Riu Palace Pacifico

Beautiful hotel with lovely staff. I can’t fault anything. Glamorous decor, lovely rooms. We loved the night life after the entertainment and danced into the night on many evenings. Everyone is happy here! Gorgeous days around the beautiful pool and beach, the sea is so warm! Drinks were plentiful and branded if you ask for them. Two of us are vegetarian and were happy with the variety of food. Many happy memories were made. Thank you.

First time to Mexico and our first time in a Riu. Loved it and still have the holiday blues a week after being home. The decor is dated as said elsewhere but the staff keep it spotless. Rooms are spacious, we found the bed extremely comfortable and I had a good nights sleep every night (not something you hear me say often)! There are 3 sockets in the room but we took an extension lead and only used one. You have to climb in and out of the bath/shower but there are handrails and the shower is good. Never had any problem with water pressure. Spent the whole time on the beach so can’t comment on the pool. The beach is amazing and Roger was an absolute gem running up and down all day getting drinks for everyone with a permanent smile on his face. Buffet was good, great selection of food, never cold and no matter how fussy there is always something to find to eat. We tried 3 of the 4 speciality restaurants. La Toscana (Steakhouse) - not overly impressed. My steak had the biggest bit of fat on it and the lobster looked more like a starter than a main. We were sat near the back next to the kitchen doors and every time someone walked in or out we got a nasty whiff of something, which was off putting Kyoto and Krystal were superb. Beautiful food, beautiful presentation and the pink champagne in Krystal is a really nice touch. Evening entertainment was standard holiday type stuff to be honest. Seen better but seen worse and the entertainment staff really do put there all into it. Overall as a family we loved it and would go back but there’s plenty of other places to see first. Totally enjoyable and a great Mexican experience!

Never been moved enough to bother to write a review but this one's an exception. (And that's coming from 40-50 nights away each year in the US, CenAm, EU and Far East). The short version is I wouldn't recommend this hotel to friends or family, I think they self grade at five stars, TA at four, I'd give it a three plus. Room. Family suite for eight nights booked directly with the hotel, sandwiched between some time in Boston and LA, as this seemed to be the only hotel in the area with that sort of set up. Rooms, dated (aware of this from the website photos) but spacious. Aircon has a good knack of leaking in cigarette smoke from adjacent rooms if the guests there have decided to smoke in doors. Some bits falling off and only two sockets per bedroom. Food Just on the right side of avoiding total disaster. Three out of four picked up a bug from the food halfway through the stay and we binned the AI in preference for going out and eating. (Anything in Bucerias is infinitely better) Food is put out in the buffet at an industrial scale and can be left to fester. Which even if it hadn't, would be at its best pretty low quality fare. This was a bit of a surprise having read other reviews, so it's horses for courses. If you like that sort of food then you'll be fine, but there are way better AIs in Mexico than this. Restaurants Grill - summed up a pretty low grade NY strip. Fusion - have to wear trousers to maintain some sort of idea of a standard (though if you were wearing flip flops with them, smashed out of your skull, and screaming at YouTube that seemed to be AOK - go figure). Food though to be fair was pretty good and some care had gone in to it. Pool Rusty metal work in places, missing tiles (that have been painted blue to hide they're missing). As others have written pretty manky by the end of the day, despite the cleaning efforts. The mankiness comes from the busiest part of the pool being the swim up bar area where drinks are often spilled and people using the jacuzzis that smoke letting their ash drop in to the pool (which is a nice touch). Abandoned the pool and went to the beach - which is the main sell of going to Vallarta. Entertainment Walked by a few evenings to see the staff working their asses off on stage to a room full of seated, motionless and silent people (OK mostly motionless apart from the lifting of drinks). So probably more bizarre than entertaining and the closest comparison I can come up with is a mid 1980s Pontins. Cleanliness Pretty good. Always someone cleaning something and the attention to spotless windows in the public areas was truly impressive (you can read that as obsessive). Even if it took a little while for the contents of someone's stomach to be scraped off the floor outside one of the lifts. Possibly the food or possibly the result of the top pick activity of some of the guests getting straight off a plane, plonking into a lounger and pointing themselves at the sun until they go properly pink whilst drinking as much as possible.. maybe it was a combination of the two, so take your pick there. If you find the review useful then fine, if you don't agree with it that's fine too, not troubled either way. Just my own opinions based on our experience there. Ultimately, it's on me for booking it and next time I'll check to see if the hotel appears on the TUI site and avoid it rather than relying only on Hotels.com which is how most of my bookings are done.