Sensatori Resort, Riviera Maya

I have just returned from Sensatori, and I would recommend it to anyone.

The staff there are lovely, and can't do enough to help you. The restaurants are all fantastic. My personal favourite was the Spoon, which is a self serve buffet, or if you choose you can have a menu meal. This is particularly good for breakfast, when they have everything like fruit, pancakes, a selection of smoothies and English breakfasts - you never leave there feeling hungry. Also, the service in the spoon is fantastic, there is always someone to greet you at the door when you come in, and the waiters do the best they can to make your meal enjoyable.

The entertainment in the hotel is brilliant, because there is always something going on, the only way you can be bored is if you don't look for things to do. Every night, in the roof top lounge they put on a brilliant show.

The kids facilities are great too. They have a kids club and the staff there is lovely, my younger sister was there almost every day, and had more friends there that were staff than kids her age.

The only complaint I have would be that some of the tiles in the kids pool were chipped, and my sister got a piece stuck in her foot and had to have it removed my a paramedic on Christmas day, then after they 'sorted it out' I took my baby sister in the pool and cut my foot on a piece of tile that they had chizzled, but not picked up. But after they found out about it they were trying so hard to make it better and safer.

Overall it was a brilliant holiday and I would love to go there again. I would honestly recommend this hotel to anybody.

In summary we all thoroughly enjoyed the holiday and were lucky with the weather, which for most of two weeks was hot, sunny but often with a pleasant sea breeze. It would be difficult to fault the hotel in terms of administration, rooms, gardens, facilities, entertainment, activities, bars and - the fantastic selection of restaurants.

The only slight criticisms would be that it is more a good 4 star than 5 star luxury, it has a very average beach which gets a lot of seaweed and so is not ideal for swimming or snorkelling. We also had a poor flight out but Thomson (First Choice aircraft) redeemed themselves on the way home!

Flights/transfers

We flew out on a 15-year old First Choice B767-300. The B767 has 258 seats in a two class layout, 63 premium, 195 economy with a decent 33” seat pitch and 2 + 3 + 2 twin aisle layout. The aircraft looked fine inside (apart from the First Choice colour scheme!) and out. However, during the outbound flight the crew had a lot of problems with the Panasonic in-flight entertainment system and 4 of the 6 toilets were declared un-usable with 2 hours to land! The crew were pleasant and tried their best to keep a lively wedding party seated and sober but this proved difficult and made for a constant background noise. You get two meals on the 10-11 hour flight. You do not get any breakfast and the main meal is a UK time late lunch and a snack about 2 hours before landing. All drinks are chargeable: canned soft drinks are £1.50, tea/coffee £2.00 and a beer or bottle of wine is £3.00. You get a drink service before each meal so you need to get extra to keep for your meal plus on the outbound flight they ran out. Cancun airport was a bit chaotic and you have to complete two forms inbound a Tourist Card and a Customs Declaration but we were only given one of the two in advance on the aircraft, which was a shame. The hotel transfers were quick and efficient at around 20 minutes in an air-conditioned minibus. The flight home was much better, being on time with working toilets and a nicer meal.

The Hotel

First impressions are very good with a welcome towel, drink and check-in was painless. Your first view of the resort is from the roof garden lounge so you can take in the whole complex with its lagoon-like interconnected pools. The rooms are very spacious with his and hers sinks, walk in wet room and two large separate beds or king sized four poster. Every room has a balcony, mini bar, jacuzzi bath, TV, DVD and IPod docking clock radio. The air conditioning is very good as long as you keep the patio style balcony sliding doors closed. Room service is good with daily linen change, mini bar refill and turn down.

Location

The Hotel is rather isolated and although you can walk southwest along the beach to Puerto Morelos in about 50-60 minutes. Heading northeast takes you towards a distant Cancun reaching a nudist Hotel Desire and another Azul Hotel in 15 minutes. The Hotel has a very average beach which shelves gently but is uneven and a little stony plus gets a lot of seaweed so not ideal for swimming or snorkelling. Because the Sensatori is all-inclusive you only need to budget for tips ($3-5 dollars per day per head) and trips or visits (say $200 per head for 2 weeks). There was some building work but it only involved maintenance (drains and balcony planters), In terms of views all the rooms (apart from sea facing suites) face the pool area. To the northeast side is a rather unattractive building plot area between the Azul and Desire Hotel.

Food

There are 6 restaurants to choose from the international Spoon, a bit canteen like to the intimate Le Chique, the only one for which you need to book well in advance. In between you have the Zocalo, Mexican; Sienna, Italian; Tapaz, Spanish and Zavaz, Caribbean. There is also a beach BBQ for lunch and on Thursday evenings for Mexican night. We recommend the terrace of Zocalo for al fresco breakfast or lunch. We thought Zavaz was the best restaurant. The service in Sienna was very poor and Le Chique is certainly an experience but may leave you peckish! Make sure you check all the opening times as some are only open in the evening and some shut one night.

