El Dorado Casitas Royale, a Spa Resort - All Inclusive

Customer Ratings & Reviews

TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

9910 reviews

• 

  Casitas staff deserving recognition

  We love the Casitas section of El Dorado Royale & have been back 9 times now over the last 12 years. This review is to single out the above and beyond care & attention we received from the staff. In particular Ramon , the beach butter at the 3000 section of Casitas! Even met his father who also works at the resort. Jorge de la Torre (consierge) also was very helpful and attentive, and finally, Guillermo at the Exotic Club beds section at El Dorado. People like this is why we come back! Ramon deserves recognition for sure! 👏 can't forget the whole team at D'Italia Casitas restaurant! Bravo 👏

  Apr 03, 2025
• 

  Very disappointed

  This was our first time at the Casitas Royale, we chose it as we heard it was comparable to the Valentin and The Excellence (we had been to the Seaside, Palms twice before). Unfortunately we were very disappointed. We stayed in the 3100 block (private pool) for one week. We were told by members that the 3100 block was for members only and were surprised we were there. Most conversations revolved around if we were members or not. If you are not a member, you are made to feel unwelcome by some of the guests. Our restaurant breakdown - rated poor to excellent - Santa Fe - poor - D’Italia Casitas - very good - Jade - fair - Kampai - good - Chef Market - poor - D’Italia - fair - Spot - fair - Cabana Pizzeria - very good - Health bar - very good - Riconosce Mexicano - fair Our pros and cons: Pros - spacious grounds with many pools - spacious rooms - outdoor shower - balcony pool (not private), cannot sit in pool. - friendly staff Cons - beach is unusable - too many venders coming onto the main walkway yelling at guests to sell them silver, cigars, hats, etc. - membership recruiting is pushed on non members pretty hard - pool chairs at 3100 block were taken up by 6:50am - making reservation for dinner is a real pain. Most restaurants were 50 - 60% occupancy at dinner and yet, could not get reservations. - little to no signs or placards for directions - poor entertainment - not a true adults only. Generations should be separated. - ants in the sinks even after fumigation - gecko in the room - broken and old room furniture in our room - room replenishing was very inconsistent - toilet in our room would not flush, contacted the concierge to repair but it still require four flushes each use. It appears that management has stopped caring. We were told the resort had a 70% occupancy, but it appeared to be less We will not return.

  Apr 02, 2025
• 

  Nice Resort But.....

  The resort is beautiful. We liked the fact that it is an older resort, so the palm trees were nice and big and all the landscaping was mature and gorgeous. We loved our swim-out suite (2910) since we spend a lot of time at the swim-up bar and it was nice to get there directly from our room. We never had to worry about saving chairs around the pool. The room was nice and big, good-sized bathroom and a large walk-in shower. There was also an outdoor shower but we never used it because it was very windy the whole week and there was always a breeze blowing in the outdoor shower. The bed was comfortable, and the mini-bar was stocked with everything we needed, including candy bars and chips. One complaint about the room is that it was very dark. I like to read and there was really no good light for reading except outdoors. There was a reading light next to the bed, but it wasn’t very good. The air conditioning worked too well, we turned it off most nights because the room got too cold! The drapes were very old and didn't close completely, so we never got the room totally dark at night. The food was okay. All the restaurants we tried had at least one really good thing on the menu and most had more than one. We ate at Kampai (2X), D'Italia Casitas (2X), Santa Fe (2X) and Rincon (1X). The Palms restaurant at Generations was a great breakfast place right on the beach, it was so nice to have our breakfast mimosas every morning while watching the ocean waves. We tried the Cocotal breakfast buffet once but were not impressed. It was too small and overcrowded. We didn’t like having to make dinner reservations every night, we prefer to be a little more spontaneous in the evenings and not feel pressured to get somewhere at a certain time. We did make reservations for the whole week as soon as we arrived so we could be sure of getting to eat somewhere. The reservation process was easy, we just did it on the resort app on our iPad. It would have been nice to have a snack bar or taco cart or something near the pool - there was no place to eat lunch or get a snack anywhere nearby. All the lunch places were a golf cart ride away or were sit-down restaurants we couldn’t use in wet swimsuits. Service was usually very good. There were a couple of mornings when the swim-up bar for our group of casitas didn’t open on time and they appeared to be understaffed. When our bartender took his lunch break, nobody came to cover for him so we all had to wait for drinks until he got back. One golf cart driver was not very helpful - after dinner at the Rincon, we wanted to get back to the Royale lobby and he dropped us off next to a huge flight of stairs instead of driving us around to the lobby entrance. Other than that, every other employee was friendly and very helpful. Overall, we had a good trip and enjoyed the resort. However, we probably wouldn’t go back. The dinner reservation system is annoying and the resort is waaaayyyy too big for us. We have never ridden so many golf carts in a week, and we only saw a small part of the total resort!! It is not a place for people with mobility issues - lots of walking, some bars and restaurants upstairs with no elevators. We did get our exercise!!

