes which in our opinion have made a difference. For example last year twice per week they held theme parties on the beach where the buffet restaurnt would set up and cook on the beach but this has stopped. When we asked a waiter why nodoby could really give us an answer. Also next year the changes are going to continue with extra charges for premium spirits and room service been introduced. Overhall the hotel was still good and we enjoyed our stay. Most of the staff have been retained and they really do make you feel welcome and go the extra mile. The food is also excellent with a choice of four restaurants of which three are a la carte. There is no limit on the number of times you visit each one and the Mexican was our favourite.

Overall we would recommend the hotel to anyone but just beaware of any other extra charges they may introduce in the future. As for Cancum must do's are Coco Bongo's and the Captain Hook pirate ship. If you go with first choice would fully recommend the mayan madness bar crawl - 55 dollars each all drink in - was brilliant !

Just got back from the Barcelo. If you want to read more reviews on this hotel, it used to be called the Costa Real or Gran Costa Real and was recently taken over.

THE HOTEL
The hotel was very good, although it is quite small and compact. With the exception of the evening entertainment, we had no complaints about the hotel. The evening entertainment consists of a dance troupe dancing for about an hour and then a male/female duo singing for about an hour. Although they were good, after seeing them five nights a week for two weeks, we were a bit fed up of them by the end. One night consisted of a karaoke and then another was a film shown on a big screen. Entertainment finished at 11pm. There are 2/3 bars. One is the 'Lobby Bar' which is an area by reception, which is nice for a couple of drinks but not to sit in all night. Be warned, it can get very cool in their at night. The way the entrances are situated can make it a bit of a wind tunnel. Another bar, the 'Beach Bar', which is, believe it or not, on the beach. The 3rd, although cannot really be called a bar, is the self service area in the 24 hour snack bar, where you can pour your own beer or soft drinks or there are bottles of spirits for you to help yourself. The other two bars closed at 12pm so after that, it's the snack bar, although you can take your drinks back downstairs to the lobby bar. Being all inclusive, you can have anything you want!

We enjoyed the food at the hotel. There is as mentioned, the 24hr snack bar, which is help yourself pizza, cold meats and cheeses, tuna, bread and salad. The main buffet restaurant, 'Albatross' which is open for breakfast from 7am-11am (which I thought was excellent as most hotels breakfast is normally something like 7am - 9am), lunch 12-3.30pm and dinner 6pm - 10pm. There is a large selection of foods to help yourself to at breakfast; yoghurts, fruit, cold meats and cheeses, toast, sausage, bacon, waffles, pancakes, scrambled egg etc. You can also get the chef to cook an omlette or fried eggs for you. Baked bean lovers you will be disappointed as there were none. Lunch was meat dishes (eg beef stew, chicken) vegetables, potato etc. Dinner was more or less the same as lunch. At both lunch and dinner you can ask the chef to cook you a steak or a very big beefburger. Good choice. You have to wait to be seated in this restaurant which sometimes can take 5-10 minutes at busy periods. There are then 3 small a la carte restaurants on site. All of these restaurants have to be reserved which can be done at GAVIOTAS restaurant between 10am-3pm each day. The first is an italian, DON QUIOTE and was very nice. The Tiramisu was to die for. The second is GAVIOTAS, an international restaurant, very good. The third was a Mexican restaurant which was our favourite. The fajitas and enchiladas were gorgeous. If you like lots of food, you will be best off at the buffet restaurant as the 3 a la carte restaurants is what I call 'small portions of food, with loads of squiggly decorations on the plate. I found that having a 3 course meal in these restaurants was enough to fill you up. There are no limits to the amount of times you can visit these restaurants, like some hotels.

THE BEACH
Is situated right outside the hotel, although it is very small. The sea is cordoned off, so there is only a small swimming area, as there is an entrance from the lagoons to the sea here and it is quite busy with boats. Men come along the beach trying to sell you stuff, but I never saw them hassling anyone.

THE POOL AND DAYTIME ENTERTAINMENT
The pool is quite big and the same depth throughout apart from two platforms where the water is a few inches. May not be too good for children if they cannot swim. There is a small blocked off shallow pool area for children.

Always plenty of sunloungers to go around. Towels are free each day, you just go to the counter by the pool to collect them. When you arrive at the hotel, you are given a credit card type thing which you exchange for your towel each day, $25 if you lose it.

