Fabulous Resort!!!!!

We were there in November and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay. The resort, the rooms were extremely clean. The resort size was perfect for us, walking distance to the beach and pools. The food was excellent, always something to eat when you were hungry, there was a 24 hour area open. The beach was breathtaking. Entertainment was phenomenal, we had a blast with all the entertainers, they were fun and interactive, we participated every chance we had. We all knew them by name...Elier, Annie, Y [... read more]andre and Andy, the beach volleyball guy just to name a few. The front desk staff was very accommodating. We actually stayed on the resort all week because we were happy with all of the events taking place each and every night. It was a fantastic vacation and we will be back next year for sure. We all had a blast, my daughters, myself and my husband.

Good with a few issues.

Travelled jan 3-10, 2017 on Sunwing for $1001 per person. Couple with teenage kid. Hotel is big. 1000 rooms. Lots of walking which wasn't too big of an issue for us. Pools are beautiful as is the beach. Resort was clean other than the pool washrooms. Urinals broken and not fixed all week. Food was good and bad. A-la-carts were awesome. Best I've had in my 4 trips to Cuba. Buffets were the typical Cuban affair. Desserts were good. Fruit was limited but veggies, cheese and cold meats were  [... read more]plentiful. Biggest issue was the cross contamination with raw meats (chicken and pork) and the undercooked food from some of the fresh meat servers. PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU ARE PUTTING INTO YOUR MOUTH! If not you might get sick. Snack bar by the pool was a better option. Wifi was crap and cost 2 pesos for an hour. Rooms were nice and modern. Clean. Water was off almost every day for a few hours so showering before supper was hit or miss as was flushing the toilet. Overall impression, resort is newer, clean and nice but big and buffet food needs a manager to do his or her job and pay attention to what the cooks are doing.! If I can see it why don't they see it and fix it. Using the same tongs to slop a pile of raw chicken into the grill then grabbing someone's cooked pork chop and toss it into their plate with chicken juice still running off of the tongs? Common sense people! Would I go back? Not sure. I'd probably try somewhere a bit smaller with an understanding of basic food handling rules. Overall a nice resort though.

Needs improvement!

Grounds was good but needs more maintenance as the path night lights are half out or broken, beach was excellent as were the pools but toilets need more cleaning and toilet paper was constantly running out. The water pressure for the showers for the whole complex was barely running for 2 days and only got fixed on the third day then the sewer backed up and had feces coming out of the opened manhole beside the main walkway. Extremely understaff over New year, food was bland and constantly runnin [... read more]g out, hot dogs and sausages that were previously cooked were used as main dishes food trays were not refilled and they had 2 big buffet restaurant together and only opened the main one till it was packed solid and out of food then would open the other side, very poorly organized. the chefs would not utilize the grills to their full use and cook for each person which made line up to 45 minutes, constantly running out of food for every single meal, running out of eggs after 1/2 hour wait then sent to the next kitchen to wait another 1/2 hour, when having any meals the wait for the coffee or drinks took 10 to fifteen minutes. At new year they ran out of filet mignon and substituted with meatloaf and very small meat that was undercooked and hard also had to wait 1.5 hour for the lobster, very poorly organized. The resort did not have enough towels for everyone which we had to keep for 2 to 3 days. certain employee had to work extra hard for a lot of lazy employee who would not move and just looked around.

Some Good Some Bad

The pool areas were lovely as were the rooms themselves an the beach but service and food were not good. There was poor food quality and taste and ridiculous waits to book a la carte dinners even when the restaurants were half empty. Still waited over 1/2 hour with reservations. A la Carte food was good though. Long waits to get drinks and we were never able to get a beach towel even though we went back to the booth with our tickets every day. Drinks were yummy though. There were small b [... read more]lood spots on the towels in our room. The was our first experience with an all inclusive and we had a great time but the poor service and food did put a damper on it.

Great resort, amazing people!

Just got back from a week vacation and it was perfect! The staff was friendly, welcoming and extremely helpful! Ocean and pools were beautiful. The food was good and I really enjoyed the a la cart restaurants, the French bistro was my favorite! Resort was great for families especially.

Great Resort..

