Fiesta Americana Grand Coral Beach Cancun Resort & Spa

This was my second time vacationing at the Grand Fiesta Americana Coral Beach in Cancun. The first was in 2006, and it was gorgeous. In 2017, it is still Grand but the rooms need a makeover, its age is showing. The employees are amazing still. Very polite and definitely aim to please. I still do recommend this hotel, the location is unbeatable and the staff is warm and helpful.

I stayed at this hotel 5 years ago and expected the same excellent service. I received it! They have a charming old school 5 star approach and it works. The hotel is overstaffed which gives you the feeling of being the center of someones attention. (Have you ever seen a cashier at a bar for 3 bartenders? Yea neither have I) Never did you find the staff sitting around bored.. always busy cleaning or trying to attend you. Breakfast is fabulous and the spa fabulous. Yes the lobby needs updating.. but I bet you when your sitting there someone will greet you and make sure your not in need of anything. In other hotels in Cancun including the sister hotels may have an updated this or that, but one thing you will receive at the Grand Fiesta is excellent service. This is how you want to spend your vacation, being pampered and feeling special. This place is exactly it! I think the lobby should be updated with new furniture and the beach chairs to come with cushions similar to other 5 star beach hotels, but other than that please don't change! For any bride looking for a property .. this is the place for you and your guests to feel special. For the way they treat normal guests I can only imagine the next level they will bring for a wedding party. Great tip- when checking in ask to join the fiesta awards club, I was offered this at check in and signed up. This gives you free internet and the resort fee is optional!

Stayed at this hotel recently and I have to say that will never come back! It's a very very boring hotel, there is absolutely nothing to do after you have dinner. No entertainment, no shows, nothing.... The food is below average. Hotel is ok for a standard you are looking for. Location is great, Beach great. But if you come with your family or if you like to be entertainment - there is ZERO.

