Spent the week of April 14th to 21st on the 5th floor of the gorgeous Riu Jalisco. Views of the palm trees, courtyard, and ocean were mesmerizing while enjoying a nightcap on our balcony each night.
We would wake up to balmy weather and fresh ocean air to enjoy made to order omeletes (with the best guacamole and salsa I've ever had) and fresh squeezed juices of various varieites.
What to do? The conversation over our mouth watering breakfast each morning.... choices are endless. Many games, sports, and tournaments daily, dance and spanish lessons, activities for the kids and of course the ever saught after pool and beach time. We never had trouble finding pool chairs, often moving unoccupied chairs to better locations. Mojitos at the swim up bar are not to be missed!
Lunch was enjoyed at the Buffet at the beach, all kinds of choices. No need to be picky, food always tastes better with a view of the Pacific anyway! From pasta and fish to burgers, pizza and ice cream. Again, anything tastes great with that guac and salsa!
We took the bus into town on a couple of days, enjoyed shopping and sightseeing (the bus a much cheaper and often faster option than a cab, the stop conveniently located just outside of the Riu). One day trip excursion on a Catamaran with an amazing company called Cieleto (highly recommended - excellent service). Snorkeling at Los Arcos and Parasailing at Los Animas.
Golfed at El Tigre and Flamingos, both beautiful and very difference courses. Flamingos was a great value at only $60 US on weekends (the price was higher during the week, we couldn't figure out why). A five dollar cab ride gets you there and we didn't need to book a tee time, in fact we were the only ones on the course on a Saturday afternoon! El Tigre was a little busier, but not by much. We booked a twilight tee time at 1:30 and paid $99 US including cart, and excellent service by the Marshal and Beer Cart.
I had read all the usual positive and negative reviews of the resort prior to our trip, and was more than impressed upon arrival. The facilities were spotless, with something for everyone in our group to do all hours of the day (our group ranged from age 8 to 36). A la carte dinners were a memorable experience, we favoured the Asian themed "Gran Dragon", but enjoyed the Brazilian Grill as well. A massage in the hut on the beach was truly relaxing and make sure to book some time in the jacuzzi at the spa (no extra charge).
Nightly entertainment was a riot, with a mix of dancing, singing, and interactive games with audience members. Don't be embarassed to get up there, you're in Mexico - no one knows you! Vendors line the courtyard on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays until 11pm so you can pick up some souvenirs for the suckers back home ;o)
I want, I want to go to Riu.... I want, I want to go to Riu..... can hardly wait to go back!
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Date of stay: April 2007Trip type: Travelled with family
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Check-in / front desk
Service
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
Front Desk: No line when we arrived and we promptly got our room on the 5th floor on the north side of the inner court (I e-mailed with this request earlier). I stated on our request form that this was our second stay with them and a couple days into the stay we received a free bottle of tequila.
Waiters/Bar Tenders/Lobby Staff: Generally they were very accommodating. All requests that we made, like asking for a pillow top for our beds, were done in a reasonable amount of time.
Rooms: When they say that there is no privacy, they mean it. the main room with the two beds that we have opened up to the sink area and shower. If you are in a room where you want a little privacy.....good luck. The toilet is in a closet sized, all-tiled room that has a door to close behind you. It's small and not ventilated. No ceiling exhaust fan either. This is the only room other than the closet, and main entry that had a door. The room itself was pleasing to the eye, nicely tiled, nicely painted, and looked in very good condition. If you use the balcony slider be sure to close it or the main A/C will turn off until the door is closed. The A/C is moderate, but with the ceiling fan on high it was nice and cool. In room safe awesome and used every day.
Noise from the courtyard: we hear music pumping a couple of times and some cheering, but we didn't feel that it was a factor. I'll bet if you were in the southern portion of the resort you would hear much more from the entertainment.
Noise from the hallways: kids having loudness contests a couple of times.......drunks whistling in the dead of night, and inconsiderate adults with very loud voices were disappointing. We were there 10 days and only 3 of them had issues. I just could not believe that parents did not care how their kids behaved or the adults that just didn't care about others.
