Park Royal/DWM Trip Report

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lawofgravity

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Sadly, I'm back home after after a glorious week in Cozumel. I know a lot of posters here are curious about the new Park Royal so I'll get right into it.

Park Royal: First impressions are everything and after a long flight in, we were greeted by the sight of the huge palapa upon entering the Park Royal resort. It truely is an amazing looking structure and a lot of our evenings were spent sitting underneath the waterfall in the lower lounge area sipping cold drinks. Ask Manuel to make you a Havana Lights, my drink of choice. The grounds are beautiful and nothing was spared to make everything look stunning. Even the underground tunnel from the resort to the beach area looks nice. Check out the light fixtures in the main restaurant shaped like fishing boats and the artwork in the 3 a la carte restaurants. There are 3 swimming pools including two beautiful infinity pools all with their own swim up bar. The southern beach pool is long enough to do laps.

When you check in you'll be greeted by the concierge who will want to meet with you to discuss what the resort can offer. She will also want to setup a meeting for you and a Royal Holiday rep. It is best to meet with the concierge asap and politely decline meeting with a RH rep, so you can start enjoying your vacation. We tried avoiding her for two days but finally ran out of excuses. After the meeting, they never bothered us again. However, they were never pushy or aggressive about it and in fact, all the staff were extremely courteous and friendly.

Our room itself was comfortable, nothing really fancy. Hot water was abundant, showers only. The beds are firm but it didn't prevent us from sleeping. Try to get a room above the fourth floor. We were on the fourth and barely got an ocean view. There is no room service and no mini fridge and a $2/day charge is incurred if you even as so much touch one of the buttons on the safety deposit box.

There are 4 restaurants, 1 buffet and 3 a la cartes (Mexican, Italian and Caribbean) There are a variety of choices available in the buffet and I don't think anyone will be disappointed. Try and stay away from the dessert table for your own health. I was totally addicted to their cakes and managed to squirrel a slice or two up to my room every day. The a la carte restaurants all offer several choices for salads, soups, appetizers and several chicken, meat and seafood entrees. We ate twice at each of them and never had the same meal twice. Yes, you can eat at the a la carte restaurants more than once. Unfortunately, because the food was good, we didn't try out any new restaurants in town or return to our two favorites, La Morena and Especias.

As of yesterday, the pier is no where close to completion. In fact, it looked like they were demolishing the existing one to build a new one. All that's left are the concrete foundations. The on site dive shop said 6-7 weeks but it looks like there's still a lot of work to be done. If you're going to be there within the next two maybe three months I would say you're S.O.L. and may have to make alternate arrangements with your dive op for pick up. The closest piers are the El Cid to the south and the Casa del Mar to the north. Since we used DWM, we just walked the ten minutes to their shop at the base of the international pier. If anyone wants pictures of the current pier, let me know and I can post it.

Since the resort is located right next to the International Pier, there are going to be a lot of cruise ships coming by. But we never saw any of the cruisers and I would say it's almost impossible for them to get on the premises unless they know of the hidden entrance on the southern end. If you're going to leave the resort, there are two entrances. The north entrance is the main one by reception. The south entrance is hidden and you have to look for it but it's located by the stone water column in front of the Caribbean restaurant. Each entrance will take you out to the street. It's a good 40 minute walk to Chedraui market.

Diving with Martin: This was the second time we've used DWM and we couldn't be happier with them. We requested Pablo for our DM as we remembered what a great time we had diving with him two years ago. He's a real character underwater and many times we would just see his legs dangling out from inside a cave while he's trying to fish something out. He's always patient with the divers and he would never hurry us. On a sad note, I saw some of the damage done on the deeper reefs by Wilma. No where was this more apparent for me than Santa Rosa. I remembered it being alive with colour but now any flat section is covered in sand. Also sad was the eerie lack of marine life on any of the deeper dives we did. On a brighter note, we saw more variety of marine life on the shallower dives than we did two years ago. Along with the usual rays, turtles, eels, splendid toadfish, we saw our first two nurse sharks (including a chance to touch one, while it was sleeping in it's cave), an octopus that we watched for ten minutes during a night dive, three spotted scorpionfish and an absolute monster of a green moray hiding under a crevice in Yucab reef that we thought was going to swallow Pablo whole when he stuck his head into the crevice. If I could I would probably have done all shallow dives to maximize diving time and see the most amount of marine life.

In closing, thanks to all the great posters here who helped me out in arranging our trip. I couldn't have done it without you. We would like to try Bonaire or the Caymans next year so sadly we probably won't be going back for a few years. If anyone has any questions let me know, I'll be more than glad to give what little help I can.

Cheers. :D
 
Thank you very much for the report on the Park Royal. We'll be staying there the 10th to the 17th and your comments are appreciated.
A question, Do you have to make any reservations for the ala carte restaurants? If so what was the process?
 
rje634:
Thank you very much for the report on the Park Royal. We'll be staying there the 10th to the 17th and your comments are appreciated.
A question, Do you have to make any reservations for the ala carte restaurants? If so what was the process?


Yes, you do have to make reservations. They can be made from 12pm to 3pm. There's a local number you can call or you can make your reservation in person at the front of the Mexican/Italian restaurant. The lovely lady there books the reservations for all 3 restaurants. In our week there, the resort was maybe 60% booked so it was never a problem getting a table. The long pants requirement is strictly enforced for men, although I was able to get away with wearing sneakers and a t shirt. Women require long pants, long skirt or bermudas. BTW, liquors is included as part of the AI package. On a few nights, we would sip some brandy or amaretto after a meal before retiring to the lower lounge area to relax with a few more cocktails. We're not drinkers, but god it sure felt good.
 
Thanks for the report, It's nice to know they have the Park Royal up and running. It was where we stayed on our first trip to Coz, back when it was called the El Sol or something like that.

Truly awful, it's one of those lemmons to lemmonaide stories, if the food wouldn't have been so bad on that trip, it may have taken us a couple more years to experience the wonderful resataurants in town that are now our regular hangouts.

Glad you had a good trip, two thumbs up for DWM here also!
 
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