El Dorado Casitas Royale by Karisma

It disgusts me that I am spending 3 mornings after my wedding writing this, but I don’t want anyone else to have the same terrible experience. My wife and I decided to have our ceremony at El Dorado Casitas Royale in Riviera Maya, Mexico. We started the planning process over a year in advance of our wedding day, August 17. Overall, the resort is wonderful including all the food, beverage and amenities. BUT we had one too many issues with quality service for the amount of money we spent and brought into the resort over a week long period. I’m just going to list out all the issues we had with the resort, staff and wedding planners. This is long but please read in full. We arrived to the resort and the told us our check-in was scheduled for the next day, thus no room ready. We had to show them our reservation confirmation multiple times to confirm. They rushed to get a room ready and it was not thoroughly cleaned or prepared. We had to call 3 times to have the lights in our pool area repaired so that we could sit on the pool/patio area at night. (see photos attached - old pills left on coffee maker (not ours, dusty light, holes in sheets). Shuttle service - we had over 25 rooms booked at the various hotels across the resort. We had multiple events scheduled, yet there were never shuttles available to take people back, especially my 80 year old grandmother, 90 year old aunt and other older relatives. The resort is huge and they were aware of events as I booked through their wedding department, yet I had to keep calling. Spelling of names - my wife’s name was spelled wrong multiple times on documents used for our celebration. I had multiple calls and conversations prior to arriving to the resort about the spelling yet on documents it was spelled wrong. We didn’t have menus in place for the start of our rehearsal dinner due to mispelling (see attached photo). The resort corrected but after everyone was already seated. Lack of communication between resort and various departments- we had special dessert deliveries to rooms for each guest during their stay; some were delivered and some were not with the excuse of the person had not checked in when the person had checked in hours or a day before. Some deliveries didn’t provide enough for 2 guests in the room, which was also to be included. Wedding Day- THE TRUE NIGHTMARE!!!! The planners asked us who would be getting ready in each room, we made it clear that our 2 nephews would be getting ready with my wife and her guys. Yet they put them in a room on the adults only side, when my nephews were walked over they were stopped. The room was relocated but they delivered their refreshments 15 minutes before they needed to leave for the ceremony. Wedding Day Issue #2 - It began to rain, this was a risk we assumed however, the staff did not take time to gather any of our items including our wedding cake (my wife had NONE), our items on our sweetheart table (my wife is missing her $200 eyeglasses), our guestbook, the table number stands we provided. They relocated us to a downstairs bar and set up a sound system. They never attempted to serve the desserts that we ordered as a part of dinner and all of the wedding staff disappeared after they relocated us before the actual event was over. Wedding Day ISSUE #3 - There were 2 other weddings that night and they had staff and shuttle support following their event while we were left high and dry. I kept calling for a shuttle for my grandmother and aunts because we were at over a 30 minute wait. When I called back the staff member said I was rude and hung up on me!!! This was as my guests sat outside waiting for over 30 minutes!!!! When they did finally send a shuttle it ran out of gas about 2 minutes into the ride. Wedding Day ISSUE #4 - We received no documents, contact etc regarding our actually marriage certificate and documents. I went to the wedding office twice and still received none of my materials from the wedding or details on when I would receive my materials or copies of all the documents we signed. This final is the biggest issue we experienced and was mentioned by all my guests except two who were not black. We all felt treated very differently by upper level staff compared to other guests who were there for weddings. We are black and the majority of our guests were also black. I have a friend who speaks Spanish as her first language and she heard the conversations amongst staff being rude to and talking about our guests. The shuttle issues and lack of quality customer service felt directly related to race. I saw shuttles ready for the other weddings (both not black couples) while nothing for ours. I watched members of the reservations team ask for cards to hold for rooms that were paid in full but never did that to other guests. There was a serious lack of consistency from what is advertised as a 5 star diamond resort and how I felt treated despite the large amount of money with spent at this resort. THE GOOD - I do want to shoutout a few folks who actually held true to what is advertised - Alicia from the Wedding Team was phenomenal and should be promoted to a head planner and not just assistant as she was consistent and committed to providing excellent service. Daniel from housekeeping was thorough and excellent. We also had some great bartenders (Eduardo and Benjamin) and restaurant receptionists. Donna from Destination Weddings was great planning and scheduling rooms and attempted to follow through with the resort with the multiple issues. If you want to discuss in more detail before booking here please message me. I don’t want anyone to experience the issues we had during their special time.

Arrived home yesterday form Casitas, 14 family members to surprise our mother on her 80th birthday, and just wanted to say a HUGE THANK YOU to all the staff for helping us pull off the surprise. From the wonderful Sr Francisco Torres at the 32 Exotic check in for arranging and coordinating restaurants & Birthday BBQ on the beach, the members of the butler team, Kat & Enrique. Concierge Ruth for their parts with the birthday conspiracy. Last but by no means least the awesome bartender Adal in 29. Membership has it's benefits but there are so many beyond the tangible. So I'll say again a very heart felt THANK YOU.