Great food, quiet location, but far from local activities
Written: Dec 26 '06 (Updated Dec 26 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Quiet, clean, large room, nice staff, good beach and food
Cons: A little far from night life and definitely not a snorkeling beach.
The Bottom Line: A nice quiet hotel with great staff. As long as you don't mind being a little ways from nightlife and downtown Cancun, the bus makes this a good choice.
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| colstudent69's Full Review: Westin Resort And Spa Cancun |
The location:
This was our first trip to Cancun and we did not really understand the layout of the city and "hotel zone" until we arrived and took the bus around. This hotel is the last stop on the local bus routes that take you from the end of the hotel zone all the way to downtown Cancun.
The hotel's location is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that it is in a very quiet area of the hotel zone, so when you are walking around the hotel all you hear is the sounds of the surf and the seagulls. There was a small amount of construction noise from the north side of the Hotel as they were finishing up building a hotel just north of the Westin. However, they quit working around 6pm and I imagine that it will be finished in a few months, so I wouldn't let that stop you from staying here.
The curse part is that if you want to do any activities in downtown Cancun or the "hot zone" where all the clubs and nice restaurants are, you will be spending 10 minutes in a car/taxi or 15-20 minutes by the local bus, one way. There are MANY local buses in Cancun and from the Hotel you'll want to take the R1 (hotel zone only) or the R2 (hotel zone and downtown Cancun) buses. The buses are 6.5 pesos per person for as long as you want to ride (but you pay each time you get on or off). Still, at around 0.07 US cents, you can't beat that. Parking is difficult to find in the busy shopping and club areas, so the bus is a very good compromise. We used the local bus to go everywhere within Cancun and had no trouble with crime. The only trouble was that the bus routes are POORLY marked in downtown Cancun, so be sure to know where you need to go to get back on the bus.
One other small benefit is that if you stay here and go to any attractions south of Cancun (Cozumel, Playa de carmen, Xel-Ha, Xcaret or Tulum) then you get dropped off first from the tour bus at night. That was nice little bonus when we were tired.
The room:
We booked a lagoon view room as we have found we spend very little time in our hotel room when we travel and did not want to pay the extra for a ocean view.
The room included:
1 king size bed
2 lounge chairs,
2 end tables with lamps,
a writing table with lamp,
ample drawers for storing our belongings,
a free in room safe,
a nice closet with hangers,
a shower and a tub with an additional hand held nozzle,
clothes line in the bathroom,
one bathroom sink and toilet,
one small sink in the main room,
a small refrigerator fully stocked with drinks,
a coffee maker and coffee,
23-25" TV with remote and access to pay-per-view movies and games.
Overall it was a large room with ample space and a very comfortable bed with plenty of pillows that ranged from hard to soft. The room AC had a little digital control and was simple to use and adjust to a comfortable temperature for us. The shower was strong and always hot and we only had two small complaints for the room:
1. There was no exhaust fan in the bathroom and with Cancun already having high humidity it made the room feel a little sticky and the bathroom floor was slippery for hours after showering. We put towels on the floor to prevent from slipping in the bathroom.
2. The window to the room could only be opened about 4 inches, it had a screwed in metal hinge to prevent the window from opening further.
These two things made the room a little hard to air out during our stay and resulted in us leaving our room door open for 10 minutes to bring in fresh air. This was a pretty minor thing, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
The staff:
The staff at the hotel was very friendly and most of them spoke at least some English, with the front desk being easily fluent in English. While I took 3 years of Spanish in High School, it was not needed to have a pleasant stay at this hotel.
When we checked in to the hotel, they said our reservation did not guarantee a King sized bed. I believe this is a problem from hotels.com and not the hotel. After some discussion we were eventually given a room with a King sized bed, but if we had not arrived early in the day, we might have been out of luck. They said they would change us to a King sized bed the next day if we could not get one the first day, but they finished cleaning one and we got what we wanted. Personally I will avoid hotels.com in the future as we had this problem in Hawaii as well and only with our hotels.com reservation.
I think the staff handled most things well and were superb in every other interaction except for when a maid tried to enter our room about 10pm. Luckily we were there and while she didn't speak English well, she apologized for accidentally entering the wrong room. Keep your door locked with the security latch to prevent any potentially embarrassing situations!
Amenities:
One of the best features of this hotel is the beach area. It is a very pretty white sand beach and has a nice sized pool with a swim up bar and three smaller pools as well. There are ample showers and a ping pong table and several other games for kids. There was also an additional pool on the lagoon side with a small waterfall and fountain for kids to play in.
The ocean itself here has pretty big waves and this was a little disappointing. We had called Westin and asked if the hotel had good snorkeling before booking the room and they said "Yes, very good". If you had read my previous review on the Outrigger Keauhou Beach Resort you would know my wife and I enjoy snorkeling a great deal. We put our snorkeling gear on and briefly went in, but quickly realized visibility was zero and with the large waves it was potentially dangerous to stay in the water for too long. This was a pretty big negative as it was one of the major reasons we chose to stay here.
There are 3 restaurants at the hotel along with 3 or 4 bars. We received 2 complimentary margaritas for staying at the hotel. We both got frozen ones, traditional for my wife and strawberry for me. Both tasted very good, but were obviously not very strong. Luckily this is exactly how we like them, so that was a plus for us.
We ate a lunch and a breakfast buffet at the hotel and the lunch was average in price, quality and quantity. Nothing to heap praise upon, but not bad either. The breakfast buffet was a little pricey ($24 USD), but the food was very good with many choices.
There was also a Club Regina side to the hotel that supposedly had a really nice spa and extra amenities, but we did not even look at those services as we were rarely at the hotel. There was also a fitness center and gift shop that we did not visit.
The rate:
We booked through hotels.com (which I would not do again due to our experience here and in Hawaii) and received an average rate of $128 per night. This hotel is rated a four star hotel and it was considerably cheaper than many 2 1/2 or 3 star hotels we looked at online before booking this hotel. We were very happy with the hotel service and room, so I would say this rate was well worth it.
Summary:
We enjoyed our stay here and had only minor complaints. The staff was pleasant and helpful and the room was clean and large. With a nice quiet beach and pool to relax, we couldn't have asked for a better place to stay. Oh yeah, except for the fact that the Westin toll free hotel reservation representative told us that the beach was an excellent snorkeling beach which is simply not true. This false advertising along with the minor complaints makes this a 4 star hotel in my book. I would recommend it as a place to stay as long as you aren't looking for a hotel close to snorkeling or the night life.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
colstudent69
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Member: Brian
Location: Houston, TX
Reviews written: 127
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Instructional Technology Educator
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