There is an entertainment team which consists of Saeed, Omar, Mariana and another male. They do a good job, although entertainment is more or less the same every day. Kayak tour, bowls, darts, ping pong tournament, pool volleyball, salsa lessons, learn to speak Spanish, paper aeroplane competition, bingo. You can normally win a prize at some of these games like a t.shirt or a bottle of tequila. Omar is so funny, he walks around the pool with a microphone trying to get people to do the activities.

THE ROOM
We had the smallest type of room available and there appears to be 3 altogether. Our room had a shower big enough to fit 6 people in and a pretty large bathroom. Their is also a shaving mains and a hairdryer in the bathroom. The room has a large t.v, dvd player, air con, fan. It also has a very large bed (would easily fit 3 people in!) a small table with two chairs, two bedside cabinets and a cupboard/wardrobe with about 10 coathangers in. Also there is a small terrace. Not big enough to put chairs on or sit on. There is a towel rail in the bathroom to hang wet clothes, but thats about it. I would advise taking some sort of travel clothes line and pegs which could be rigged up on the balcony. It gets quite windy at night so leaving your stuff hanging over the balcony is not adviseable. The next room was a junior suite and these had a big balcony with a hammock on, we would have preferred this one. There also appears to be bigger rooms with larger balconies as well. Take care when you book, we thought we were getting a balcony and were disappointed with the terrace. Clean room. Most of the rooms face the pool and the beach and the entrance faces onto the street. We were on Floor 4 (there is no ground floor(?), it starts at Floor 1) and our entrance door was in the area of the hotel where the rubbish collecters came at 2am in the morning and where the food and drink deliveries arrived, so take some ear plugs. We were also next door to the maids linen cupboard so they were constantly coming to collect linen from about 7.30 am. Take some ear plugs.

All of the staff at the hotel do an excellent job and most are friendly and helpful. They all speak English. You will have a do not disturb sign for you door if you dont want the maid to disturb you and she will phone later in the afternoon (if you are in the room) to see if you want her to come, or if it can be left for the next day. Not getting woken up at silly hours by persistent maids!

You can also order room service once a day included in your package which consists of breakfast lunch and dinner (pizzas, omlettes, chicken, burgers etc)

There is also a mini fridge in your room which is restocked daily with water, soft drinks and beer.

CANCUN CENTRE
There are loads of bars and clubs in the centre, although not as many as I expected. Most of them you pay a set amount, say $40, to get in and a free bar all night. We visited DADDY ROCK, PAT O'BRIENS, CARLOS AND CHARLIES and COCO BONGOS. COCO BONGOS was fantastic with the shows and acrobats. The staff in all of these bars are very entertaining and do dances for the customers. Most of them have special nights e.g. ladies pay a reduced amount. Beware as the staff then tend to serve many men before they serve the women as the women have paid a less amount to get in. I suppose they dont want you to get too much value for your money!

OTHER STUFF
Taxi's are not particularly cheap and most of the cars probably havent passed an MOT (if they have such a thing) for about ten years. Haggle with them as you will get the price down a bit.

The hotel is a good hours walk to the centre, but the local buses run frequently and cost about 35p each for any distance.

There is not really much around the hotel, a couple of shops over the road. Most of the prices they ask are extortionate, so haggle. Things like water, are quite expensive at the shop, so keep the bottles you get in your mini fridge and ask the bar staff to fill them up from the water machine or do it yourself in the snack bar.

There are two currencies, american dollars and pesos. I have read reviews on this site that recommend taking dollars. I would disagree, because if you do, it is so easy to get ripped off. If you pay for anything in dollars, you get your change in pesos so it is very confusing to work out and we did get ripped off a few times. Dollars are okay if you are not going to need change or for tipping. The staff in the hotel do a good job, so tip them! As most countries, tipping is expected.

There are a variety of trips available to take, but First Choice are very expensive. We didnt realise until later, but there are two desks in the reception area, where you can book trips with the hotel and not your tour operator and they seem to be cheaper. We went on the Jungle Tour, where two of you share your own speedboat and go in a convoy out across the lagoon. Didnt see any crocs. You drive for about 20 minutes and then snorkle for half an hour on a small reef in the sea where we saw quite a few fish. The whole trip takes about two hours and cost about £30 each. You have to make your own way there and what First Choice didnt tell us about was the fact that you have to pay some sort of conservation tax when you get there (about £1.50 pp) so make sure you take some extra cash.