We had an amazing stay!! We arrived Saturday, Oct 7, and stayed through Thursday, Oct 12. I had visited the hotel back in 1991 when it was relatively brand new, and I can honestly say, the "old" place holds up very well (though I'm sure has been spruced up since 1991!). It was me, hubby, kids 8 & 10. We chose this hotel - 1. Because I had been there in 1991 & it was gorgeous, and 2. because in my head - it was still 1991, and there was very little "stuff" to do in Cancun with hotels few & far between and most activity was within walking distance of this hotel. Well, There's a TON to do in Cancun now - and, I can't believe how many hotels have gone up & are literally right next to each other. Even just outside the hotel - the amount of stores & restaurants that have gone up - WOW! The supermarket is a great place to walk (I think it took 5 minutes from door-to-door with stopping for the crosswalk light). The service at the hotel was fantastic. Everyone remembered our names, Javier at the buffet breakfast remembered our juice drink order for 4 people each morning too. Our last name is very difficult to stay, and since the reservation was booked by me, so in my name, after we gave our room number (512), everyone called me "Mrs. Elizabeth". We sat through the timeshare explanation - for 25% off? You betcha! Kids ate virtually free the entire time anyway, and all our food/drinks were 25% off. We absolutely had zero hard sell after the sales pitch, so I guess it depends on who gives the timeshare talk. We said nope, won't do it - and that was it. We didn't get a "closer" ... maybe it helped I had 2 irritated kids with me, but the sales guy (Ricardo) was very respectful of our time & understood it wasn't something we were going to do. Our buffets were comped when we checked in, so we did sign up for the session for the 25% off ... very flexible timing, chose 8am on a Monday morning. Done & Done. We had read enough review here on TA to know they'd offer that. The staff was fantastic everywhere - the beach, the pool, and we laughed at the buffet each morning - we all tried to get up the stairs before anyone ran down to grab our food to carry it to our tables. I made it to the top stair once, but that's as far as we got. Also, after reading reviews about the no food policy. Did everyone who complained about it on here read the full policy?? Yes, we signed it - BUT - if you read it from top to bottom, it basically states please don't bring in food in to cook. They don't disallow drinks, etc., as a matter of fact, I grabbed Diet Pepsi daily from the supermarket, I had one of those huge 3L bottles one of the days, and the doorman offered to bring it up for me since we had several bags with snacks/drinks. My kids had gatorades, hubby grabbed the Jack Daniels mixed drink cans for fun, we grabbed bags of chips. We never hid it, and we were VERY respectful that the rooms aren't made for cooking. One of the concierges I spoke to about this said that people used to bring in full sandwich-making stuff, or breakfast milk/cereal/pancakes & would make huge messes and were very disrespectful of the rooms. But bringing in outside drinks? They specifically told me at check-in that's not a problem, just please don't cook. No issues there. I'm on vacation, I'm not cooking in my room anyway. We had 6 bottles of the free water in the room each day, we asked at the front desk for more one day, they handed us a few - no issues there. My kids weren't as careful about not opening mouth in shower, splashing water in their mouths at the pool, etc. No one got any digestive issues!! YAY!!! The pools are amazing. My kids never wanted to leave. The beach was the perfect size, not so wide that you have to walk super far, just right. We'd hop back & forth between pool & beach, never worried about leaving our towels/floaties, etc., at our pool chairs, they stayed put the entire day. Granted, we were there in off season, so it wasn't packed - I SO LOVED that there was absolutely no issues getting chairs at any time of the day. Partly why we go off season! Love the swim-up bars too ... the bartender at the 2nd pool (the waterfall/infinity-edge pool) on Wednesday, was fantastic and I forgot his name! He suggested I try the Isla Contoy (will they share the recipe??), and he made my husband a punch so we could try the Havana Club 7-yr rum. He even surprised my kids with 2 small desserts as we were finishing lunch (we sat on the dry side while our room was cleaned). Very thoughtful all-around. Towels huge & abundant anytime we needed, they provide towels & slippers too before going back into the hotel. SO MUCH FUN!!! It is a HUGE resort, so yes, there is a lot of walking. Again, if you don't want to worry about walking too much, skip going to a resort! My daughter did the Paddleboard (included with resort fee), but the ocean was a bit rough and it was tough for a 10 year old. She'd done it in Hawaii in a protected lagoon - NOT the same! It's wavy ocean here! We took advantage of Playa Caracol ferry & headed to Isla Mujares on Tuesday - maybe a max 4-minute walk from the front door of the hotel to the ferry ticket booth. CONVENIENT!!! Also - there are bathrooms pretty convenient at the first pool and clearly marked, not sure people scoped them out before they were needed. No issues getting to/from the bathrooms, so not sure why people complain about them not being available. With 2 kids, lots of drinks, we were in them a lot. We were in our room by 9:30 each night, NEVER heard any live music in the lobby - we saw lots of instruments, maybe we were just there the wrong nights, or too early. That would've been fun for the kids. Kids club - I was nervous, because I had read from other TA reviews that parents can't check it out, and they are super secretive of what's behind those closed doors. Well, Brenda at the Kidz club front desk was amazing. We went to check it out our first day, and she offered us a tour, showed us all the areas, explained the sessions. All visits were complimentary with our reservation, and included lunch on days we wanted to send the kids. There was a late-night 7-9 session that Sunday, and our kids took part. They LOVED it. They reported that everyone was so nice to them. They also had lunch on Monday (they switched closed day from Monday to Tuesday last week) & stayed for cookie decorating. The kids had a blast & kept asking to go back. The facilities are top-notch, all the workers are dressed alike - easy to spot who is the adult vs. kids. They all welcomed us & treated our kids like they had been going there for ages. They let me go back in again when I asked if the kids could change into their swimsuits there. Fantastic. I wish we would've used it more, but it was such a hard pull - pool vs. kidz club. AWESOME service! I felt confident my kids were in great hands each time they were dropped off. From Chicago, it was a 3-1/2 hour nonstop flight, then about 20 minutes in our private shuttle to the hotel. Seriously, so easy to consider coming down for a long weekend going forward. The kids are BEGGING to come back here, and even after we went up & down Kukulcan Blvd, we would definitely chose this hotel over all the others!!! Seriously still one of the nicest hotels I've stayed in. Our room was clean, no issues with plumbing or hot water. All 4 of us showered each night to get all the chlorine/sand/sunscreen off of us before dinner, and as the mom, I was always last - always had plenty of hot water. The view from the room was spectacular. Yes, we had condensation on the doors when we opened them and the floor got slipper there - but can you imagine how nasty it would smell if there were carpeting? ew. I have a feeling that the condensation issue holds true for everywhere in Cancun - it was hot & STEAMY everywhere were went. The housecleaning staff came by each night with chocolates & made sure we had what we needed (extra towels, shampoo, whatever). All in all, FANTASTIC experience, we will absolutely go back, and probably within the next year for a "quick trip". We had great vacation memories as a family here.

