Hotel Grand Oasis Caribbean Resort - Cancun, Mexico

Above: The beach at Grand Oasis Caribbean Resort

Above: Me lounging in the cabana.

Above: Weikai smoking a Mexican chocolate cigar in the cabana.

Above:Weikai and I at the Asian restaurant at our resort.

Above: The pool as viewed from our room.

Above: The beach and ocean beyond the pool.

Above: The beach had both shaded and sunny spots.

Above: The lobby at Grand Oasis Caribbean.

Above: Weikai and I lounging in a cabana by the pool.

Above: The view from our cabana.

Above: The view from outside of our hotel room door.

Above: The pool all lit up at night.

While in Cancun, Weikai and I stayed at the Hotel Grand Oasis Caribbean Resort, an all-inclusive resort located on a beautiful, white-sand beach on Kukulcan Boulevard on the main hotel strip in Cancun.

While the resort has mixed reviews by its guests, Weikai and I really liked it. Here are the pros and cons.

Pros:

• Everything is included. It's all-inclusive, so meals, drinks, room service, everything is included. No need to go out to any of the overcrowded bars or restaurants to shell out too much money, just stay in!
• They're always cleaning! The place is spotless. They squeegee everything -- the floors, windows, tables... it's kind of crazy. I didn't know the squeegee was so popular in Mexico!
• The staff is nice. We didn't encounter any rude or obnoxious servers at all. Such a rare occurrence in New York, so it was a nice change!
• The beach is pristine. White sand, blue water. It's heaven.
• The views are amazing. We stayed on the 9th floor. As you can see from the photos above, we had a lovely ocean view.
• The TV has English and Spanish channels.
• They had a smoothie bar! (Unfortunately, it closed at 5pm every day)
  

Cons:

• The wines and champagne are of substandard quality. They all tasted like rubbing alcohol.
• The service is often very slow. We tried most of the restaurants and experience long waiting times at most of them. The only restaurant that I really liked was the buffet near the lobby. It had a large variety and practically no waiting times for seating. The other restaurants had long waiting times for both seats and food. No bueno!
• Room service can be slow as well. The average waiting time was quoted at 45 minutes, but we often waited longer.
• There were definitely some immature spring breakers. One particular group of drunk guys by the swim-up bar was carrying a few naked blow-up dolls. They were "interacting" with the dolls (but nothing too awful), even though there were people of all ages around. So disturbing.
  

Overall, I definitely recommend the resort. It's the newest of the Grand Oasis hotels and is overall very impressive. It was our first all-inclusive resort and a great way to start out!