Hotel Riu Palace Antillas

My husband and I recently vacationed here for his birthday. This was our first time to Aruba and this resort was so amazing! The customer service was top notch! The food was excellent for an all-inclusive. This resort is located in a great location, where you can just make a left out of the resort and there will be tons of restaurants and shops to choose from. Thank you to Ashanti & Gunther (front desk), Vava (bellman), Juan ( bar server), and Joanna (Room Attendant) for making our stay more special!

I am currently here for the second year in a row and this year I brought a group of 70 people. Best Adults Only All Inclusive Resort in the island. Excellent food, excellent service and very accommodating staff. We are alreday planning to bring our grouo back again next year!

Planning our honeymoon we wanted to do something in the Caribbean that was all inclusive and no kids. With so many choices we ended up going to a travel agent for some help. After looking at many options we settled on the Riu Palace Antillas. Our agent signed us up for the "Elite Club" which brings additional features. The resort itself is nice. Five on sight restaurants to choose from. All themed differently with a buffet. One huge pool and right on the beach. But, other than drinking, eating or sun bathing the resort offers very little else. There is an entertainment hall on sight but offers very little. What I found extremely frustrating is in the evenings, during college football, NFL football and hockey season, there is not a TV anywhere other than your room. The sister resort next door has one bar that offers TV's to watch sports. Not that I want to spend my honeymoon watching TV. But in the evening there really isn't anything else to do if you stay on sight. There is a big tourist area just up the road which is an easy walk. The Elite Club is interesting. We were put into a room that was in a separate building from the main resort. There are 28 rooms all together in that building. They are supposedly the honeymoon suites. There are Elite Club rooms in the main tower. It was nice being away from the main resort though. DIdn't have to fight the elevator lines. Elite Club offers you the ability to make dinner reservations through the Riu app. If you are in the general area you have to wait in line. The Club also has its own pool with bartender. Its own restaurant and own bar. You can also get exclusive food items via room service. You also get a stocked mini fridge, water delivery every day and some snack items, all of which can be restocked via the app. There is also an area in the back of the buffet room for Elite Club. You get a menu of "exclusive" breakfast options but.... All the waiter really does is go to the buffet and plate what you order. Which took unusually long. The app is very glitchy. One day we attempted to order a sandwich and had to schedule a time only to be told we were out of the window and the order was cancelled. Then... it showed up. The restaurants overall very much reminded me of a cruise ship. After about four days of dining on sight we had enough and did the rest of our meals in town. The Steakhouse which I believe is their signature restaurant is very mediocre. The service at the specialty restaurants on sight I found to be very slow. Overall the resort is kept clean and the staff is very nice, although stingy. Every time we asked for a certain amount of something they always shorted us one or two items. My wife and I travel quite a bit and our impression of the Riu Antilla is it is a booze cruise on land. And a tip if you hit the beach or general pool. You have to get up early, get your towels and place them on a chair to get a good spot. If you wait, as we did, the choice spots on the beach with a tiki umbrella or right at the water front are taken. We were put under a tree near the beach.

It was our first time to Aruba and we were blown away with how friendly people were! We have visited other islands and all inclusives and I can’t say enough how hard the staff works here to please the guests. I read some reviews who said differently prior but still booked and had a great experience with all the staff being friendly and accommodating to say the least. The rooms are spacious and updated, and the full mini bar was a plus and I appreciated it being restocked daily with beverages. Rooms were always made up and clean upon our return from our adventures. The shower is the star of the show and the hot hot water love it! Minor cons is I wish there was more then one towel hook in the shower, it seems so minor but when there are two of you and no where to hang the other they just end up on the floor. Secondly having more plugs in the room (American plugs) or a warning to guests to bring conversions, I understand people from other countries come here so it’s battle of the plugs. And the AC, I was fine but my fiancé runs warmer and 69 was not cool enough for him, that’s where the thermostat stops. Next the food! I’ve been to a lot of all inclusives and the food is either limited or huge menus with mediocre quality. Here you get variety steak house, Arubian, Italian, and a French/ Spanish style restaurant. Now the restaurants have limited seating so it’s first come first serve so you have to get down there around 5:30pm if you want to be seated at 6 or a little later. The other option is the buffet which has a different theme every night so if you prefer a buffet you have lots of options and not the same old stuff each night. The other bonus is lots of bars! A lobby bar, 24 hour cafe, and pool bar during the day, and then at night an additional outside bar opens when the pool closes and you have the lobby and cafe. Around 11pm the club there opens which has different parties each night. (We didn’t attend since we are early birds, so 11pm we are out!) All the restaurants are amazing, the menus are small but for an all inclusive the quality is there, even the buffet there are so many options! The beach chairs are also first come first serve but they will continue to set them up on the beach until they run out so first day we didn’t have an umbrella. We did notice that people bring tumblers to keep their drinks cold since the outside pool drinks are small cups and usually don’t keep your drink cold long, highly recommend a yeti style cup, we ended up buying them here. If you do forget something the bottom floor has shops you can visit for most essentials or town is just a short 5 min walk. We also got a couples massage which was really affordable and super relaxing, the spa seemed brand new and the massage beds were huge! It was a really relaxing massage to kick start our trip. We loved staying here and would highly recommend it to our friends and family!

Food and location was excellent. Loved the swim up bar and direct beach access. There is a short walking distance to a variety of bars, market place and restaurants.