As some of you may have read in my review of the Hyatt Regency Cancun, I originally booked the Camino Real Cancun for my vacation in Cancun in early November with my mom. I had heard good things about the hotel, and was looking forward to staying there.

I knew that it was one of the first hotels in Cancun and that it occupies a prime location on the tip of the "7" shape that comprises the resort area of Cancun, surrounded on three sides by the Caribbean. Sounds great, I thought! Little did I know that this hotel is direly in need of updating and maintenance and looks like it has not been remodeled since the early 1970's, when it was built!

I should have known we were in for it when we got on the charter bus (really more the size of a large cargo van) with the other vacationers who had booked through Apple Vacations, and we each had to tell the bus driver which hotels we were going to, and no one seemed to have any comment for us when we piped up eagerly that we were staying at the Camino Real, whereas with the others everyone else seemed to have some positive feedback.

I had never seen the hotel before, because although it is near the nightlife in Cancun, it is "off the beaten track" of the main arterial road, the Boulevard Kukulkan. So after dropping almost everyone else off at their hotels, we finally arrived at the Camino Real and saw a small inconspicuous entrance with the hotel's name written in a 1970's type of style in a hot purplish-pink. OK, not a beautifully impressive entrance like almost every other hotel in Cancun, but we still had an open mind at this point.

When we walked into the hotel, I was sorely disappointed. First of all, the front desk was nowhere to be found, no one was welcoming us to the hotel, and the lobby area was quite dark and unattractive, with low ceilings and a reddish-brown carpeting. It really was a shock for me, having stayed at many other hotels in Cancun that were all light, bright, covered in marble, with open high ceilings and an expansive floor plan in the common areas. This was not my idea of a 5-star property.

We finally located the front desk; after waiting for about ten minutes, the clerk finally greeted us and was not very friendly about it. She seemed as if she had many other better things to do, and was not thrilled about being at work that day. Although I had informed my travel agent that we would need two beds rather than one, I reminded the clerk of this. She seemed annoyed by this, and said that she had to change our room assignment because of this and redo all our check-in documentation now. I pointed out that my travel agent had booked the reservation this way, and that I had a printout confirming it, to which she reacted with disinterest.

After finally getting our room keys, we were shown to our room by a very friendly bellman who gave us a mini-tour of the hotel as we walked across the property to the room. On this tour, we saw that the pool was unimpressive (just a plain rectangular shape with nothing special about it, all one depth) and was overrun with children, although it was November. This was not what I was expecting. Also, the "private lagoon" which is touted in the brochures always sounded like it was available for swimming. This was obviously not the case as it was stocked with fish and looked very murky. So we would have been stuck with one unspectacular pool and/or the beach. It may sound like I am being overly picky here, but I have high standards based on other hotels I have stayed at in Cancun. Also, I was paying about the same as I had for the other hotels, so I wanted comparable quality.

The way this hotel is set up, it requires quite a bit of walking to get to the rooms from the common areas (there are some wheelchair ramps by the many sets of steps, but they are not consistently throughout the property, so this would be an issue for someone in a wheelchair or who cannot walk for long periods or up stairs). There is a main low-rise building which contains the standard rooms (to which we had been assigned)and a newer tower which was added later.

When we arrived at our room, I was again very disappointed. Again, the obnoxious hot purplish-pink decor, our bathroom was dingy and the tile was chipped and dirty, the large window overlooking the Caribbean was disgustingly streaked and dirty and covered with a dark thick curtain. When we stepped out on the balcony, the view was nice, but the chairs were very dirty and we didn't want to sit on them - also the door would open or close easily to get out to the balcony. In general, I was fit to be tied. Not a good way to feel on vacation, and not something I experience often. My mom was OK with it, because she didn't have anything to compare it to, having never been to Cancun before, but was getting stressed because I was unhappy.

We decided to change our clothes and head down to one of the restaurants to have lunch. We went to the Maria Bonita restaurant in the hotel, which was very uncrowded at the time we were there (2 pm); however, the host seated us *right next to* one of the only other tables of people in the restaurant, a father and his 6 or 7 year old daughter. We were literally almost on top of these people (it was one of those "trench"-type seating arrangements where half of the table is a booth and the other half is a table, arranged very closely together in a long row). In short, if I was trying to, I couldn't have picked a worse spot in which to sit! We felt self-conscious of our conversation, as we could hear every word the father and daughter were saying and vice versa. We finished our lunch (which was very tasty, to be fair) in a hurry and left.

At this point, we decided to take a walk around the property and see if we could catch a glimpse of one of the tower rooms, as we had asked the front desk earlier if we would be able to possibly switch. She had replied that we would be able to for an extra $200 per day! OK....if it's worth it, maybe we will, we thought. We walked around in the tower trying to see if any of the rooms were being cleaned so we could just look in from the hallway (I know I'm not the only one in the world to play this little game - we've done it on cruises too, just to see what the difference is in the various levels of staterooms). We did see one room, and it was exactly the same as ours, with the exception of having an entertainment center and an oak decor rather than the painted white traditional Mexican decor of our room. Also, the rooms didn't have as nice of a view as ours did (its only redeeming characteristic). We decided it was definitely NOT WORTH IT for an extra $200 a day.

Now I am feeling somewhat annoyed, and decide to walk around the beach area to see how it is, as that is supposed to be the distinguishing characteristic of the hotel. Well, unfortunately, I was not impressed with that either. It was a very narrow strip of beach, and was very crowded, including many noisy small children and babies in the area. This did not look like a place I wanted to spend my days and I knew I would not be able to relax with all the noise.

We decided to walk next door to the Hyatt Regency Cancun and take a look around there, as I had gotten the idea that maybe we could switch over to that hotel, as we booked our vacation with Apple Vacations and, I reasoned, we should be able to transfer and pay any difference without too much trouble if we liked it at the Hyatt. As it is off-topic, I will not go into how much of a difference I felt as soon as we went over to the Hyatt (see my review for more details). Suffice it to say that we instantly wanted to switch over to the Hyatt, regardless of the extra cost. We spoke to our Apple Vacations rep, and they allowed us to do so. The funny thing was that we wouldn't have had to pay a dime extra if we got a standard room at the Hyatt; we just chose to upgrade to a Regency Club room (which turned out to be a great decision) so we paid $150 more per day for both of us. A bargain, in my opinion.

In general, I cannot recommend this hotel, as it is inferior in quality and is not even a good value compared to other hotels in Cancun. I definitely think its 5-star rating needs to be re-evaluated, as it did not come close to this standard, in my opinion!



Recommended: No