My husband and I were at the Riu Jalisco for a week in mid May. The hotel was full while we were there but there were no long lines or long waits, up to about 10 minutes if it was busy. All the food was good to very good. We ate at the buffet, steak restaurant and the Italian. The buffet had so much variety and we over-ate. The ala cartes helped us to control our calorie intake and servings were more than satisfactory. Drinks were pretty good, not high end alcohol but ok. We spent hot afternoons in the Sports bar as it had a/c and Saul was a friendly bartender. Staff were very busy and worked quickly to serve everyone.
The beach is great for walking, soft sand that does get hot, not like Cuban sand. The water is dark Pacific Ocean with lots of waves but at least you could jump in and cool off.
The rooms are a bit dated but are kept clean. We didn't spend much time in there except to shower and sleep. The view from our room was over a dried up lot next door. The grounds of the property are very nice and well kept.
You can walk over to the Riu Vallarta and have drinks and lunch and use the facilities just not restaurants for breakfast or dinner. The menus looked the same as at the Jalisco. The Vallarta has been renovated, modernized, since I was there 4 years ago.
There was a White Party one evening and I think it is once a week, so bring some white clothes and have fun! The evening entertainment is ok and you can always sit on the beach and listen to the waves if it doesn't suit you.
We walked into Bucerias one day. It's about a 40 minute+ beach walk and this time of year is blazing hot. Wear your bathing suit so you can cool off once in a while. Keep walking until you see the stairs up to the street and you will be in the street market area. It's a day out. We also got a massage on the beach - $25 CAD for 1 hour - it was very nice. My husband did parasailing from the beach and totally enjoyed it. $80 CAD for about 6-7 minutes. Otherwise we just beach walked and relaxed which is what we went for.
The one thing that was not impressive was the daytime entertainment. For a couple of days they had the mics turned up so loud and yelled into them constantly so that there was nowhere to escape it, even though the resort is big. No relaxing on the beach while the entertainers were supposed to be engaging with the people at the pool because it was just too loud. My husband asked them to please turn it down as I'm sure the people around the pool were unable to talk to or hear their neighbour. The assistant manager (as she described herself) told him this is what the clients want and he told her he was a client too and he's asking for it to be turned to a moderate volume. He likes to listen to his music fairly loud but this screaming all afternoon was annoying. The people on the beach are obviously not participating in the pool games, they are hoping to relax and remove themselves from those activities. He did make a written complaint and for the last couple of days it was better so I hope management listened.
We did get a good deal on this quick getaway, the food was better than good and the staff were friendly. We had a nice time overall.