The resort is really beautiful inside and it was really clean. The rooms were also very clean. The staff was very nice and very helpful when needed. I was really disappointed when it came to the food. I know its Cuba but I was hoping the food was going to be better.

Jardine del Ray, Melia

The only thing negative, was there were a lot of kids, which made it noisier than otherwise. Everything else was great. We did the catamaran trip. Would recommend it highly. People are very pleasant, as always. Room was clean. Resort was well kept.

Not a well managed resort

The hotel is good in general. The rooms are clean and the room cleaning service is good. The main problem is with the buffets (in reality almost one main buffet for several hundreds of guests). The management of the buffets and even restaurants is very poor. The supply of the food in the buffet is a disaster. There are only 20 food trays with almost 10 different food options (10 duplicated foods) with just a few main food items. The majority of the foods are side dishes. In most cases many of tr [... read more]ays are empty and takes time to be refilled. The trays are misplaced and don't match with the food explanation tags above them. If a tray is empty there is no guaranty to be replaced with the same food. There are a long cooking lineups at all times. When the cooks are out of supply they go personally to the kitchen at the back for supply leaving people to wait for them for several minutes. The cooking surface is very small for the demand and the cooks usually just use a half of the space and not utilized the half in full usually one or two orders at the time. This may be a policy to control the number of deliveries. The towel service is very bad and usually with no towel to supply. The punctuality is very weak among the staff. The towel service is supposed to start at 9 am but in most cases starts at 9:30 with no towel available (sometimes until afternoon) because the supply service truck is delayed. This is true about the customer service that when they open late they don't care about the line up and just do your own job in the office including chatting with colleagues for half an hour before provide service to the line.

Good resort needs some improvements

Overall we had a good time here. The rooms were nice, the grounds were beautiful and the beach was out of this world. The water was amazing I had not seen anything like it before. You could see your feet in the middle of the ocean. I personally also enjoyed the entertainment, especially the live music in the terrace every night. The only thing that needs improvement in this resort is the management in some areas. The service we recieved at the bars, buffet and restaurants was great. But towel se [... read more]rvice was not good and the snack bar by the pool was very understaffed to the point where we had to wait over an hour for some fries we had ordered. And there was not always bottled water provided in our rooms. If these small things improve this would be a much better hotel. Overall no regrets staying here.

Spacious hospitable resort

Large resort, lots of amenities, rooms were well equipped and cleaned daily. Staff were friendly and courteous. Meals and buffets offered great variety. Grounds were well attended. Enjoyed the evening entertainments.

Great week at MJDR!

Got off to a bit of a rough start.. long check in process and dirty room, but quickly resolved and everything was great from there! Huge beach, multiple pools and always shade available. Its a big resort, but outstanding staff really make you feel taken care of. Loved the beach party and theme nights.

Let feeling unwelcomed

We just returned from a week vacation and this will be my 20th visit to cuba and 4 time to cayo coco. Unfortunately my impression is not a positive experience and that customer service was really lacking. At the Italian restaurant the waitress was rude and made the group feel less than welcomed. We were told immediately before ordering that we were only able to order one item from each list in the menu and getting wine was like pulling teeth. There was 16 of us dinning that night and they wo [... read more]uld not leave us a bottle and did not come to refill after multiple request. We were told that we would have to wait and wait we did for over 30 minutes. I felt like we were begging to be served. This was our first a la carte experience on the resort and first impressions are lasting. The bar was never able to handle the number of guest and drinks took a long time to get. Rooms: some of our rooms were good but that was in block 8 and 16. The rest of the group did not have toliet sets the entire week even though they called numerous times. Also one room the TV did not work and many calls later still not addresses just the run around (these rooms were in block 8) This was even reported to a manager and still not fixed. Boxed an extra meal for the Japanese at a cost of $35.00 pesos and when we arrived told a glass of wine would be $3.00 peso each. They only filled the glass a 1/3 of the way and if topped up charged again $3.00 pesos. I have paid at other resorts to have a special meal and never charged for the house wine. Feel that this resort was more about extra money and less about impressing the tourist. Went to book the cave night with the Sunwing rep and told that it was no longer running. We wanted to go as a group of 16 people. That night when we were in the lobby there was a cuban selling the tour we were told no longer running and closed to the public. I think that this is so it can be sold by cash and not as a trip through the operator. We were so discouraged at this point we decided to not go. We did take the tour bus to Pillar beach and had a great time and enjoyed the service we received on the beach and at the restaurant. Perhaps they should hire some of these people to work on the resort. The beach was beautiful the weather was hot and sunny and that was the only positive I can say about this trip. I would not return or would I recommend this resort to any of my friends. I think it may be time to look at other islands such as Dominican Republic for future trips.

