The Reef Playacar Beach Resort & Spa

This is a good all-inclusive option if you plan to spend most of your time on tours and don't want to spend too much. The food was good, with a breakfast and lunch buffet and two dinner restaurants, Mexican and Italian. You have to reserve at the lobby that morning. Try the Mexican hot chocolate at breakfast! There's an activity every night, though the week we visited was on the quiet side and not many guests joined in. The staff were super friendly and helpful. The hotel has beach access, and 5th avenue is about a 25 minute walk or an $8 taxi ride away. If you're expecting a 5 star resort with 12+ restaurants, lots of entertainment, and foam pool parties, this won't cut it. But for an affordable all-inclusive when you'll be out of the hotel a lot, it's a good choice.

The only person who made a positive impression was Santos at the pool bar. The complex is nice and small, but it wasn't accommodating to our group of 7 across 3 rooms. We couldn't sit together at dinner because there was only one table for more than 4 people, and they asked us to pay to get that table. A couple of minutes later, they asked us to pay for wine to get it. We couldn't arrange a late checkout, even though our return flight was at 11pm. We paid almost 19k$ for the week and they couldn't help us with anything. The refrigerator wasn't refilled during the week. I don't recommend this resort.

We stayed last week for a few days, and the experience dragged down the end of our vacation. If we'd booked longer, we would have left right away. This place was below average across the board. The buffet food was inedible, service atrocious, and drinks at the 'all-inclusive' bars took more than 20 minutes. Each of the property's only 2 bars had one staff member, with lines 10 to 20 people deep. The snack bar was meant to open at 11am when breakfast closed, but nobody was there on my several visits between 11am and 11:30am. One staff member didn't know where the chef was. I insisted on ordering so I wouldn't have to keep coming back. He said 10 minutes, but my cheese pizza and fries took an hour and tasted like prison food, slop and inedible. The two dinner restaurants were also below average. The Italian restaurant gave me what seemed like food poisoning for about 16 hours, and the portions were tiny. The beach cleanup was awful to watch. Sargassum is a major problem on the beaches in Playa Del Carmen and along much of the coastline, but there are environmentally friendly ways to dispose of it. This hotel bags it in ugly, non-biodegradable black garbage bags, which stop the seaweed decomposing naturally. The bags sit on the beach for hours while guests look at garbage instead of the Caribbean. Later, they're dumped in the jungle offsite, where they leave a toxic mess of chemicals and microplastics mixed with seaweed that can't properly decompose without oxygen, and can make its way back to waterways, including the cenotes. Other resorts down the beach were handling it properly. This one wasn't. While I tried to relax on a sun chair, a man spent 3 hours smashing at a rock wall with an axe right beside me. I finally told him to stop. It was rude and inappropriate, and stone was even flicking onto me. Photos show how close he was. Small, pointless updates around the property also caused a lot of noise. The staff were the most disappointing part. They came across as cold, rude, and uninterested, ignoring us unless we called out for service. Of perhaps 50 staff we interacted with, maybe 3 were pleasant. The location is great, which makes the cheap, budget feel a real shame. We paid $350 USD a night for 2 people all-inclusive, and it was on sale. Absolutely not worth it, and I don't think you'd enjoy yourself. Photos show the beach covered in seaweed garbage bags, the bar lines that took 20 plus minutes, and the man working with an axe beside me for 3 hours.

The food was spot on, and the entertainment team were great. I joined Pati for yoga, stretching, and aqua aerobics, and she was brilliant. Staff were engaging and lovely, though the bars and restaurants could use more people because service was very slow. The rooms were nice enough, but a little dated and in need of an update. The location, gardens, and beach were 10/10. I'd definitely recommend this resort.