Mexico: 8 Days at all-inclusive Paradisus Cancun
Back in April, we traveled to Mexico for 8 days at my first all-inclusive resort experience in Cancun 🇲🇽!
Overview of our trip:
- 📅 Dates: April 15 – 22, 2025 (this includes 2 Easter statutory holidays)
- 💸 Price paid: $2500 CAD per person (includes direct flights, airport transfers, and the all-inclusive hotel)
- 🏨 All-inclusive resort: Paradisus Cancun
Here is a review of our 1 week vacation.
The resort: Paradisus Cancun
When we first arrived at Paradisus Cancun, I noticed the structure of the hotel. It was like a row of 4 giant pyramids on top of a hill. The resort grounds is huge with a lot of green space in the front and entrance that made the hotel seem so grand.
Walking into the lobby, I felt it was a beautiful space. They had really high ceilings decorated with so many hanging vines that it felt like we were in an oasis in the jungle 🌿. Check-in process took longer than I expected because they needed to double check we had a room with a single king bed and not 2 separate beds, but aside from that we made it to our room pretty quickly.
We had a spacious and clean room in Tower 3 with a balcony view that faced the front of the hotel. This balcony had really beautiful sunset views 🌇. Mini-fridge was always stocked daily with snacks and drinks.
After a few initial days staying in our room, we noticed a very loud bass vibration and noise in the AMs coming from somewhere. We suspected it was across the main street where there are other businesses like restaurants and clubs, so we asked for a room switch. The staff were hesitant to switch us as it was a busy weekend, but they were able to accommodate us and move us to a room in Tower 1.
This room looked older/less modern and interestingly had a hot tub (kinda dirty) outside in the balcony. It also had a sofa bed that looked out of place compared to the rest of the furniture, but it was much quieter so we were content.
The rest of the indoor facility was always clean and beautiful. The resort is very wide so you may find yourself walking a lot from one side to the other. In the main lobby halls and areas, it can get stuffy in the afternoon as they have an indoor-outdoor situation going on so the inside of main areas do not have AC.
Most of the excitement happens near the centre of the resort with several bars, sitting areas, restaurants situated in the bottom floor. In Tower 1, there is also a little fountain/garden area where there is tea time served and live music on certain days.
The real highlight I would say is the outdoor area. There is direct beach access which is so convenient and nice because it is less busy than if you were to go to a beach 🏖. The sand is soft and the seaweed situation in April was actually not too bad so you can definitely swim and play in the ocean.
I will say the ocean waves can get a little rough 🌊. I know how to swim and still got a little fucked up by the waves. The beach also stretches across several different resorts so make sure not to walk too far off.
The pool is equally great. There are many different areas including children swim areas on one end (farther away from the main pool). The main pool was a fun area where they do activities every day (family friendly but not that lit).
I especially liked the swim up pool bar where you can sit in the pool and order a drink and enjoy that drink while still being in the pool. It was just a little inconvenient to have your phone with you or cash to tip because you are swimming and may not have your items with you.
On a separate not, the beach chair situation was not the best but not dire. If you do not want to wake up early in the morning to snag a lounge chair by the pool, you will need to opt for one that is not in the shade or simply take ones down at the beach below (many more available and more shade with straw umbrellas). We did not feel the need to pay additional $ for a daybed.
The restaurants
Top 3 reasons why I travel is to eat so one of the most important factors I was looking for at an all-inclusive resort is that the food has to be somewhat decent 😋! I don’t want any food poisoning happening, no diarrhea, no bad food even if it’s free 🙅🏻♀️.
Paradisus Cancun had 9 restaurants for us to try and since we were staying 7 nights 8 days, we were able to try all of them. Tip: You need to make reservations for these restaurants, so I recommend you book them all early on and not stress about it later.
Restaurants we did not visit and why:
- Lemon Fish: This is the Japanese restaurant. We didn’t really trust sushi in Mexico and it honestly did not look better than any sushi from Vancouver so we skipped it.
- Sal Steak Cave: This costs additional $
Malva food bazar: the buffet
On our first night, we settled in and were ready for dinner by 8pm. Unfortunately, none of the restaurants had seating until 9pm or later, so we headed to the buffet.