  Mar 31, 2025
• 

  Worst experience ever

  The person who handled our check in was clueless. He ended up having to call for help to check us in and explain the changes to a signed Exotic contract. We ended up in 3101, 1 of 4 Emerald rooms on the El Dorado Royale property. The problems began immediately with the second bathroom. Instead of having a proper countertop (glass & marble), it was a piece of painted plywood. The toilet did not flush–it was about to overflow. If I had not shut off the toilet, there would have been human excrement everywhere. Only high pressure air came out of the faucet. Doesn’t anybody evaluate the rooms before check in? Then went to “dressing room / closet” only to find multiple scuff marks everywhere. The El Dorado stay website is barely functional. For starters, it should be an app. Have no problem using the site to make dinner reservations, but you can barely see the menu on an iPhone without blowing them up, and moving it around. And the restaurants menus at Generations are even harder to read. The room service component does not work. We found out the hard way after trying to place an order and waiting for 2 hours for food that never came. Why do you launch something when its clearly not ready, and when all it does is hurt the guest experience? Room Service menu hasn’t changed in years. Emerald members are supposed to have access to an “enhanced” menu. To me that means more than a cheeseburger or turkey sandwich. The menu is incredibly basic and needs drastic updating We went to Habb for dinner. We were 10 minutes late for our reservation, and then had to wait an additional 15 minutes to get to the hostess only to rudely be told we would not be seated because we were 25 minutes late. Had to be 80 degrees in the restaurant, and half the tables were empty. They were clearly understaffed. La Isla–who would set up an outdoor seafood lunch buffet when its 90 degrees out? The seafood was not kept cold enough. I tried an oyster, spit it out, and we left immediately. We went to use the beach beds. Pillows were moldy; the bed was not made up. The next day was the first time we saw our beach butler after being at the resort for 4 days. Oversight? Never seen vendors or guards with machine guns on the beach. They would bother us every day. Forget the beach, not that there is much of a beach. For the duration of our stay there was construction going on as they were rebuilding a staircase in the room next to ours. So much for serenity. Turn down service was awful–They never refreshed towels at night. One day we had to use the towels by the jacuzzi, and they were not replaced for the duration of our stay. 2 of the 4 remotes did not work. Alerted the butler, and maintenance came and said the two that work will work in either room. The sliders are rusty and difficult to move. Door locks were even worse. We had to leave the door ajar to the delight of the mosquitos. The curtains did not move smoothly along the tracks. One night the wand came off in my hand as I was trying to close the curtain. The AC in the bedroom died. The filter had dust an inch thick on it. That’s a health hazard, gross and affected our ability to sleep. We came back to our room after breakfast. The lounge chairs outside our room were not made up nor were our beach beds. I found a 2” rusty screw on the walkway to our outdoor dining area. The walkway was in need of repair. I called our butler to the room and asked her to see the general manager. We repeatedly tried to get to the manager, and were blocked at every turn. Attention to detail was nonexistent. Lots of lip service. Cesar Contreras is the Member Care manager. He might as well be the director of excuses and deflection. Other than trying to constantly baffle us with BS, he did absolutely nothing to help us. Ditto for other people who were supposed to help us–Lorena Loeza the head financial officer and Soraya Nassar; the senior Exotic representative, both of whom did the dump and run never to be heard from again. On our last night, we came back from dinner and realized that the AC in the living room was not working. I went flying as I slipped on a large puddle on the floor. Our butler called maintenance and they never came. The information database is compromised. We get many calls from fraudsters asking to buy our nights. Flyback is a joke. Exotic sells it to you & when problems arise they disappear. We could not wait to go home. Even though we are members, we will never go back. It feels like a house of cards about to implode. I would never recommend any resorts under the Grupo Lomas umbrella. All you have to do is do a simple search on the web to uncover many people who have enormous problems with Exotic Travelers. Isn’t it funny that when you write a bad review, you get a generic response from the hotel manager who does not provide any contact info. Memorable for all the wrong reasons. Run away…….

  Mar 29, 2025
• 

  We will be back to casitas.

  The first this everyone should know about this resort is that is that the beach sucks and it's easy to find that out but still heard people unaware of the rocks and reef and cement blocks in the ocean. Great things about the resort. Food is excellent. Every restaurant gave us amazing service Fuentes was an amazing experience and worth the price Bartender are amazing Breakfast at Santa fa restaurant is where we went every morning. Shout out to Alex. Check in and out were stress free and done very professionally Our room was clean amazing well by Hugo. He was great Our first concierge was Jorge and he was amazing. He did everything he could for us. Things we hope that could be improved - air conditioner leaked multiple times - we lost a reservation to a restaurant thought the app even thou we didn't cancel it so that sucked alot. - the dishes from room service weren't clean from our entrance for 3 days. - they didn't give us clean glasses in our room. The wine classes were just put back dirty. I feel this is an issue with restocking the bar/ clean glasses. It's not done automatically rather you have to get it restocked on your own. All in all an amazing place and will be back again.

  Mar 06, 2025