Food: Overall not very good. I found something to eat everytime we sat down, but only around 4 of the meals was I very impressed with what I had. Most of the time the food was very blah. I never had seconds. Ice cream cone station at La Botana and the buffet was a hit with my 5 year old.
La Botana: I read a couple reviews that discussed bird issues at the RIU. Well, it's a problem. La Botana is right next to the beach and doubles as the "Steak House" at night. We ate there for lunch. When lunch just opens up and there are not that many guests there the birds go nuts. They are eating off plates, the macaroni salad in the salad bar.....you name it. They are everywhere. I actually close-lined a blackbird and knocked a full hotdog out of his beat. I told my wife about it and she asked me where I hit it. I said, "In the weenie!" Sorry, funny to me though. In a nutshell the birds are annoying and everywhere. Seeing them actually eat off the salad/desert bar was disgusting.
Pools: Here is were I can clear some issues up. There really is no "Adult" or "Childrens" pool. Well, there is a 3rd pool that is the size of a big doughboy. It comfortably has room for about 8 kids and it's right next to the RIU Kinds Fun Zone thing. It is around 15 inches deep?
Kids Pool with slides: 4 feet deep everywhere, but a little shallower in the "hot tub" (doesn't work and is just connected to the main "kids" pool. There are 3 slides with water running down them. Very fun for the kids. The point here is that it's 4' deep and if your kid can't swim you have to monitor them the whole time. Therefore you have both kids and adults in the "kids" pool.
Adult Pool with Swim-Up Bar: 4 feet deep in most places. In the two areas where there are 4 in-the-pool-and-water-lounge-chairs the water is only 2 feet deep. The swim up bar area is not that long and people crowd around it. Most times if you haven't already parked your butt there you'll have to get out and go behind the swim up bar and order there. Normally there isn't a long line. It is my opinion that because this pool has two rather large areas where the pool depth is only 2 feet this is why you have a lot of kids and adults both in this pool. Good news is that the spa actually worked in this pool.
Resort Capacity: Most days the resort was about half full. A couple of times the place got packed and there wasn't much room for any activity in the pools.
Poolside loungers: Never had a hard time getting one. Sometimes in the middle of the day we could not get one right by the pool, but behind those.
Beachside loungers: I didn't count how many were there, but I estimate that there were more than 200. Never did I see them even close to being all taken up. If you wanted one with shade it was tougher pickens, but there are just a bunch of them.
Beach Activities: Our first 7 days saw not much happening (when it was quieter too), but our last three they started doing a bbq, entertainment, drink stations, and it got more "involved". Oh well.
Lobby Wi-Fi was awesome.
Sports Bar food is a joke. It's a microwave station.
Grounds: always very nice
Beach: very nice if you ignore all of the cigarette butts in the sand.
Beds: Rock hard and uncomfortable even with the pillow top.
On well, trying not to repeat reviews. Send me a message for more info.
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Date of stay: June 2011Trip type: Travelled with family
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
We booked with Sell Off Vacations a group vacation to Riu Jalisco Dec 29 - Jan 5/14. There were 18 of us and we were very happy when we arrived to find that we were all on the same floor. One of our rooms was beside some young adults from Calgary taking full advantage of the free alcohol that the resort provides. Every night it was noisy with doors banging and yelling and screaming into the early morning hours so needless to say most of us did not get any sleep. We told our Sunwing rep and also the hotel manager that the noise was getting unbearable and they assured us that they would put security on our floor which did not happen. On our way back to our room from the nightly entertainment we witnessed one of the young adults hanging from the balcony on the fourth floor!! I do not begrudge anyone from having a good time but believe that the hotel needs to beef up their security before someone gets hurt!! We were also disappointed in the A la cart booking system as one of group members stood in line for one hour just to find out that he could not book for the group that someone from each room had to stand in line. The rooms were clean but not until later in the day. New Year's Eve party was a really great time, Valentino and all of the entertainment crew did an amazing job. Riu really does need to figure out the sharing between the 3 hotels though as Palace and Vallarta were able to come over to Jalisco but Jalisco can not go to any of the others and it was very challenging to find seating and for the waitress to keep up. We heard from others that they came over to Jalisco because the entertainment was better. The food at the buffet was great and the service was exceptional being that we were such a large group. We just love Antonio as we would walk in for supper and he would have a table set up for us in no time! New Years Eve was a special meal and it was great!! The hotel and grounds were very nice but I am just not sure because of the noise problem that I would recommend this hotel to anyone wanting to get an uninterrupted nights sleep. Also be aware that there are no doors on the bathrooms in the rooms so if you want privacy to shower you will not have any.
