This is my honest review of The Grand Moon Palace in Cancun. I want to start by laying down the groundwork, I am a picky traveler and I expect high quality when it comes to food, wine selections, room and most importantly, service. We travel a lot and usually stay in high-end resorts like The Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton chains. So, with this in mind, keep reading to find my honest opinion of the Grand Moon Palace in Cancun.
Before I start, a foreword: Last summer, we went to Le Blanc Spa Resort, a new hotel in Cabo San Lucas. It is an adult-only all inclusive resort where they give you a certain number of credits when you check-in to use towards the spa, upgraded wine or food (wagyu beef, etc) or tours.
We went to Le Blanc as a guest of my mother-in-law and had access to her resort credits. They offered us credits to attend a meeting to see if we wanted to join the Palace membership. After a 2 plus hour meeting, we agreed to join because our stay at Le Blanc was amazing and we would love to go back. We also enjoy traveling with our kids so we negotiated a trip to the Grand Moon Palace for the kids ski week. This is my honest review of The Grand Moon Palace in Cancun. I have summed it up into two main sections, The Great and The Not-So-Great.
THE GREAT: A REVIEW OF THE GRAND MOON PALACE IN CANCUN
SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE
My review of the Grand Moon Palace is that it has something for everyone. It reminds me of a large hotel in Vegas combined with Disneyland. Yes, I know the size of the place can be a negative. We will discuss the drawbacks later, but for now, one of The Great’s is that there is something for everyone. You can’t get bored.
The Grand Moon Palace has tons of restaurants, bars and pools. There are also lots of activities. There is a water park, adult pool, theater with shows, bowling alley, golf, tennis, bicycles, mini golf, surf rider, teen lounge, kids clubs, two spas, a nightclub, and I’m sure I’m forgetting others. And if this isn’t enough, and you get bored of the hotel you can access all the nearby sister hotel properties. So, basically everyone in the family can find something to do. This makes the Grand Moon Palace great for a family looking for fun and diverse activities.
THE SPA
In my opinion, the Awe Spa at The Grand Moon Palace is pretty awesome! Most high-end spas are pretty unaffordable but here because you can use your credits, it makes it much more doable. I love getting a massage or facial. After that, my favorite thing to do in the Spa is to use all the facilities. The facilities are free but it’s encouraged to tip the attendant that helps you. They provide you a locker, robe and slippers to use while in the spa. A bathing suit is mandatory as being naked is not encouraged.
To start, the attendant starts you off in the hot sauna. She puts a towel down, and places a comfortable wood headrest under your head. She places freshly sliced cucumber on your eyes then adds an orange infused cold towel over your head and eyes. The smell is divine and the sauna is warm and I am ready to relax. After ten glorious minutes meditating in the sauna, she comes to collect me.
Once outside, she asks me if I would like lavender or lemongrass aromatherapy spray over my body. I choose lavender and it feels cold but smells delicious.
The next step is the cold room, it’s stark white and it is cold! I’m not sure exactly of the temperature, but the minute I walk in I am uncomfortably cold. The attendant places a towel down on the bench in front of an ice maker then instructs me to rub ice all over my body. After this, she explains the importance of Aloe Vera gel on sun exposed skin and leaves me with several portions of Aloe Vera. I fervently rub the ice all over my body followed by Aloe Vera gel. I’m anxiously awaiting her arrival because I’m in there for ten minutes and I’m freezing!
She finally comes in and from there, she takes me to a table by the steam room. She hands me some hair conditioner to put in my hair and a face mask to rub all over my face. This is all in preparation for the steam room. I can’t wait to be warm again! The steam room is super steamy and all I can tolerate is five minutes. LOL. After five steamy minutes in the steam room, my hair feels soft and my skin feels smooth. The rain shower is next followed by the warm beds.
The warm beds are my favorite. The attendant puts a towel down on the bed and places cucumbers on my eyes followed by a yummy smelling towel placed over my eyes. By this point, I am feeling super relaxed and I am ready to close my eyes. The bed is getting warmer and warmer and the curvature of the bed feels perfect on my spine. I am so COZY! So cozy, so relaxed that I doze off to sleep. It’s heaven.
She’s there as I wake up and asks me what I would like to drink. I order a hot chamomile tea, sip it quietly and feeling so relaxed. I’m trying to savor my last minutes of pure bliss. Reluctantly, I get up knowing it has to come to an end. I give her a tip and head back to the lockers to change and head back to my room. If I could do this every day I would, but with kids and my hubby seems too selfish, right?
So, the spa is a pretty relaxing and well worth the visit. After hearing about the spa experience, my two girls were dying to get a facial. The hotel is able to make that work for us, which I thought was super cool. We had to go to the other smaller spa over by the golf course which was easy enough. I have two happy teenage girls who are thrilled to get a spa treatment. A plus for a hotel that can indulge two teenage girls! My review of the Spa at The Grand Moon Palace is that it is excellent!
THE GYM
We also love the gym. We went every day. The gym is nice and big. It is well equipped with weights, cardio equipment, stretching room, sauna, water station, towels and water bottles. We didn’t do any classes so I don’t have much to add there.
ALL-INCLUSIVE
Another great benefit of the Grand Moon Palace in Cancun is that it is all-inclusive. Ok, full disclosure, I am not a fan of all-inclusive places. All-inclusive usually means people gorging themselves on a lot of food and drinking excessively. There is also an implied perception of lower quality service, food and alcohol. At The Grand Moon Palace, some restaurants did not have the best customer service and the food was at most average. However, in my opinion, several restaurants were top-notch.
