Xcaret Park is one of the most popular parks to see in the Riviera Maya.  While there are many all-inclusive resorts that are located within a short drive of the resort, there are only two (plus two more with the new Hotel Xcaret Arte and as yet to be completed La Casa de la Playa) which have direct access to this park.

Since Hotel Xcaret Mexico became a very popular all-inclusive resort choice, one does not hear too much anymore about Occidental at Xcaret Destination.  This Occidental resort is a Barcelo property and consists of the following:

• 765 rooms.  Not quite a mega-resort, but it’s large and spread out so there is a certain amount of walking involved.
• direct access to Xcaret Park, either by a 5-min. walk or by taking the canal boat which goes right through the resort’s main lobby area.
• if you stay at this resort, you can purchase an Unlimited Xcaret Experience Package which allows unlimited park access for your stay.  That means you can go back and forth between the park and the resort as many times as you would like.  Go to the park for half a day, back to the resort for dinner, then go back to the park for the evening show, Xcaret Mexico Espectacular Show.
• access to 11 restaurants, 11 bars, seven pools including a natural oceanfront pool, a private cove, beach snorkeling access at the resort.
• prime resort to experience lots of wildlife including monkeys.

When it comes to rooms, quite frankly there is basically nothing to distinguish one room category from another unless you want a resort upgrade to gain access to more amenities–they all have a larger amount of space, there are connecting rooms for families, and the upgraded rooms allow access to more pools and amenities, but the only room with balcony Jacuzzi or something special would be the Romance Suite with the Royal upgrade.  And that room seems to be very difficult to book–I did a dummy booking using several dates and it was not available for any.  As far as price point, you can get a basic room for two adults during the off season for $3800; a bit high, but the location to the park cannot be beat.  If you belong to My Barcelo (it’s free to join and gets you more perks the more you use it), you can get that price point lowered by using your membership number to book.

Here are two videos highlighting some of the resort’s amenities and layout.  What do you think?  Would you consider staying here just to gain direct access to Xcaret Park?