Resort Details
Customer Ratings & Reviews
TripAdvisor Traveler Rating
9189 reviews
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Mar 06, 2025There are much better places to stay
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Resort Review The Good: ⭐ Beach – 5/5 Absolutely stunning, with pristine sand and crystal-clear water. ⭐ Scenic Walkways & Wildlife – 5/5 Beautiful paths throughout the resort, with plenty of animals adding to the charm. ⭐ Restaurants – 4/5 The food was good! The Bad: ⭐ Buffet (Breakfast & Lunch) – 2/5 Nothing appealing, I ate toast and eggs for breakfast and the lunch buffet was nasty, so I eat burgers which I almost never eat everyday and quality, though dinner can be hit or miss. ⭐ Service at the Buffet – 3/5 Getting coffee is a challenge, even when tipping generously. The Ugly: 🚫 Pool & Beach Service – 0/5 No service at all, which is disappointing for a resort. 🚫 Bar Experience – 1/5 Long waits for drinks, and overly sweet cocktails. I asked one bartender that was setting up his bar if he had any ice and water and he said to me “listen lady, I’m busy”. 🚫 Self-Service Atmosphere – 2/5 If you don’t mind serving yourself. Most staff were nice but a lot are not overly friendly, which I’ve never experienced before. Usually, I know most by name and are friends with them…. Final Verdict: ⭐⭐ – 2 to 3 stars max. Not worth a return visit.
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Mar 04, 2025Best beach, worst service
If you love to relax on the beach and swim in the ocean then this resort is for you. If you also like good entertainment and friendly staff then this resort is not for you. I went to Iberostar waves quetzal with my husband and 10 or our friends for his 50th. We weren't all 50, some of us were in our early 40s lol. I wanted to say that my husband has a sleep apnea machine and it worked and had power all night as I know that's a huge concern at some resorts. The only issue here was that some of the rooms there isn't plugs next to the bed so if your cord isn't long then maybe bring a small extension. We often go to adults only but one of our friends was bringing a child and so after reading a million reviews on trip advisor I decided to book this resort as it said the beach was good, ocean was swimmable and food was decent. All very true. .This resort seemed great for families. There were many 60+ people and many families. Not many young adults. I may be a tiny bit picky with my resort standards. I have been to Mexico many times. I have stayed at several other resorts and think I have an understanding of what is good and bad. So based on that I'll break it down by pros and cons in my opinion. Pros - The food was good, not great but good. We did the buffet every day for breakfast, your usual resort breakfast. They had decent lattes, cappuccinos and espresso so they get bonus points for that. We ate at 3 of the other restaurants. The smokehouse was really good you didn't need a reservation to go. The Japanese restaurant was okay, the show that they put on made it worth going as it was entertaining. The Italian was pretty good, probably my favourite. I never did find the Mexican restaurant. For lunch there was a buffet that had a few meat options change daily. Or you had the option of going to the burger, hot dog, fries station. The burger wasn't great. The fries were good. I was excited to use the app to book reservations for our group, but it didn't work to book everyone. Some of my friends got in a day later and we couldn't reserve for them without their room number so they didn't get to join us for 2 of our dinners. - The beach was huge and sand was so soft. There were plenty of umbrellas on the beach with lounge chairs. I walked the beach and noticed several other resorts (including the Rio next door) didn't have umbrellas on the beach. Normally I am a sun lover but I really was happy to hide in the shade. The water was so green and blue and clean. They do a great job cleaning up all the seaweed every morning. The only downside of the cleanup was the machines noise because I had a room on the beach and it started at about 630am every morning. I am a light sleeper though and earplugs helped. - The jungle walk - To get from the buffet to the beach you need to go through the jungle. It's about a 5min walk from the lobby to the beach. Seeing the animals and getting that shade is nice. They have lots of coti, peacocks, a tortoise, turtles, fish, flamingos. We only saw monkeys once on our trip while we ate breakfast. At night the animals make all sorts or noise and in the early morning too. I didn't have a jungle room I had a beach front room so they didn't wake me up. If you are a light sleeper bring earplugs. I saw lots of peacocks fly up to the balcony at night and they are noisier than you'd expect. - The location - Although this wasn't right downtown playa it was a 8min cab ride away from all the action. The cab into town is about $10 per way for up to 4 people, the price goes up with more people but they have price map in the lobby so that you know you are not getting ripped off. Playacar is also in a gated community so it is very safe. There was a small market off the Main Street to the right that you could walk to. It is a 5min walk. There you will find vendors like downtown that are selling things for more money. Probably double. You will find a restaurant, Starbucks and pharmacy as well. - They have an icecream bar and it was delicious - There is an adults only pool bar - There was a quiet pool that you could always find loungers at The cons - The front