Club Med Cancun Yucatán

Hi,

This is my 1st post so please don't flame me.

I have young kids and am taking my first Club Med trip to the Yucatan resort. Whe I was getting prices, the booking agent suggested the Jade Pavilion as the rooms had water views, bigger and the price difference was not that much. I think early December must be the low season.

Anyway, does anyone know what the additional services at this pavilion are and what they cost to use? e.g. Room Service. More specifically, I have an 18 month old daughter who still takes milk before bedtime. Is this something I can order for room service?

I also need coffee first thing in the morning before I can function. If not I am completely non-compos mentis. Are the rooms equipped with coffee machines or do I have to walk to the main pavilion like a zombie for my caffeine hit?

What are the rooms themselves like? Do they have a small bathtub for the kids or are they going to have to take showers?

Sorry for all the questions but this is the first (of hopefully many more) "family" Club Med vacations.

Thanks for any info you can offer.

Daniel

Hi, Daniel! Room service was included. The only thing we paid extra for was for upgraded wine. We had a coffee maker in our room and there was also fresh coffee downstairs in the Jade lobby (it takes about a minute to walk downstairs).

We found the dedicated staff at Jade to be very accommodating and they went above and beyond to make everything right for us.

Only some of the rooms in Jade have a water view. The other side faces the interior of the village and the tennis courts. Our rooms in Jade were the same as the rooms in the other buildings. However, if you manage to get a suite in Jade, those will be bigger and nicer than the standard rooms.

We did not have a suite in Jade so our room had only a shower. They did have a plastic baby tub in the room that you could use. They might also have had a bottle warmer? Not sure.

I think Jade is definitely worth the extra cost, especially if you have kids. There is a private pool (no hauls to the main pool if they're tired), and room service can be a lifesaver when everyone is cranky.

Have fun and please post a trip report!

Lara

Check out this site which also has some pictures of the Jade suites.

http://cmcancunreview.com/

As to the normal rooms, we went down with a family a few years ago and the adjoining rooms worked out fine. The only drawback was that there was a stwep down to the balcony. We had two kids just under 2 years and they gave them a "baby kit' which included a small plastic tub for use in the shower. One other thing that was handy is we brought two-way radios for communication. We have CDMA phones and although there is supposed to be coverage there wasn't any or if there was it was bad. If you have a GSM phone you will probably have coverage. We stayed in Jade years ago before it was renovated and the other drawback is you are far from the main area. I also can not recall if the main rooms have coffee pots.

Jim

Hi Daniel,

I will be in the Jade building in early december too (with my wife and my 4 years old son). This will be my third trip to Cancun Club Med but my first time in the Jade building so I will follow this thread with interest.

Pierre

O.K. So I arrived back yesterday from my stay in Cancun. I stayed in the Jade pavilion and would recommend it highly. That being said, I have never been to a Club Med before and thought that I would get a lot more use out of the room service. That was not the case. The rooms are nicely furnished and serviced very well. The pavilion has its own entrance, reception, pool and staff. The pavilion is fenced off on one side, has reception at the front of the building and fenced off at the rear of the building towards the restaurant Las Cazeulas.

The good:

Great location and service from the room and pool service staff. Eduardo in the Jade Pavillion was always delightful and tried so hard to speak French with my wife. He is an asset to the resort and it was always a pleasure to see him great us at the door. A smile goes a long way.
Great food at both the Main Buffet restaurant and the 2 specialty restaurants. It is obvious the have a French chef in the kitchen with the pasties they were turning out. Delicious!
Well maintained. The were almost an army of staff trimming plants, washing windows, picking up cigarette butts etc. etc. The resort was impeccable.
Loads of sporting activities and the availability was awesome. The longest I waited was 5 minutes for a catamaran
GO s were generally friendly. My kids fell in love with Sergio from La Hacienda.

The not so good:

Restaurant Hours - For a resort that markets itself as a family resort, they obviously don’t understand this. 12:30 lunch and 7:30p.m dinner is way too late for small kids to be eating. This messed up my kids schedules from day one and they never really recovered. As a result, my kids were constantly tired and miserable for the entire vacation. This alone would be a reason for me to never good back to a Club Med.

Lifeguards – One lifeguard had the nerve to tell my wife where and where not my baby could walk, even with mummy less than a foot away and under surveillance. She was either too close or too far from the pool edge (in the Jade pool) and even suggested to my wife that our kids were out of control. He was over our shoulders all day, every day. We watch our kids like hawks and didn’t appreciate the extra “attention” this lifeguard was scrutinizing with us with. Kids are not cattle and sometimes will not listen, not even to lifeguards. My only suggestion is that they have more family friendly lifeguards in the pools and leave the hardcore lifeguards for the beach

Managers – We had two interesting experiences with the Hotel managers in our visit. The first was the cocktail invitation in the Jade Pavillion. The manager and staff invited the guests to a cocktail and champagne drink by the pool on Monday night. The staff pounced on the champagne and helped themselves leaving guests to serve themselves. As it was the champagne my wife was after, I had to wait 15 minutes until the staff was done serving themselves. My second experience was when I wanted to discuss the lifeguard situation (see above) which obviously upset my wife. I mentioned it to the concierge who promised to mention it to the hotel manager and have her call us back. We heard nothing; in fact, eagle eyes lifeguard was back at it the next day with another couple.

We had a great vacation but realistically, there is a difference between being kid ready and kid friendly. The steakhouse and Mexican bistro restricted us to the Main Buffet and the opening hours there were more limited then elsewhere. It is O.K. to say that you are kid friendly, but you really have to be kid friendly. Most of the activities are restricted to kids a little older which they can do at other resorts when they are the same age anyways. Restaurant hours were downright pain for the kids.

I would go back to this resort without a doubt, just maybe not with the kids.