El Dorado Royale, a Spa Resort - All Inclusive

Customer Ratings & Reviews

TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

17812 reviews

• 

  Terrible experience

  My heart is shattered. I’ve cried at least four times since this happened. I cannot believe the treatment we experienced at this resort. For context, my family has been part of Exotic Travelers for over 11 years. I have visited El Dorado Royale more than eight times, and my family collectively has stayed at Exotic Travelers resorts well over 30 times. This trip was meant to be the most special of all—my wedding. Naturally, I chose this resort because of our long history here. I invited 30 guests who traveled from their homes to Mexico to celebrate with us. Had I known how poorly we would be treated, I would never have chosen this location. ⸻ The Incident at “The Spot” Just one hour into our third day, we visited the members-only pool area, The Spot. The bartender, Noa, refused to serve us—no water, no drinks, nothing. We stood at an empty bar for well over 15 minutes. This was not due to crowding or lack of staff. Two guests approached the bar after we did and were served immediately. They received their drinks, returned to their loungers, and we were still standing there, waiting and being ignored. We asked multiple times and were dismissed each time. Eventually, we left the bar area and continued swimming. Later, my friend told me she had a nearly identical experience with the same bartender, except he told her to “go climb the tree and get her own coconut” when she asked for a piña colada. This was not sarcasm or humor—he was nasty, rude, and openly demeaning. When I confronted him and asked if he truly said that—because I was in complete disbelief—he boastfully admitted it and shrugged. I asked to speak with his supervisor, and he told me no, repeatedly. The anger and disgust in his expression were honestly frightening. Then, shockingly, he pulled out his phone and took a picture of my friend without her permission as she continued asking for a supervisor. ⸻ Aftermath I was left speechless. I immediately called our butler and explained what happened. He arranged for supervisors to meet with us, but the emotional damage was already done. I am heartbroken because no one deserves to be treated this way—ignored, mocked, humiliated—especially in a place we have trusted and supported for more than a decade. We’ve paid an astronomical amount of money for our membership, only to feel like a burden. It is unacceptable. After this experience, we genuinely feel that Mexico is not a place we would want to return to. ⸻ How We Now Feel I now feel uncomfortable, unwanted, and honestly embarrassed. I feel like I don’t even deserve to be here. The way we were treated has made me afraid to leave my room, as though the staff would prefer if we weren’t here at all—and that feeling is incredibly painful. To make matters worse, the friend he was most rude and unprofessional toward is a plastic surgeon who had seriously considered purchasing her own Exotic Travelers membership. After this experience, she will never return and certainly will not be investing in a membership. This is an experience I’ll never forget. I posted some photos from my many trips there.

  Dec 03, 2025
• 

  El Dorado - Been there, won’t go back!

  This resort is too big for its staffing. Golf carts are used to travel around the property but they are hard to find when needed. There are little bus stops with a time clock for the next shuttle but rarely are correct or work. We reserved a room with king bed but got 2 doubles. It took 2 days to correct their error. When we enquired about the room change at the front desk b/c the concierge was not getting answers the first day, the customer service staff laughed in our face and said they were working on it - 3:30pm the second day we moved. This room had no coffee, phone, safe and some lights were not working. At one point our bartender counted the number of drinks ordered for people in our group. When he was handed a $5 all of a sudden his attitude changed and was more attentive. You need reservations for dinners but to do so have to use their app - most times it didn’t work or was unavailable. The buffet was for breakfast and didn’t have much choice in food and was the same every day. The beach restaurants were a fair walk and served the same food every day. They closed at 4:00pm but dinner restaurants didn’t open till 6:00. No information on evening entertainment, don’t know if there ever was any. If you did walk, due to lack of shuttle service, there is no signage to know where you were located on the property or directions to landmarks. Our pick up time for the return flight wasn’t until 7:00 pm, so we asked to have a late checkout. We were told a late checkout is 12:30 and if there was a room available it would be $20 US per hour. We said ok - 2 couples we would split 4 hrs, so we could shower, etc. You can only reserve the day prior to checkout, when we went to confirm we were told they had no room for us. Their loss again b/c we made friends and they allowed us to use their room until we had to leave. Once again not very accommodating! I thought with the influx of reservations from people unable to travel to Jamaica they would try to draw clients, maintain a client base and be more accommodating - it seemed to be more of an inconvenience for them.