Activities and entertainment

In terms of activities and entertainment there is a weekly "What's On" sheet for Sport & Leisure, Entertainment and Play which has a two week rotation. You would be hard pushed not to find a sporting activity during the day to suit from morning beach and pool exercises, beach and pool team games, card gaming, tennis, dance lessons, shuffleboard and kayaking. It's even not too late to brush up on your Spanish. There is nightly entertainment in the roof garden lounge stage area with a house band and then the Show Cast or external entertainers such as a Cuban Circus, Mayan Dancers or Michael Jackson tribute. For the young or young at heart there is a Thomson Cancun "bar-crawl" on Mon and Thurs which ends in Coco Bongos or Carlos "Charlie" plan to take the next morning off! For the children there is an under creche and play area, for 4-12's there is a daily supervised entertainment schedule and rock climbing wall. Finally for teenagers there is a separate supervised programme and dedicated teens club computer games area (closed for one of our two weeks for repairs).

Trips and visits

In terms of trips and visits the resident Sensatori (Thomson) reps will give you a local orientation and tell you about the trips which range from $15 alternate day shuttle ride into Cancun or Playa del Carmen (ferry to Cozumel) up to the $210 per head Whale Shark experience. You may want to acclimatise for a few days before contemplating any trips as the heat is debilitating and for one day out in each week I would budget $200 per person. We went to Playa del Carmen for a shopping trip and dip in the sea. We also went to Chichén-Itzá which cost $99 and included free drinks and snacks on the coach, a swim in a cenote natural bore hole and buffet lunch. Note that the trip is 3 hours each way so it makes for a long day. Some of our party had been before and so went to the Xcaret Eco Park which they thoroughly enjoyed and was similar to the Xel-Ha water park – both cost $109 to $139 and include lunch and snorkels/life jackets.

Beach, pool and spa

There is a choice of sunbathing area, adequate sun loungers and parasols around the pool and beach although if you want a particular spot or it's busy you may find towels have beaten you to it! There is covered seating for 70-80 in the BBQ area. There are also 29 beach cabanas of which 10 are in the premium section and 20 palapas albeit all seem to get bagged very early in the morning but free up mid/late afternoon. There is also a nice jetty with shaded seating. At the concierge and towel change huts you can borrow/exchange paperback books and magazines (plus they promote their own trips and time share!) There are three swim up bars by Zocalo, Zavaz and a premium one near Le Chique. The "World-class" spa looks very swish but is quite expensive and there is a reasonably well equipped and free gym.

Amenities and facilities

The hotel does not seem to have a business centre but you can have a Wi-Fi connection for $15/day or use the CyberCafe (6 modern terminals) for $10 per hour or $6 for 30 minutes. There is a small and very pricy shop for gifts, clothes and toiletries you have forgotten or run out of. There is a separate gift shop with local crafts.

Standout staff Ian, Lizet, Euan and Jorge activities staffWaiters Wil(bert) in Zavaz, Mateo and Luis in Zocalo. Bar staff Carlos in Mojito, Merly by Pool.

The Sensatori is actually a very good resort. Well laid out and tastefully decorated throughout, however in internal shop is very expensive, so try to buy your extras at other places, instead of the resorts own shop.

The food could be a little more varied, as the restaurants seem to offer the same menus for the day and evening meals, so choice is limited. Could be better for a 5 star rated resort. Our holidat lasted two weeks and during the entire fortnight we never saw any fresh fish on the menu.

As mentioned on other reviews, the beach is awful, very rocky and difficult to walk on. It's hard to swim and uninviting, as the sea is full of seaweed. Each morning they send a tractor along that turns the sand to make it look better!

When we arrived at the hotel, we discovered that we were booked into the wrong type of room from the type specified on our booking. From this point our holiday started to go downhill. We paid over £200 to upgrade our room and were moved to a swim up suite the following morning.

The trips operated by the tour company are expensive and due to the location of the hotel it cost $90 return to get to over to Cancun. It was cool when we were there and pools were absolutely freezing, we went in them twice for a very brief swim.

Now the good points. The food is outstanding and we could never understand how people did not find the food attractive and varied? Compared to other All Inclusive hotels the Sensatori really does deliver in the dining department. At no point did we have any reason to complain about the food.

We flew to the Sensatori Resort on the 27th February. The Hotel is amazing, a real 5 five star resort.

The hotel fairly new and offers modern rooms that are large compared to hotels in Europe. The food is great except for the one restaurant you have to reserve your table.

If I were to change anything about this Sensatori it would be the beach. It's simply a let down compared to the suroundings, it's so rocky, it has to be seen to be believed.

Overall the staff at the Sensatori were really great, offering good service. Your rooms were always cleaned twice a day! The nightly entertainment was fair but nothing special. The bar closes at 1 o'clock in the morning.