El Dorado Seaside - EDSS - Review with lots of pics and details! 03.19.09

[Ana]

awesome review!!! and your pics are so great I love the under water ones hehe! soooo cute !

[yamille]

You are a rockstar with these reviews. Congratulations!

[MsZ]

That review is phenomenal!!! Thank you so much for giving such detailed information on everything- this is so helpful! Your TTD pictures are awesome as well- those underwater ones are great! So cute!!

[beach2009]

Great review so far, pls tell us there's more to come today

[MomentsThatMatter]

Hola Brides looking at El Dorado Seaside!

If you would like to see a slideshow of this resort...we currently have one running in our Galleries page.

Enjoy

Lincoln & Lori

[erinleigh]

I really enjoyed reading your review!

[michellepicksbrent]

You have provided such an amazing review, I'm sure you'll help sell this resort to some location undecided brides! Thank you very much for sharing!

[SoonToBeE]

so sorry for the lag on these!! I am going to do a bunch more this weekend! There are more coming I promise

[da.shmoopies]

Wow. What a fantastic review! It almost... almost... makes me want to change from Hawaii to Mexico. I can't wait to read the rest!

[SoonToBeE]

Part 3: Resort: appearance, rooms, location, pools, food, fitness center etc…)

Here is instalment #3.5 of my wedding review focused on the resort.

 

Beach

The property is very nice and very well-maintained and the beach is no exception. All day long you see resort employees raking the beach and making sure that the sand is beautiful and clean.

 

That said, it’s not the best beach you’ll ever see. But chances are if you’re going to the Mayan you probably aren’t going for crystal clear blue waters and white sandy beaches…..

 

So as long as you are expecting that you won’t be let down. The water is clear in parts, but the beach is pretty windy – so it’s not amazingly clear. The beach is brown sand and beautiful. I didn’t really go in the ocean that much, but when I did it was very nice.

 

The beach is broken up into two parts – one part has the beach beds and is swim-able with immediate access to the ocean, the other part also has beach beds but has a retaining stone wall that removes access to the ocean. For obvious reasons the swim-able beach is more popular.

 

Here is the beach from the right showing the gazebo:

 

and the beach from the left

 

The beach also has the notorious ‘beach whales’ – they are very close to the resort on the retaining wall side of the beach and far away from the resort on the beach side. They don’t impede the beach on the swim-able side and make the beach, well, swim-able!

 

We noticed that the sand flies were bad our second week, but didn’t have any issues with them the first week. Not sure what the cause was, but we were glad that we had the swim-up suite to get away from them!

 

Beach Beds

The beach beds are a luxurious take on the standard resort beachfront. They are comfortable and private, allowing you to feel like you’re on your own private piece of heaven. And they feel much more chic than a regular beach lounger! There are beach loungers scattered along the beach as well, but for the most part the beach beds are where people want to be.

 

 

Because people love the beach beds people tend to get up very early to reserve their favourite bed for the day. If you want a specific bed in a good location you will have to get up early to reserve it with towels. If you don’t care where your beach bed is you can usually find one somewhere along the beach later in the day.

 

People do reserve the beach beds with towels, but it seemed like people will remove the towels on good beds if they aren’t being used for a long period of time.

 

There is towel service, and a beach butler along the beach, so you always have a waiter coming to take your drink orders while you sun bathe. Service is slow, but it’s better than getting up I guess!

 

There are also swinging beach beds and double decker beach beds. Both seemed pretty cool to me, until I went in them! The swinging swing with the slightest movement and the double decker beds seem pretty rickety. I didn’t like spending a lot of time in either one of them, but the definitely make the resort look nice!

 

 

Overall the beach was okay. I have seen much better beaches, but our guests all seemed happy. I really think the upgraded beach seating makes up for the lackluster beach – they make the beach look much nicer than it is.

 

Wedding locations

There are three main wedding locations (Pier gazebo, beach gazebo, and white gazebo), with only one being private (beach gazebo).

 

I like the pier gazebo the best, I just think it looks simple and classy and really allows you and your wedding party to decorate it - without a lot going on.

 

The pier gazebo is on display and is not well protected by greenery or beach beds - this is good and bad. You feel somewhat exposed to strangers on the beach, but it's also private because it is really hard for strangers to get close to your wedding. This is important because resort guests LOVE watching weddings!

 

Here are some shots of the pier gazebo:

 

The beach gazebo is set up on the far end of the beach at the edge of the resort. You can really decorate this as you want, and I think decorating is important. Not enough decorations and you'll look like your standing betweek four sticks!

 

This set up is a few feet from the the beach beds and the main beach. The hotel reserves the closest beach beds, but resort guests will clamor as close as they can to the boundaries to watch your big day. It felt really intrusive because gawkers were only about 3-4 metres away from the wedding.!

 

Here are some shots of the beach gazebo:

 

The 'aisle' for the beach gazebo:

 

 

 

The white gazebo is located in the middle of the resort. It has the same issues as the beach gazebo, except that it is a permanent structure. It seems a bit overpowering and I'm not sure how good the pictures will look from the inside of the gazebo, during the wedding. I don't think they'll look great, but U don't have anything to back that up other than the pictures below:

 

 

 

Overall I would say that the best location is the beach pier. It is private and provides some of the nicest pictures (in my opinion!). Again, the other locations are basically in the middle of the beach, with curious onlookers sitting and gawking a few metres from your wedding ceremony.

 

I was one of those gawkers while we were there (blush). While some of the gawkers are polite, some are not – the topless woman with a mohawk smoking and drinking a few feet from one of the weddings we saw comes to mind. Not exactly what one dreams about on their wedding day