Here’s another budget, family-friendly all-inclusive resort in the Riviera Maya which offers great deals many times throughout the year.  It’s called BlueBay Grand Esmeralda, and it’s located north of Playa del Carmen.  While not classified as a mega-resort, BGE has 979 rooms and suites, three pools (no swim-up bar, however), two buffets and six a la carte restaurants, a sports bar (no A/C), six bars including a beach bar with swings, theater, tennis courts, jogging trail, spa and gym, motorized and non-motorized water sports, and kid’s club.  Since the resort is large, it also offers golf cart service to take you around the resort if you wish.

A big negative here is the beach.  The resort sits next to a mangrove forest with merging river runoff, so sometimes the water gets brown and has an odor.  To gain access to nicer waters, guests often take the 10-min. beach walk north to the lagoon adjacent to Hacienda Tres Rios resort and swim there if the BGE resort’s beach is not looking good.  While resort guests have access to the lagoon, they do not have access to any loungers or Bali beds which may be present–those belong to the Hacienda Tres Rios’ guests.

Rooms are pretty basic here, so it’s best to upgrade to a suite.  One of the nicer suite categories here is the swim-up suite–while it doesn’t have much terrace privacy, it is a great opportunity to jump in the water and cool off if you’re not close to the pools or beach.  Below is a video of management discussing room categories; if you don’t speak Spanish don’t worry, the gentlemen walk around the suite so you can see what it looks like; various pics are displayed as well throughout the talk.  Also, if you want to see the suite in more detail, there’s a website called Oyster.com which has detailed photos of lots of rooms at many resorts in the Caribbean.  If you want to take a more detailed look at this suite, click here to see those photos.

Take a couple of minutes to view the video; would you stay here?