Barcelo Maya Palace - All Inclusive

Customer ratings & reviews

TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

18126 reviews

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  great location for family vacation

  Spring break trip with HS senior group. The resort is beautiful and even thought it was full booked it didn't seem like it. It is so large it never seems crowded. The drinks are great and food is good. Book the restaurants early so you can get in. Great time for the whole family

  Apr 23, 2025
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  Very big property, be prepared to walk!

  This is a very big place. Our room was almost as far as you can get from the lobby / pool / and food areas. Easily a 10 - 15 minute walk. There are enough pool chairs for about 1/4 of the people here. If you are not up at 6 am to "reserve" a chair, you will not get any. There are signs everywhere that state there is no reserving of chairs, but that is clearly not enforced or observed. Avoid the buffets during peak meal times, they are crowded, and food is very slow to be refilled once empty. Quite often there was very little choices because of this, and lots of the hot food is cold. Lineups for the freshly cooked stations were sometimes 20- 40 minutes long. Considering the resort is "all inclusive" we had to pay to use the water slides, and kids under 17 had to wear life jackets. Unfortunately the life jackets grip the slide and make it impossible to slide down. Quite often the kids had to walk down the sides. Complete waste of money. We also visited the go karts, but kids have to be 15 to drive them, so some of our group was left out. The karts are in very poor repair, some barely running, and others sound like they are falling apart. This is our 4th trip to Mexico, and by far the most expensive resort we have stayed at. While it is a nice place, We feel it is not worth the high price, we have had better experiences for less money at other resorts.

  Apr 22, 2025
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  Don't go here.

  This resort is terrible, save yourself money, your sanity, and go somewhere else. I don’t even know where to start. 1) Check-in: Check-in at all-inclusive always takes a long time which is to be expected, they literally don’t even offer you anything to drink let alone a water bottle. 2) Water: Getting water bottles during our stay was such an ordeal. We have a 7-month-old so we needed bottled water to make formula. I asked multiple times for a case instead of getting 1 or 2 bottles at a time. Front desk employees would tell you to call room service, and they would send a case, room service would say they aren’t allowed, this back and forth happened constantly. We also had to drink water so the 4 small bottles in the room would get used up quickly, room service would only send 4 at a time and then when I called to get more the employee rudely said, “what do you need so much water for, we already sent some”. I explained that I had a baby that needs formula plus two adults who also need water, and she hung up the phone on me. It’s an all-inclusive, I’m not sure why they are so hard up on water, but it was painful. To get enough water to last the day you had to keep collecting bottles one by one from every bar/restaurant you went to. 3) Customer Service: General customer service was terrible; it was a drag for employees to answer any questions or help you. At the buffets, you would have to ask for a drink several times and you were lucky if you got something by the time you were done eating. Staff were rude and gave you the run around every time. The supervisors and managers were the worst, so good luck asking to speak to one and go that route. At the bars, they were refusing to serve people half an hour before closing time, so you couldn’t even drink if you wanted to. No staff at any level had any accountability for anything, you are on your own. 4) Food: The buffet food was not good, sometimes not even edible. Buffet food isn’t always 10/10 at all-inclusive, which is to be expected but this was bad. Looking forward to the a la carte restaurants? Good luck because even if you try to book the first day you show up, everything is already apparently booked, the kicker is if you do manage to get a reservation and show up, it’s empty so it’s weird how you can’t make any bookings. It’s bizarre that you book an all-inclusive but are unable to make reservations because they are full every day, so you must eat at the terrible buffet. There is no poolside food whatsoever, so if you are at the pool, you can’t get any food, you must leave the pool area and go eat at the buffet. You aren’t allowed to bring any of the buffet food back to the pool area. You also can’t go to the buffet without a shirt on from the pool, so you need to get fully dressed. 5) Poolside chairs: Just a heads up, that people wake up at 7am and go put their towels and things on the beach chairs to “reserve” them for the day. It’s funny when you go to the pool you don’t see anyone sitting on the chairs for hours. So, unless you just take one that already has someone’s things on it and haven’t seen anyone sit there, you will never get a beach chair. 6) Transportation: Beware that this resort doesn’t have the usual golf carts to transport people from hotel to hotel. You must wait in the lobby for a bus, sometimes up to 20 minutes or more, plus the time it takes to get to whichever resort you want. 7) Activities: They advertise activities such as go-carting, haunted house, escape room etc. but you must pay extra for everything as it isn’t included. There really isn’t much to do. No shows or anything to watch. 8) The only positive thing I will say is that it was clean and seemed to be well maintained. I’m not sure who is giving this place good reviews, maybe it’s the only place they have ever been, they have never eaten decent food, and like being treated bad? If that’s what you are into then definitely go here. This place really made for a terrible vacation, and you felt scammed for spending thousands to go there. The worst part is that you could do nothing about it, or you were risking even shittier customer service. I wouldn’t be surprised if they cut you off from water if they felt like it.

  Apr 22, 2025
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  Family vacation

  Excellent resort with abundance of option for people of different ages. Great food and entertainment during the day and night. Highly recommended

  Apr 22, 2025
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  Great resort

  Overall a great place and checked every box of what I’d like from a resort like this. Only thing that was a drawback was a tour group called GradCity showed up halfway through and turned a relaxing resort into a frat party. Kids were not rude just loud and everywhere. Just not the vibe I’m looking for anymore.

  Apr 21, 2025