Bluebay Grand Esmeralda

The grounds were immaculate. The pool was very nice, and there were always chairs available during my stay, no matter what time of day it was. (I stayed between April 28 - May 5). My room was great as well, a nice walk-in shower, good AC, a mini-fridge stocked daily with water, soft drinks, and beer. The room was a ground level garden view room, which I highly recommend. The ground floor rooms have a nice large patio, compared to the upper floors which have a smaller balcony. The food was also impressive. I'm a vegetarian, so I sometimes worry about choices, but there was always plenty of options at the buffets. At the A La Carte restaurants there were fewer choices, but that's to be expected.

I found that sometimes the service was a bit lacking. This is often rare when visiting Mexico, as in the past I have found that the staff are generally quite eager to please. There were some good staff members of course - we had all lovely servers at the buffets, and Mario, who cleaned our room, was excellent. However, we encountered a number of average and below-average employees during our stay, at the front desk there were a couple unpleasant people, as well as some of the bars throughout the resort. It seemed the bar staff gave service depending on how well they were being tipped. The beach is also a bit of a let down, brown water with a large amount of seaweed washing ashore - but hey, it's nature, you can't really complain. It was nice that the traveling salesmen who patrol the beaches were not allowed to come ashore. They waited at the water line and called out to come a see their products, but they didn't bother you while you sat on your lounge chair in the sand. On the other hand, I found the resort photographers fairly pushy. When relaxing at the pool they come around and force people to take photographs wearing sombreros, holding iguanas - that sort of thing. Maybe some people enjoy this, but I prefer to sit in silence and read my books and they were incredibly pushy, they wouldn't take no for an answer!

Pools were large, food was good. Staff was excellent.

Beach had lots of weeds in water. Not sure if it was just a nature thing, but the staff cleaned it every day.

Huge complex

Food was great and rooms were comfy

The facility is just too big and hard to navigate at times. Stayed in Mexico many times and there are better places to stay for the same price.