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Date of stay: December 2013Trip type: Travelled with family
Room Tip:Choose a room on the upper floors as mosquitoes are a problem on the lower floors.
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
We were a group of 11 ages 20-50 some family and some friends and everyone had a Fantastic time! The rooms were very big and clean and balcony was huge! Room 3129, 3132, 4129 and 4132 all had king beds and a large balcony. Room 3130 was two dble beds and a smaller room and balcony but still very nice. We did the Rhythmn of the Night Excursion $89 per person (6 of us) and loved it, the boat ride, the Show and the Meal was the BEST! We also did the Downtown Express Tour $25 per person and had Abraham as a driver, he was wonderful, very informative, we walked along the Malecon and saw the statues and checked out the beautiful church (Lady of Guadalupe, I believe), we did a tour of a Tequila Distillery, wow , that guy was great, we tried many samples, and we also did some shopping downtown Puerto Vallarta. The waves on the beach are pretty big sometimes and the red flags were out often enough so watch for that, picking seashells on this beach is great! For a la carte meals we went to the Nayarit (Brasilian food), very good and interesting when they lit the food on fire in the pan on the table. We also did the El Gran Dragon, was also good. Ismael a 20 year old waiter in the La Botana and some a la carte's was fantastic! We were also lucky enough to watch the (turtle )men dig up the turtles and then they let us release them ( they were very particular about the way they were handled and we had to stay behind a line and not interfere with them once they were on their way, also had to wash hands with sandy water to ensure they would get no lotions and stuff on them) into the ocean. I would stay here again no problem, and we met people that had been here from 2-10 times, so would definately recommend this place to others. Great Job RIU JALISCO, we had yet another wonderful holiday!!!!
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Date of stay: January 2010Trip type: Travelled as a couple
Value
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Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
Just got back from Riu Jalisco and in all had a great time. The food was great, weather was perfect and the rooms were very nice. Changed rooms after the 2nd night to a courtview side which was much nicer. The resort is huge with elevators only in the main lobby so a lot of walking to get to the rooms or pool/beach. Would be helpful for additional elevators on the other end. The only complaints I would have is lots of kids. This made it very noisy in the hallways since everything echos and the kids would run and scream in the hallways even fairly late at night. As well had a couple of teenagers in the room right beside us who partied all night so had to call security a few times. Apparently its cheaper for locals between May to June so kids are free. As a result it was bombarded with kids and teens which were the main cause of the noise and disturbance. My friend who I travelled with was there in January and did not experience this. As well the spa is very expensive. Be prepared to pay top dollar for everything or try and bargain. Had a massage at the spa which was not so great then found they have a massage hut on the beach which they do not tell you about. Massage hut was amazing, It's much cheaper and a much better massage. With regards to the rooms having a little curtain closing off the bathroom area would be convenient for privacy when sharing a room but otherwise the rooms were great. Very comfortable and great air conditioning. Balcony overlooking courtyard is nice and a convenient cloths line rack was helpful. All in all I was very pleased and had a good time. Going at another time when there's no kids Nov - Feb would be better but probably more expensive.
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Date of stay: June 2013Trip type: Travelled with friends
Room Tip:Stayed in room 6121 which was more in the open corridor so you hear everything. Especially the...
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
Okanagan Falls, Canada16,848 contributions378 helpful votes
You won't find much,,as only 6 master jacuzzi suites in the resort.
In the Review section, type in the key words,Master Jacuzzi and allreviews will pop up ,some with pictures.
The jacuzzi is on deck above the balcony,via a circular staircase.
Going to Riu web site you will find, they cost Double the price of regular room.
Book early if you want one.
Good luck