The buffet looks substantial but after doing a walkthrough, there wasn’t a lot that was appetizing to me. It felt more like a regular standard buffet and some of the items really lacked flavour or texture. The drinks were also made really strong so after our sub-par meal here, we never ate at the buffet again ☹️.
Blue Agave
The first restaurant we dined at was Blue Agave for lunch on our first full day. They are open for lunch and dinner but the menu is the same so we only came for lunch (some restaurants are not open for lunch).
Blue Agave is a casual Mexican restaurant serving up lots of different tacos. Some of my favourite items are:
- Taco de lechon (braised suckling pig taco)
- Taco lengua de res (beef tongue taco)
- Taco pastor (pork and pineapple taco)
- Guacamole and chips
- rice pudding
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Food by the pool or beach
Short and sweet (by the pool): the pizza and calzones were bad 🍕. Ice cream 🍦 and taco stand were good.
By the beach, there are workers who you can order food and drinks from. There wasn’t really a menu so we just ordered what we saw other people were eating – a hamburger and fries 🍔. Surprisingly, these were really good and hit the spot!
Flora
Flora was inside the hotel to the side and it was described to be a Mediterranean restaurant with some questionable branding (the staff were like idk what kind of restaurant it is now).
We tried a variety of their menu items including: tuna tartare (colour looked off – I do not recommend raw menu items in Mexico), beet salad, meatballs, octopus (small serving of tentacles), steak, tiger shrimp, brownie, poached pear and meringue.
I thought everything was just ok and none of the main dishes really stood out to me. My husband liked it more than me.
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️
Aqua Marine
Aqua Marine is a seafood restaurant located outside by the pool in a giant straw hut. It is actually quite breezy and comfortable under the hut and you can wear more casual clothing dining here (like your swimsuit and a cover-up). They are open for lunch and dinner and this ended up being my second favourite restaurant in the resort!
My favourite items on the menu were the shrimp and fish tacos, as well as the octopus entree 🐙! These looked so colourful and had some great bold flavours. I wasn’t a fan of their rice dishes though.
We came back for dinner on the same day and tried their whole fried fish, sea bass entree, shrimp and mussels. Everything tasted good but the desserts like the panna cotta and creme brulee were a little lacking.
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cielo
Cielo is the second Mexican restaurant in the resort. They are connected to Blue Agave but are only open for dinner and is less casual/more formal.
We had reservations here but ended up missing it because we wanted to check out the Mexican street party event at the main pool. Little did we know it was basically the buffet food but outside.
We ended up back at Cielo around 9:30pm to try their food. I really liked the guac and chips, the pumpkin soup, corn salad, aguachile and my braised pork tacos 🌮. My husband is not a big fan of all this slow-cooked meat for taco filling, but I felt it was still yummy. I did like Blue Agave more if I had to compare these 2.
And on another note, it was surprisingly not easy to find guacamole at this resort. Aside from Cielo, Blue Agave or room service, I didn’t see any in the buffet.
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️
Sante
Sante is the restaurant in the adults-only area of the resort (AKA “The Reserve”). Since we were not staying in the adults-only area, we were not allowed to visit those areas, including the adults-only pool and this restaurant. However, we were told we could reserve Sante for dinnertime.
Like Aqua Marine, the restaurant is outside and undercover with a great view of the beach and ocean. It was quite windy on the nights that we dined here, but not cold.
Our favourite items here were the arancini (fried well), shrimp and lobster bisque soup (second time was a tad salty), tiger prawn skewers, shrimp and clam squid ink pasta, baklava, and a coconut sponge cake. Not sure if it’s because this is for adults only, the food tasted the best here and seemed to be the most consistent 👍.
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cappella
Cappella is the Italian restaurant located on the outside patio of the buffet. They are only open for dinner but have a nice view of the smaller event poo if you want to see any live entertainment while eating.
Things we liked from the menu included the boccocini and tomato salad, calamari, chicken parmesan, gnocchi 🍝, tiramisu, panna cotta and the cannoli (this was the best!).
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cafe
There is a cute little Nespresso coffee cafe near the buffet and beach exit. The pastries were all from the buffet and as you know now, I am a buffet hater so didn’t love those pastries. But the coffee here was good ☕️! Just wish they had a matcha drink on the menu.
Room service
You can order room service for free 1x a day. We ordered it on our first night as a late dinner and there were very few options to choose from and it didn’t taste fresh or that awesome.