FAVORITE RESTAURANTS
My favorite restaurants are Habibi (Lebanese) and Tavola (Italian). The servers at these restaurants were amazing and the food was delicious. I would give both of these restaurants five stars. The Asian Restaurant gets 4 stars from us because the server was very kind. She brought us Wagyu beef on the house and my kids LOVED every bit of it. It’s a must try. My kids loved cooking it on the hot coal.
My favorite pre-dinner place is Tapas Y Vino. I was there every night before dinner for some yummy tapas and a good glass of wine. The servers were very attentive and nice. They even offered me and my husband tastes of Mexican wine and other wines they thought we would enjoy. The tapas were great and the chefs preparing them worked hard every day.
THE DRINKS
Besides good food and a good spa, what else is important on a vacation? Well, that’s a no brainer, how about some good drinks? The drinks were definitely in The Great category. The Grand Moon Palace has a great wine list. There is a decent Rioja Tempranillo on the house list and for our fancy nights a Gran Reserve Rioja that we enjoyed for a fee.
There are also some cool adult bars and a speak-easy that is hidden behind a door on a bookshelf. My husband loves a good mixed drink. He was happy with all of his drink selections at the Grand Moon Palace.
THE NOT-SO-GREAT: A REVIEW OF THE GRAND MOON PALACE IN CANCUN
THE SERVICE
Now onto the Not-So-Great. In my review of The Grand Moon Palace I would fall short if I were not completely honest. I am definitely a glass half- full kind of person. I try to look for the positive and good in life. However, The Grand Moon Palace fell a little short for me especially when it came to service. I had a not-so-great experience on the first day when we checked-in to the Grand Moon Palace.
After checking in, we are told by the front desk that we have to meet with the concierge. We need to do this to apply credits (basically money you can use for upgrades of food and wine and spa) from our last stay at Le Blanc in Cabo. We waited 30 minutes to see him. This concierge turns out to be a salesperson that wants us to do a sales tour. Who wants to go on a tour at 8:30am on their first day of a vacation? Ummmmmm, not me! I do not like to be sold anything and especially not when I am on vacation. I don’t care what you are going to give me as a “prize” to do this tour. There is nothing worth sleeping in and enjoying my cup of coffee.
This is my number one beef with this place. Since it is a membership place they are always trying to sell you a higher level of membership. We are not interested in that kind of thing. These meetings take hours (even though they only say an hour). Yes, the phone rang the next day to remind us of our meeting and no, we did not attend. You are not obliged to do any of this and you can just say NO!
Tired from our trip, we finally arrived in our room 45 minutes later. The concierge/sales person told us that we should make restaurant reservations ASAP since they sell out. So, once in our room, I immediately found the phone and called the reservation number to book the restaurants. I am greeted by a not-so-polite man that makes it very difficult to make reservations and we are not able to book any of the restaurants.
I want to add that several of the really good restaurant experiences that we had did NOT require a dinner reservation. In our experience, the Italian Restaurant, the Asian Restaurant and Habibi, the food is amazing and the service is excellent. The buffet also had decent food and the service was very good. Thank goodness for Rosario at the buffet, our mornings are awesome because she takes such good care of us. When my youngest had a belly ache, she was great and prepared her a special Mexican tea. We can’t forget my favorite afternoon spot, and one not to be missed is Tapas y Vino, where the tapas are very good, the wine is great and the service is excellent.
Two restaurants had really good food but the service was slow and unresponsive. They were Los Tacos, and Momo (Japanese) located at the sister hotel (Sunrise).
THE BEACH
This next one is a BIG not-so-great for us. Are you a beach person or a pool person? If you are a pool person then skip this part, it won’t pertain to you. However, if you like the beach this could be a show-stopper. We walk to the beach at The Grand Moon Palace and are so disappointed. Who knew that there could be a yucky beach in Cancun? It’s so bad that they don’t even offer any beach service. The water is murky and filled with algae. Yuck.
THE SIZE OF THE HOTEL
Another not-so-great is the size of this place. It is HUGE. Our room was about a mile from the main building. I think this says it all. The Grand Moon Palace is so big that they have a shuttle service to take you to all the different places in the resort. Most of the time, the wait for the shuttle is not too long. I would usually walk and get some exercise and my kids and hubby would wait for the shuttle.
So, this is my honest review of the Grand Moon Palace in Cancun, Mexico. The best part of the Grand Moon Palace is that there’s a lot to do. If you love a good pool and a water park then this may be your ticket. With the right server at the right restaurant you are golden here. However, if you want the beach, you will have to take a shuttle to The Beach Palace.
Would we go back? Possibly. Now that we know what we are up against, it would make it easier. I almost wish I had done more research before going so we wouldn’t have been thrown off guard by the size of this place and the lack of beach.
In my honest review of the Grand Moon Palace in Cancun, this is not a five-star experience, the service is not good enough to compete with the Four Seasons or any 5 star resort. I would give this place 3.9 stars in my book.
Thank you for visiting my blog! Stay home and healthy and when life resumes to normal we will start traveling again and I will be posting more reviews and posts about our adventures! In the meantime, take good care and thank you again! XOXO, Jenny 🙂
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