We also did the Dolphin swim. I would not recommend that you do this at the aquarium (town centre) although it is a little cheaper. I was told that the Dolphins are kept in very small pools and barely have room to move about. We paid a little extra (total cost about £100 pp) and did it at 'Delphinus' which is about 40 mins drive away, transfer included. It was fantastic. There are a lot more Dolphins than at the aquarium and they have more room. You spend about an hour in a group of five people and one dolphin. I would definately recommend. There is a dvd for sale at the end and many photographs which are really expensive. If anyone in your party is not swimming, they could take pics for you.

We only ate out of the hotel once, at THE RAINFOREST CAFE, which was set like a real rainforest, the kids would love it. Cost about £30 for two cocktails and two main courses tho, so very expensive.

If you went on holiday to Cancun and didnt go all inclusive, I am sure it would cost an absolute fortune.

We thought the weather would be excellent at this time of the year. Although we had quite a few sunny days, we also had quite a few cloudy ones and sometimes rain during the day. Speaking to people at Cancun airport on the way back, Riviera Maya seemed to have much better weather. The airport is really expensive to eat or drink at and is only very small.

VOLTAGE
Not having been to this side of the world before, we took our european plugs, which did not fit. I presume you can buy special adaptors. Someone in the hotel gave us one, but it was only 6v. My hairdryer would only work on a low setting on this, so try and get a higher one. The hairdryer in the bathroom is okay, but very hot and no temperature settings.

Unlike where we have been before, English are not the majority holidaymaker. Americans and the Canadians are. They are quite loud and everything in Cancun is americanised. The restaurants and the bars are all bigger and better.

Cigarettes are about the only thing cheaper than at home, roughly £2.25 per 20.

At the beginning of the holiday you will be given a 'gold card' which you get from the desk behind the shop. This card entitles you to ten percent off in the shop and the spa/beauty centre. What they dont tell you is when you use it once, they take it off you and you cannot use it again. Save it till the end of your holiday and use it for any stuff you have put on your room bill. Wine in the a la carte restaurants is at an extra charge if you have bottles and is quite expensive. Just ask for a glass of wine as part of your all inclusive and they will keep topping you up!

The sauna, spa and gym are very good. If you want to use the gym, make sure you take trainers. I didnt and they are very strict and will not let you use the gym without them. Beauty treatments and massages can be taken at a charge and put on your room account.

Have a good holiday!

Overall, if you want plenty of evening entertainment and a large beach, this hotel is not for you.

I went to Mexico for the first time in july 2005. we stayed at the gran costa real. Before we went we read some reviews and got very worried as they did not seem to be good at all.

They said that it was a 3* and was on the lagoon side this is not true. the hotel is a 5* on the carribean side and has a lovely beach, if you go the the sister hotel they do have a really nice beach but the beach in the costa real is more private and the sea is much calmer great for relaxing.

The staff at the hotel were very nice and helpful. we were there when hurricane emily hit and we were delayed flying home for three days, throughout the hurricane the staff were very calm and helpful. I would recommend this hotel to young couples and singles as it is very lively especially in july (summer break). it is also good for families, but it does get noisey at night.

The food in the hotel was great, the buffet restaurant was not the best i have had in all-inclusive but it was good. The main thing that i liked about the restaurants was that you could eat in them as many times as you wanted with a waitor service, so it wasn,t like some all-inclusive hotels were you can only eat in the nice restaurants once a week. The pool was very nice and kept clean, in the day it is lively round the pool but the entertainment team dont make you join in if you don't want to. the hotel is about a ten minute bus journey (buses run 24 hours a day!) away from the clubs and bars and it cost 6.5 pesos each time which is about 30p, much cheaper than taxis. the rooms in the hotel are very clean and have all been refurbised. Take DVD's as there is a player in your room. The shower is massive and very clean.

if you go on any excursions before booking it with your tour operature go in to the centre and see if you can get them cheaper you can save your self alot of money. Don't change any money in the hotel go just across the road. In the hotel the rate was 15 peso to the pound across the road it was 18. I saved myself about 800 peso!. Me and my partner had an amazing time at this hotel and would definately go back, just make sure that you do explore Mexico and don't just stay at the hotel as you would miss out on alot. Xel Ha is great it lovely a great day for everyone no matter what age. Swiming with dolphins was very good we did it at wet 'n' wild, well worth the money. the nightlife is excellent make sure you go to Dady'os and Coco Bongo.

Overall the holiday was amazing a great experience well worth the money, would do it all again. The weather is excellent out there very hot not like what is says on all the weather channnels (rain), it rained twice in 2 weeks.