During our two week road trip of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, we travelled to Cancun, Chichen Itza, Valladolid and Tulum before finishing off with four nights at Sandos Caracol Eco Resort in Playa del Carmen. You can find our full itinerary here.
As this was our first long-haul holiday since having a baby, and our first time doing a road trip with her rather than a staycation or a cruise, we weren't sure what to expect. Anticipating a potentially stressful and tiring couple of weeks, we decided to finish off our holiday with four nights in one of Mexico's famous all inclusive resorts. Pre-baby, we had never stayed in an all inclusive. However, the prospect of low effort, high convenience fun with unlimited food and an abundance of activities was very appealing!
How to choose an all inclusive resort in Mexico
The choice of all inclusive resorts in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula can be overwhelming and I spent a long time searching for the best option. The first thing I did was narrow down the choice according to my nightly budget. In general, we try to spend £100 per night maximum on accommodation; however this did not apply to all inclusive options. When searching for an all inclusive resort near Cancun, our nightly budget increased to £200. Despite doubling our budget, this drastically lowered the number of options available to us! If you have a higher budget, you will still have a lot of choices at this stage.
Beyond this, we narrowed the search down to resorts that offered free cots or cribs because we knew we wouldn't be travelling with one. Helpfully, Expedia allows you to search by hotels that have cots available. We found this criteria narrowed down the options a lot.
Finally, we prioritised hotels that had Very Good review ratings or higher. I tend to look at the ratings on Expedia and also compare these to recent reviews on Trip Advisor. Trip Advisor users can be brutally (and helpfully) honest in my experience!
We also found this really helpful Kiddieholidays article with the 11 best baby and toddler friendly places to stay in Mexico - lots of incredible options including Sandos Caracol.
Why we chose Sandos Caracol Eco Resort Being a moderately priced all inclusive resort with good reviews and facilities for children, Sandos Caracol met all of the criteria outlined above.
We really loved the jungle environment of the resort, in contrast to a lot of the other larger resorts which were more landscaped, and the idea that we would see lots of wildlife during our stay. We also found the size of the resort appealing - big enough to have multiple restaurants and pools, but not so huge that we needed golf carts to get around. We were particularly excited by the 19 waterslides at the resort, especially because our toddler is pool and waterslide obsessed.
The location in Playa Del Carmen worked really well as the final stop on our road trip, and the 45-minute transfer back to Cancun International Airport was very convenient.
Accommodation
We stayed in an Eco Family Superior room (room 4813) which was next to the nature walk, a 5-minute walk from the water park and a 10-minute walk from the beach and main restaurant area. It was a very quiet location and all of the paths were very pushchair friendly.
The room itself was very spacious, with a modern design and a lovely contemporary bathroom. There was lots of space for Wren's travel cot, as well as a huge kingsize bed and bunkbeds.
We loved the balcony, with gorgeous tree top views and lots of space for drying swimsuits. It was the perfect place to enjoy nature while Wren slept.
The mini bar was restocked every day, there was a huge drinking water dispenser and the room was always meticulously clean.
Customer Service One of the most common complaints we had read about Sandos Caracol was the check-in process. Arriving at around 2:30pm, we had visions of long queues and not being able to reach the room until way past the check in time of 3pm. However, we had a pretty good experience. The queue was very short, and staff provided us with refreshing cold drinks while we waited. Wren and Michael ran around the lobby while I waited in the line - which admittedly did move very slowly. However, we were checked in and in the room just after 3pm. There was a relatively hard sales pitch to tour the Sandos time share properties but, after we politely but firmly declined, they quickly escorted us to a golf buggy which delivered us and our bags to the room.
Food and Drink We did not expect the buffet restaurants to be high quality, and therefore we weren't disappointed! There is a wide variety of cuisine available, especially at the international buffet, but the menu is repeated every day and the vegetarian options are very limited. However, we always found something to eat and our toddler was very happy with the familiar pasta dishes after ten days of trying Mexican food. We appreciated the option of speciality coffees at breakfast included in the all inclusive package, and we found the Mexican buffet to be the best evening option.
We don't drink much alcohol so can't speak much to the quality of the bars - apparently very unusual for all inclusive guests! However, we really enjoyed the alcohol free frozen cocktails, especially mango and pina colada.
The a la carte restaurants that we tried were much better quality. All three of us loved the El Templo teppenyaki restaurant, which was a really fun experience and the freshly cooked food was delicious. Wren demolished her egg fried rice! We also enjoyed the rodizio restaurant Fogo de Brazil - admittedly not ideal for vegetarians, but the selection of meats were excellently cooked and we loved the grilled pineapple.
The booking process for the a la carte restaurants is pretty terrible, so be warned. You can only book on the day, via the Sandos app. Bookings open after midnight, and you have to log on and quickly select your desired restaurant and timeslot. Tired after a day of holidaying with a toddler, we weren't awake that late any night on our trip! However, Michael took one for the team and stayed up on two nights to make our bookings. By 6am in the morning, almost all the restaurants were fully booked.
Our main struggle was finding an early lunch for our toddler who naps 12pm-2pm. The buffet restaurants weren't open for lunch that early, so the only option was burgers or tacos near the main pool. Neither were ideal meals for an 18 month old, so we often took some snacks from breakfast to tide her over and then had a bigger lunch after her nap.
Activities
As I mentioned before, one of our main motiviations for booking Sandos Caracol was the water slides - and we were not disappointed! Wren fully embraced the toddler section and enjoyed going down every single slide, over and over again. It was wonderful seeing her confidence grow and it was so fun to go down the slides together. We also enjoyed the bigger water slides, taking turns while Wren continued to splash around.
There were a couple of minor drawbacks to the water park. The food stand had very irregular opening hours and sometimes we couldn't get drinking water. There wasn't any shade, so we weren't able to let Wren play for as long as she would have liked, as the sun was direct and very strong.
Given how much Wren loved the slides, we spent very little time in the swimming pools but found them to be nice and cool, with steps for easy entry and a ledge perfect for Wren to jump from or for adults to lean on.
We spent one very hot afternoon cooling off in the Kids Club. While Wren was too young to be left there without parental supervision (being under 4 years old), we were able to enter with her after 3pm each day. With a small soft play frame, building blocks, video games, movies and crafts, it was the perfect place for her to let off steam and take a break from the sun.
We also loved the small community farm of rescue animals, which offered children the opportunity to feed the animals twice each day. Wren was able to take part (with one of us supervising) and she loved meeting the pigs, donkeys and rabbits.
Environment
The jungle setting of Sandos Caracol really set it apart from other resorts in our eyes, and it definitely felt like an authentic reflection of the Riviera Maya jungles. There is a lot of wildlife around the resort, to the delight of our toddler. We loved spotting the coatis, agoutis, raccoons, lizards, peacocks, turtles and lots of bird species. There is a resident troop of howler monkeys, although we sadly didn't see them.
The beach was very small, but with a beautiful outlook. We had seen reviews that the sea floor was rocky so we came prepared with water shoes but we didn't actually end up swimming. Did I mention that we were too busy with water slides?
There are multiple cenotes around the resort, which are beautiful, and you can swim them at certain times of day. We really enjoyed walking around the nature reserve, which features a waterfall and suspension bridge.
Overall, we had an excellent time at Sandos Caracol Eco Resort and found it to be an excellent toddler-friendly all inclusive resort in Mexico that was fun for all the family!
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