  Dec 02, 2025
• 

  El Dorado Royale worth a visit.

  Check in at the El Dorado Royale was easy and Cindy made it smooth and welcoming. Rooms on the Royale side are a little dated, but clean and comfortable. Housekeeping was very good, we enjoyed Ezequiel’s service. Fridge service was poor at the end (missed a couple of days and we had to make several phone calls to get this fixed) Food – Overall, food was good. Breakfast – they had a few al la carte restaurants which we didn’t try because of the timing for pickleball. Cocotel is the breakfast buffet, and it gets very busy. Our usual servers were Mariano and Alfredo both excellent. Only 1 person making eggs and the line ups were long. Bacon availability was inconsistent. It was a decent breakfast. Lunch options are limited and we wished they had a lunch buffet, but they don’t. We did try Spot (tacos were decent a little too dry), Kick was good our server Vlad made our lunch fun and enjoyable. Kick has burgers, hotdogs, salads. We also tried to get into La Cabana but got rained out twice and one of the times we were sent to Cocotel for lunch of burgers and pizza, the burgers were grossly undercooked and the pizza was just barely ok. We did spend a lot of our lunches at the Health Bar (it was right outside our room) and it was a total hit. Wonderful salads, paninis, deserts although mostly vegetarian it was very, very good. Our server Flora was quite good, friendly, polite and put up with us Dinner fare was excellent. Food quality was excellent and we went back a couple of times to each of our favourite restaurants. Our return visits were to D’Italia Casitas (servers Edmar, Miguel and Itzel were excellent), Santa Fe (our server Victor was excellent) and Kampai where we found the food very good. However, the dinner reservation process is very poor and in order to eat at any of the restaurants you have to have reservations. We were required to book with a concierge on our date of arrival and that was a long and confusing process with very limited times available for restaurants. Then, after speaking to other guests, we found that you could book directly via the app and there were more times available on the app. Yet the concierge, (Reina) got rather indignant when we booked restaurants through the app. **Make sure you make all your reservations first otherwise you may get left without reservations and have to go to the buffet at Generations for dinner, The concierge service was average to poor. Most concierge (Alphonso) employees are only interested in upselling you on spa options, time share meetings, dinners on the beach etc. We asked for 2 extra chairs in our room so that we could use the table to play cards with our travel partners and it took them 3 days to deliver. I had to contact them 3x to get this done. Standard response from front desk was no. The concierge who was the most helpful was Jorge as he managed to fulfill most of our requirements. Property – well-kept and beautiful. Walkable if you don’t have any mobility issues. Shuttle service is spotty to non-existent in the morning. There were more shuttles in the evening, but you had to be at the beginning or the end of the resort. We were in the middle, and most were full as they drove by. The property is very large, and you have access to all pools, except those in the Casitas area. Pickleball – This is one of the primary reasons that we went. They have 3 very nice courts. Free to use for all guests and they have resort organized play at 9am every day. We were short 1 player, but we didn’t have any issues finding other guests to play with. Beach – this is a drawback for the resort, but we knew this going in, so we weren’t disappointed. However, during our time there, we did find 2 areas where beach / ocean access was available, and it was nice. Not a resort if you want a long beach walk. Would we return simply, yes, we would go back to this resort. The pickleball, the lunches, the dinners were enough to overlook some of the shortcomings of the resort

  Dec 02, 2025
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  Terrible beach, food and lobby/transportation staff!

  The staff in the lobby was rude as heck and they tried to shaved an hour off our trip with an early airport transfer and then when we paid for their taxi, he petulant and asked for more than we were told. He forced me to go to the bank machine for extra cash when I gave him 1K pesos. He wanted 1,300. The beach is like Normandy and the food was bad as Cuban food. Stay away!

  Nov 24, 2025
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  Safety concerns

  Most of the staff was great! Food 6 out of 10 Roaches just gross. Several safety issues door locks, frayed wires slick paths

  Nov 24, 2025