Jilly's El Dorado Royale honeymoon review

TA Jill · 10-28-2007, 02:44 PM

I thought I should write a seperate review on our honeymoon location, since my wedding review was so long, lol!

So, we left Dreams on Sunday the 21st to head over to El Dorado. We took the shuttle with our families back to the airport and then we went back over the the same place we caught our shuttle the first time and looked for the American Express Agent. The check in process with them was quick and easy and we were soon on our way.

Let me just say that the driveway to El Dorado is SO LONG, I was dying in anticipation of getting there and seeing everything! I was not dissappointed, it is totally beautiful.

Just as it was at dreams, the service is impeccable. We pulled up, they tagged our bags and they got us a golf cart to bring us to the Casita check in. DH really loved all the special treatment, with the private check in, champagne and cold towels during check in. It was very nice. Our room wasn't quite ready as we got there around 1130, so we went off to get some lunch and explore.

El Dorado is HUGE! I feel like we didn't even see everything the entire time we were there because it is so spread out and everything looks the same, it was easy to get lost!

We got into our room at about 200 and it was absolutely beautiful.
We had a huge bed, that was so comfortable you felt like it just conformed to your body. They have the netting things that hang from the ceiling, like a canopy for the beds. Every night they would come and drape the canopy over the entire bed and turn down the blankets and leave us some mints.

When we arrived we had the towel swans on our bed with flower petals. Everyday when the maid came she left us a new towel creation on our bed, it was so cute.

I loved the high ceilings in the room, we also had a jacuzzi, and I loved the outdoor shower. We got one of the swim up casitas, so we had the lazy river right off of our terrace with two lounge chairs in the shallow water. That was nice, so I could just lay in the sun right outside of our room. It was so hot I couldn't lay there very long.

We also had a personal concierge, he was wonderful, always checked on us and was always there if we had any questions.

Lets see, the restaurants, we ate at:

Kampai - Japanese food, I loved it, it was really good

JoJo's - I think this was mediterranean food, but I don't remember for sure, we had lunch here, it was very plain, didn't like it that much, and we didn't go back, not because it was that bad, but because there are so many restaurants.

Fuentes - this is the "mexican Theater" restaurant, they have foods from all of the restaurants, we had the penne with shrimp in a cream sauce, it was excellent!

Cocotal - also very good, I think we had beef

I don't remember the name but we ate at the burger & pizza place too for lunch one day, the pizza was really good.

we ordered room service for breakfast everyday because we were lazy!

My favorite dinner was our candlelight dinner on the beach! It was included in our honeymoon package and we almost were going to just skip it and eat somewhere else, but we decided when are we ever going to get to have a candlelight dinner on the beach again? so we did it, and were so happy that we did, it was fantastic & so much fun! I wanted to get a picture of our dessert, but my batteries died in my camera, they wrote "happy honeymoon, Jill & Steve" on the plate and made some palm trees and stuff, it was really cute.

They also include a 30 minute massage lesson in the honeymoon package, but we didn't want to do it. We had a couples massage included in our package at dreams so we were all set with massages, but they have really cool sky massage places, they're set high up on the beach, outside, and you have your massage there, they looked really cool!

We did go on a horseback riding trip at maroma beach while we were there, it was okay, I love horseback riding so I really wanted to do it, but they make it seem like you're going riding through the jungle and really you're just riding down these trails they created, not very interesting.

We also went to a timeshare presentation while we were there. they offered us $150 to use in the gift shop or at checkout, so we figured why not, we wanted to see the new presidential casitas and the infinity casitas, they were really cool too!

Lets see what else, there are so many pools El Dorado, there are two huge main pools, there is a saltwater pool, a pool that is undercover, and there is a pool in every section of the casitas. We were in section 29 in the casitas, so we were almost at the very very end of the resort, it was a long walk, but we needed the walking with all the eating & drinking.

They have shuttles all the time and if you're in the casitas they pretty much treat you like royalty, if you need anything they are waiting on you hand and foot.

All in All we really loved the resort, we really have no complaints about anything, it was beautiful and we had a fabulous time.

We really want to travel to a lot of other places, so we probably wouldn't go back anytime soon, but maybe someday, maybe our 10 year anniversary. I would love to stay in the casitas again, but I don't know if its really necessary, I think you would get just as good of service in the regular rooms, and they do have regular rooms with the lazy river.

Oh, they also told us that El Dorado is going to be splitting, it will be El Dorado Royale and Casitas Royale, they will be two seperate resorts, people in the casitas will be able to use both resorts, but people in El Dorado will only be able to use that side.

In the newsletter they gave us when we checked in we noticed there were 6 weddings the day before we got there! We saw one wedding set up on a Thursday, it was a HUGE one, probably 200 people. I liked where they had it setup it looked really pretty.

Let me know if anyone has any questions! I'm sure I'm forgetting something, thats why I wanted to write this right away so I didn't forget!

Jackie · 10-28-2007, 02:50 PM

Great review, When I thought I might get married on the RM side I wanted to do it at the El Dorado Royal although it wasnt in our price range. It just looks outstanding and so romantic.

MsShelley · 10-29-2007, 04:53 AM

great review, Jill!

Christine · 10-29-2007, 06:42 AM

sounds like a great honeymoon, its nice to go all out for the honeymoon, I mean when else will you do that?

TA Jill · 10-29-2007, 04:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christine

sounds like a great honeymoon, its nice to go all out for the honeymoon, I mean when else will you do that?

Thats exactly what we thought!

jfwolfe72 · 10-31-2007, 08:42 AM

Thanks so much for the review, Jilly! And congrats, congrats, congrats on your wedding!!

MrsV-to-be · 10-31-2007, 04:17 PM

Thanks so much for the review! I really appreciated hearing how much you liked it! Congratulations again :)

Leia78 · 10-31-2007, 04:20 PM

Great review Jill. Thanks for sharing. I'm glad you had a very romantic and relaxing time.

jessicamo · 04-06-2008, 12:01 AM

Thanks for the review. I really appreciated reading it. You mentioned if we had any other questions, well her goes:
1 - You mentioned dinners and horse back riding and a few others, but what else did you guys do while you were there. I am content lying in the sun, but not sure if my fiance will get a little bored.
2 - What about night life, granted you were there on your honeymoon and maybe not interested, but we are going with a few single people for a wedding. Just curious. Thanks!

TA Jill · 04-06-2008, 04:07 PM

well, we had just spent a week at our wedding resort with 25 other people and a lot of running around getting ready for the wedding and preparing for our guests to arrive, etc... so we didn't really want to do a whole lot.

We usually hung out by the pool or at the bar. Theres usually some type of show every night at one of the bars, we went once, but it was a show we had seen the week before in cancun, so we weren't really interested in seeing it again.

We did go horseback riding and we went into playa del carmen one night to go shopping.

At night we usually just spent a lot of time at the bar close to our casitas, that's just how we are. Not to mention the heat takes a lot out of you, making the day really long, so we were ready for bed by about 11 or 12 each night.

They do have a shuttle that goes to playa del carmen and also one to cancun. There are also a lot of other excursions you can pay for. My DH had already gone deep sea fishing when we were in cancun.

We met another couple our first night and hung out with them almost every night, we also met a few other couples as the week went on.

Some people did dolphin excursions, others did Xel-Ha, there's a bunch of others too.