Travel

All Inclusive or All Hype?

This past October we took a big family vacation to the Riviera Maya in Mexico, about an hour south of Cancun. We booked an all inclusive stay at a well known beach front resort. As an all inclusive virgin, I really had no clue what to expect. All I knew is everything was paid for in advance, at a seemingly discounted price, and it was the popular route to take when vacationing in that region.

When we got there we were amazed by the resort. Massive, gorgeous, right on the beach. 10 restaurants and 9 pools. It was awesome.

We were also amazed at the fact that everything was FREE! I mean ya technically it’s not, it’s included in your package, but the way we were all eating and drinking it would have easily been 5 times the cost.

Another great thing about all inclusive is you really never have to leave the resort,(which is not really my thing), BUT it’s great for small kids. We have a 2 and 4 year old, and doing anything too crazy was just not going to happen without a meltdown every 30 minutes. So we stayed within our beachfront resort for 6 days and it was great except…

THE FOOD and WEAK DRINKS.

After the third day of being there, we were all pretty burnt out on the food. It started to feel like you were chugging epsom salt due to the high salt content for preserving the food. Also the drinks. Oh man the drinks. My husband introduced me to a term called “near beer”. Apparently its what they serve you at all inclusive resorts. It’s basically beer with a quarter of the alcohol content in a normal beer. They also substitute hard alcohol with liqueurs..yikes..although probably a blessing in disguise.

All in all, I would recommend all inclusive if you have kids and want to save some cash.

I wouldn’t recommend it for a honeymoon or romantic getaway.

That may be a little vague, I know, so here’s a list of all the PROS AND CONS of all inclusive packages by blondebrunettetravel.com