lobby staff were not friendly or accommodating. - The pool is deep and you need a floaty or something to enjoy it. The one side that is shallow is full of children and them doing games. They did a foam party one day and that was sort of fun. I also joined water aerobics, which was fun but all in Spanish. - The shows were terrible and mainly in Spanish. They had the same entertainment staff for the fist 3 nights just talk and do games and I had no clue what they were saying. I'm used to resorts talking in both English and Spanish. I found most people, even the patrons of this resort were Spanish though. - The rooms are old and outdated. This is common and I didn't care too much originally, but the first room they put us in was by the lobby. Anything on the 2900 building sucks. You get view of the parking lot. We ended up paying an extra $600 US to move to the beachfront. Which had a bit of a more updated room. My friends were all in the 2600 building. I thought all if their rooms were nice. The resort of basically by building groups with 2900 being the furthest crap rooms and 2000 being on the beach nicer rooms. Some of the rooms AC seemed to turn off when you leave the room. My first 2900 room was like that and it made it smell very musky. My 2000 room the AC stayed on, which was nice. - The upkeep on the building happens often which is good but they love to start at 6am . This means leaf blowers, hammers, sweeping etc. I wish they started these things at 9am so that people could sleep. - There is no room service, there is no drink service on the beach or at the pool. You have to stand in line to get drinks. The drinks were not great. I probably won't ever go back to the Iberostar even though I absolutely loved the beach and spent most of my days on it. I think I would prefer to find somewhere with better service and that accommodate English speaking travellers more.
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Mar 04, 2025Beautiful Location Great People
The staff are the key to the wonderful visit we had coupled with the Beach which is a beautiful turquoise color. The restaurants are very good as well. Seeing the Monkeys, coti, and flamingos always started the day off good. But it is the staff that hooks you ...
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Feb 26, 2025Huge Disappointment
Booked for our friends 50th, had high expectations and not even remotely impressed. Extremely rude front desk staff, got 3 out of 5 of our reservations mixed up and the staff were inconvenienced to help. Service was not good, majority of staff were not friendly and did not want to go out of their way to make us feel welcomed. Got told by one staff member “I’m busy lady, I can’t help you right now”…that is mortifying! Food is very average, rooms are out dated and run down. The only nice things were the jungle and the beach. The entertainment was embarrassing and it was overall a boring experience. I would not spend my money to go back there.
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Feb 24, 2025
Beautiful resort
We spent a week at this resort the 3rd week of January. Check in was fast and efficient for both my husband and I and our daughter and her husband. Once checked in, we were helped with making our dinner reservations for the week which was nice as we didn’t have to worry about it then. Despite the weather not being the best with some clouds and occasional rain, we had a great time! Our room was in building 23 which was close to the pool which was nice. The room was a bit outdated but it was clean and we didn’t have any problems with it. The resort grounds are absolutely beautiful with the jungle and the paths that you walk to get through the resort. I would say that someone with mobility issues could have trouble walking the paths as the rocky ground was a bit uneven. The walkways outside of the jungle areas, on the outside of the room blocks were smooth paths. It was fun to look for the monkeys and to see all of the other animals. So many birds, peacocks, coati, flamingos, fish, tortoise and other little creatures that roam around. The paths were well maintained and always kept clean. The pool area was beautiful and clean and the beach is amazing!! We did get up early to get desirable chairs on the beach as they do fill up and we spent most of our time there. There were plenty of chairs around the pool and it seemed that you could get one somewhere at any time of the day. As for the food, we really enjoyed it! The buffet had a great variety and it was always tasty. We ate here every morning for breakfast and several evenings. The lunch restaurant near the beach always had plenty to choose from. I enjoyed the nachos and fresh guac every day! There was also a snack bar outside of the lunch restaurant where you could grab a hamburger or hot dog and fries and this was also very good! We went to the Hibachi restaurant one night and the “show” was fun and the food was very good. We enjoyed the Italian but wouldn’t run back there. The smokehouse was good and didn’t require a reservation. The meal was served family style here with a little bit of everything on the plate. I would have preferred a menu where I could order only what I knew I’d like. There were a couple of things on the platter that I could have passed on. As for the staff and service…I can’t say enough good about them!! Everyone was so nice and helpful and worked so very hard to make sure we had an enjoyable week! They always had a smile on their face and were willing to help. We really enjoyed our time here and wouldn’t hesitate to return!