Secrets Excellence Riviera Cancun

Carrettera Chetumal - Puerto Juarez
324-342, Villas del Mar, No. 3
Cancun 77580
Mexico

Description: 440 rooms

"Excellence name well deserved"
My wife and I spent 3 nights at Secrets Excellence and were very impressed. If opulance, luxury, a doting staff, delicious food, a wonderful beach, and lovely pools is what you're looking for in a resort, this is the place for you.

This is without a doubt the best resort we've experienced.

"Royal Hideaway vs. Secrets Excellence - Mayan Riviera"
We have been to Royal Hideaway (RH) twice before coming to Secrets Excellence (SE). We were a little worried if the place could match our great experiences from before. Overall, both are excellent in their own way. We always travel with another couple during our December holiday, and they agreed with this conclusion also. RH is upscale sophisticated... high brow with conceirge style check-in. You feel like you "have arrived" when you pull up through their stone driveway. SE is beautiful and more relaxed than RH, with a regular lobby check-in, but also elegant, although the entrance has less impact. To tell you the truth though, once you are in the hotel you don't go back to the entrance, it's what's inside that is important.

SE was more fun and young than RH. No tequilla conga lines at either however, which is the way we like it. SE had live music during breakfast, lunch and dinner. Good bands and solo musicians. All four of us are in our early thirties so that was appealing to us. RH had limited musical entertainment at night.

RH has a smaller more pristine property...down to the wood poolside lounge chairs. SE is more expansive, with less elaborate details on the property.

SE never required reservations for their restaurants. RH does. RH had the incredible "afternoon" tea service with white glove butler service and champagne. SE did not. Although we made our own at SE, which the staff was more than happy to accomodate.

Room...Our room at SE was more elaborate than RH.

FOOD... Excellent at both. Wine selections are very good at both, although RH had slightly better choices. SE however does not serve wine by the glass, they serve it by the bottle. A very nice touch.

Appeal... Again it depends on what you want. For totally relaxing ambiance, I would return to RH (albeit, once they return it to its splendor, Wilma did a number on so many of the properties including SE, although they seemed to have recovered quickly). For laid back fun, nice entertainment, I would go back to SE.

Either way, I think you are making a good choice and I wish I was returning to one of them.

"Secrets Excellence - Living up to it's name"
My husband and I wanted to be pampered on our honeymoon, and we were treated like royalty from the moment we got out of the van. Cool towels were handed to us, and our bags whisked out of our hands. We didn't get the champagne at check-in (not really sure why, as we saw others with it later in the week) but we weren't very concerned.

We were given a walking tour of the grounds by our porter on the way to our room. And what a room! We had a partial ocean view (a honeymoon upgrade?), swans and rose petals on the bed and four cold beer in the mini-fridge. It was heaven.

Maid service twice a day is great. We had some timing issues with the turn-down service. They kept coming by around 6, which is when we would just be getting back to our room to clean up before dinner. It was not problem though, you just put the do not disturb card in the door when you arrive, and turn it over when you leave. Turn down was always done by the time we came back after dinner.

The food was incredible. The service at all the restaurants is fabulous. My chair was always pulled out for me. The portions are designed for you to be able to have multiple courses, but my husband found that the desserts were often a little disappointing.
You must have Juan at El Patio make you Mayan coffee at your table. It was fabulous to watch.

There is entertainment every night after dinner, but not much to do after 10. The Desires Bar never really got going. I don't know if that is the way it always is, or if it was because the resort was less then half full when we were there.


Our one and only "incident" was with AquaWorld - the people in charge of lending out the beach equipment. The pedal boat we took out broke when we were half way to the reef (about 200 yards off shore). The fellow on the beach seemed to look directly at us (using his hand as a shield against the sun) as we waved the broken pedal in the air frantically. But alas, we had to swim for it, and towed the broken boat along with us. We did, in fact, make it all the way back to his booth, pedal in hand before he noticed that anything was wrong, or that we had even "returned" the boat.

The Manager of Aquaworld was contacted only after my husband marched to The concierge desk, having only received a blank stare from the Aquaworld employee. The Manager was apologetic and was surprised that some of our fellow vacationers had recognized that there was something wrong, but his staff had not. We let the issue drop, and we certainly would let it ruin our holiday, but some gesture (a spa visit perhaps) would have been appreciated. I think Aquaworld is run independently of the hotel, but the hotel should realize that incidents like this still reflect poorly upon them.

The entertainment staff is wonderful, hard-working and dedicated (but gentlemen, you might want to watch your wives around those boys - they are such sweethearts). Jean-Paul took us on a beach walk, and showed us some of the destruction left from Wilma. It was humbling to see the amount of damage the storm had caused, and heartening to see how much clean-up and repair had already been done, especially at the resort. Any work
that went on while we were there would have been taken as general maintenance under any other circumstances.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of SERC is how friendly all the staff are. Everywhere you go, you get an Ola, or Buenos Dios and always a smile. There were people planting and cleaning constantly, working extremely hard and still they would always smile and greet you as you passed by.

The final word - Go. You will have a great time, we did.

"Couldn't have asked for more!"
My husband and I went to this resort for our honeymoon, and in our opinion by far, we had the best honeymoon possible! We had a great time with all of the entertainment possibilities that the resort offers. We even went deep sea fishing, which really wears you out! On our first day there, before we even checked in, my husband and I were in the sea and he got bit by something. Well we went to the doctor and couldn't hardly undestand a thing he was telling us, so we went and saw one of the men that handles the bags and he saved us like $150.00 and told us how to handle it. His name was Jose, we just absolutely loved him, he was definately our amigo! Everyone going on a honeymoon should go here and bring lots of money for the spa! It is worth EVERY CENT!