This hotel was rated five stars so that is the reason we booked it. We arrived on Wednesday and the hotel was serene and beautiful all was well until... we had to sign a document stating we could not bring food or beverages into the hotel due to sanitation reasons, which is a ruse so that you can only purchase their expensive drinks and snacks provided in the room. ( There is a way around that, read on and I will address that later.) THEN... before we could even walk away from the front desk, our luggage was held by a bellman way off to the side like ransom. We were so tired from traveling but they not let us go to our room. We were ushered around like dogs on an invisible leash. We were led by a sales rep and forced to sit in the lobby and listen through 20 minutes of how we should sign up for a 90 minute presentation for a time share the following day. They do not like to use the term timeshare, they call it "points". I told them we were not interested, but the rep said just agree and you will get 25% off food and drinks and tours. We did and the next day, we sat through a hard sale. We received a free breakfast and 25% off all food and drink, but only received 10% off one excursion. Kinda like a bait and switch... DON"T AGREE TO SIGN ANYTHING. Point systems/time shares are a waste of money. With a timeshare, you can not hold the deed to the property, and you can not deduct the $2,500 maintenance yearly fees. Never buy a time share, countless people try to sell their points on Ebay for $1. Do the research... Long story short , it was a 90 minute waste of time. It turned into a hard sell, our rep had to bring over the manager because the sales rep could not close the deal. Yuck what a bad way to start a vacation. The 25% off for food and drink was good, however when we tried to book an excursion in the hotel, we only received 10% off. That was not what they stated during the sales spiel. Finally about the hotel. The room is great, but for 5 star, I'd say not really, it's nice but 4 stars at the most. The view and beach are 5 star. The bathroom door stuck closed, and it takes forever to get hot water out of the shower or bathroom faucet, even when set to the hottest position. The toilet clogged on our last day and we dealt with the situation ourselves. Picture me leaning over the toilet with a coat hanger, scooping out wet toilet paper. Yuck. We did not want staff in our room as we brought in food and drink which you can purchase at a fantastic market just walking distance around the corner from the hotel. Next major problem is the music in the lobby. It is serene through out the day, but once night falls they have live music, (if you can call it music) which BLARES up through the atrium and provides no sleep until after 1:00 AM. What a stupid feature and a huge mistake this classy resorts makes. From smooth jazz, to trashy disco. Whoever decided to intentionally disturb the residents with this NOISE should be fired. We booked a resort, not a night club. Also, about the toilets. They seem to clog often enough, to the point of raw, stinky sewage water running out from the hotel, on to the street. While we were there, there must have been a major clog as a large hole was dug about 2' X 8' and a huge pipe was exposed directly adjacent to one of the pools. The problem was fixed and the hole was covered and paved in 2 days. The exterior back portion of the hotel stunk of raw sewage which ran all the way down the street. We asked the hotel across, the street if that water was really raw sewage and the man laughed and said YES! WoW! To remedy the food in the room situation, we brought groceries into our room anyway. The market around the corner is top notch, with reasonable prices. People can not exist without your own water and food readily available. Just remove their drinks from the little frig in the room, and place your food and drinks in it. And please clean up your mess. We took the trash out everyday, cleaned up crumbs on counters and the floors. Before you check out, restock the frig with the hotels drinks and clean up everything. If you are going to break the rules, don't be a slob. Be aware that if you open the patio doors, all the surfaces mirrors, countertops become glazed with condensation and the floors become slick. Keep the door shut and if condensation forms on the exterior glass, wipe it down with a towel so you can enjoy the outstanding view. Finally, the beach is nice but it is only about 20' wide. The pools take up all the area that could be beach. The pools are pretty but their are no exterior bathrooms, so you know EVERYONE HAS NO CHOICE BUT TO PEE IN THE POOL. The resort is really nice, service is top notch, there are just some pitfalls you need to be aware of. Now that we know of problems, we would stay there again and be prepared for whatever may arise. BTW - The ice is purified in this resort, so all cocktails with ice are safe to drink. To be safe, we only drank bottled water and did not eat any produce, salsa, salad, tomato etc. We did not experience any stomach problems during our stay!