Great Resort and Price!!

Great resort... Food was definitely acceptable... Everyone was friendly... Grounds were maintained well.. Only issues to note were the mosquitos were brutal, but the hotel did everything they could to eliminate that issue.. Definitely recommend bringing some form of bug spray.. We will definitely be coming back to this resort in the very near future..

Incredible stay in Paradise

This was the most amazing resort with the most wonderful people! The beach was beautiful and clean and the pools were ideal with different depths and activities depending on the pool! I loved the stay overall, the only draw back was the food which was mediocre.

Everything we hoped for!

The hotel was in great shape, with lots of staff to keep it clean and neat. Grounds were constantly being worked on to keep it to a great standard. The buffet food was ok (typical Cuban standard) but the a la cartes were really tasty!! The beach was lovely! Lots of shade areas to read a book. Once in the water, there are pockets of coral so watch for the dark spots as you will hurt your feet. Excellent for snorkelling!!! There is plenty of sandy areas as well so we would recommend this beach for [... read more] those who like to swim and snorkel! The staff were very helpful and eager to please. There are mosquitoes as it is close to a lagoon. So maybe bring some bug spray for the evenings. We highly recommend this hotel and would love to go back!

Good Resort

The resort looked like it was recently updated. The grounds were well maintained, the rooms were nice, and the restaurants were clean. The pool didn't seem to be cleaned on a regular basis though. Also the public washrooms were hit and miss, often flooded and smelling horrible. Our room had a scenic view of a gravel pit which wasn't great but not the end of the world. We went to two alacart restaurants. The oriental was good however the service was very slow. The Cuban grill was amazing [... read more] and they even made a cake for our friend as it was his birthday. The buffet food was better than most Cuban resorts. Normally I find the meat fatty and dried out but not here. If was very tender and juicy. The buffet though seemed small for the size of the resort and it always seemed to be packed with people. We found a few times that some items in the hot buffet were stone cold when freshly restocked. As with most Cuban resorts the service was great and the staff are always friendly though they seemed to be short staffed.

Nice Beach,poor entertainment

Huge Beach,lots of sunshades too bad sunbeds are hard plastic.Rooms nice and clean.Food was OK.We tried only Italian a la carte restaurant pretty good.Buffet and beach buffet where clean.It's 1 year old so grounds palm trees are young.Service everywhere in this resort very good.Except beach volleyball entertainment very poor pprobably conditioned by former leader's funeral.Overall a nice 1 week vacation.

Very Big

It was very nice. Grounds were well kept. Many pools.Rooms very nice clean plenty of towels. Beach was wonderful. Buffets was good .a la cart. We went to the Ialian resturant ordered tomato and meetball soup came with one meetball in the middle .that was a joke. Also went to the seafood ordered lobster. Received 1 teaspoon of lobster. All and all we were only there for 3 nights and 4 days .we did enjoy our trip. The staff at the hotel were wonderful.

Average Hotel but good price

The hotel was about average, nothing too exciting. The room was again OK.... the beds not the greatest. The beach was wider than I expected but it has a lot of shells and corals which makes it hard to walk in the shallow water. The food wasn't great but you can find something to eat if you really wanted to. I would not stay 2 weeks though. The reason we booked this resort was mainly for the low cost. For CUBA, I would give it a just about 4 stars...... not the 5 stars it claims to be.

Best Beach! In Cayo Coco!

The resort was very large and clean. Gardeners every day cutting and watering and maintaining the landscape. Are room was modern looking,clean, and a quiet air conditioning! The beach was the best! shaded area was always available!