I only recommend to order breakfast room service as there is more options 🍳. We liked the Croque madam and the french toast + fresh fruit, coffee/tea and breads.
Free activities
There are a lot of different free and paid activities at Paradisus. Since we traveled as 2 adults, I will only include the activities we saw or participated in and opt out of any of the children activities.
Tennis or mini golf
The activity we did the most was probably tennis 🎾. You can book the tennis court and have private time by yourself – they provide 2 rackets and 3 tennis balls. So if you’re not good enough to play with 3 tennis balls, don’t play.
The mini golf ⛳️ is in a similar area (outside near the entrance). We felt it was too hot to play tennis or mini golf for most of the day and we would only book early morning (before 10am) or right before sunset.
Swim (pool and beach)
Of course it’s a beach or pool bum day! One of the most relaxing activities was just swimming in the pool, playing in the waves, and relaxing on a lounge chair.
I’m not a very relaxed person and it’s not like I brought a smut book with me so I liked to just scroll on my phone while drinking a cold margarita slush.
The only activity we joined in the main pool was a zumba in the water – many of the adults joined.
Free live entertainment
There is free live entertainment every night but it repeats after a week:
- Monday: silent disco
- Tuesday: don’t remember
- Wednesday: Children performance
- Thursday: Dance and singing performance
- Friday: Mexico night with a mariachi band and cultural performances
- Saturday: Circus show
- Sunday: Fantasy/Disney show
Definitely the weekend entertainment is a bit more fun and exciting!
Gym
There is actually a really nice gym inside Paradisus Cancun and it was pretty empty for most of the time. Complete with free weight area, multiple Stairmasters, cardio, smith machines, cable machines, etc. 🏋️♀️
The spa was not free! Neither was the escape room.
Drink!
We like to drink and enjoyed the unlimited alcoholic beverages at the resort 🍸. We liked the bar above the main beach exit as it was close to the “club”. My only gripe is that everything closes at 11pm so you’ll have to start drinking early!
Excursion: Cenote + snorkelling half day ($200 per person)
8 Days in a resort can get boring as a couple with no children. I highly recommend you sign up for at least 1 excursion if you are staying 7 days. It’s nice to actually leave the resort and still feel safe.
We signed up for an excursion at Paradisus Cancun at the excursion desk. You can probably find a lot more variety of excursions online and they are likely cheaper, but we didn’t book ahead and was fine with paying the $200 per person for our half day excursion.
This included transportation to and from all the locations from our hotel, a buffet lunch, and tour guide. Our excursion took us to 3 different spots.
The first one was a cenote for swimming, jumping, zip line and snorkeling. I didn’t love this spot because it was filled with tourists (all the spots they took us on had tourists) but this one especially had a bunch of screaming kids/teenagers near us. We only got to do the zip line and jump maybe twice before we were ushered into snorkeling. The snorkeling was bad and the water was not clear – not much to see.
The second spot was the best – it was a cave cenote. The water was much colder but super clear and clean. You really need a tour guide to explore this cenote and it was so cool to explore and see the inside. still very touristy as they installed lights in the cave so you can see and there was also a photo zone inside the cave.
Third spot was a snorkeling spot with a lot of fish 🤿! This one had a lot of people but you can kind of explore on your own.
Overall, we liked our excursion and our tour guide did a great job. I just didn’t love picking up all the different guests from different hotels (I thought it would mostly be guests from our own hotel). This accounted for quite a long travel time in the bus as we made so many stops and since we were the first stop, we had to wake up the earliest.
Final thoughts
We had a relaxing and enjoyable time staying at Paradisus Cancun for 8 days 🥰. After a chaotic first half of the year, this was exactly what I needed to de-stress: a trip where I have to make very little decisions!
The facilities and the stay met my expectations and for the price point, days stayed, and dates stayed (long weekend), I think it was worth $2500 per person.
The service in the hotel was also pretty great. I read a bunch of reviews of poor service or people harrassing you to buy a timeshare, but we didn’t get any of that. Staff were helpful and always had a smile on their face. They do rotational so you may see your favourite bartender working at a different bar the next day.
Overall, I think Paradisus is a great choice for your first experience at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico. Good for couples, friends and families!
Sincerely, Loewe
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