Cancun 2015Flights: JFK-CUN
AA JCUN-JFK
AA JHotel:Fairmont Mayakoba
Cost:29k MR (with 40% BA promo)
2 Fairmont CC certs and suite upgrade
Paid base price for third night + suite upgrade
Short review: I'll have to disagree with Dan's conclusion in his post
The Most Underrated Credit Card? and say that the most underappreciated card is the Fairmont Visa card. The card gives you two free nights and elite status that rewards its members with suite upgrade certificates. Effectively receiving two nights in a suite.
The Fairmont Mayakoba is MASSIVE (how do you capitalize CAPS?).
It's located in the gated Mayakoba Resort which houses 2 other lavish resorts including the Rosewood (where you get checked in on a boat and ridden with the boat to your villa) with Hyatt now in construction of the new Andaz Mayakoba.
Guests of all the resorts have access to some of each other's facilities.
The overwhelming majority of rooms are actually separate villas with 1, 2 or 4 guests per villa.
A few unlucky guests end up in regular rooms in the main lobby building. Which might explain why Dan
doesn't seem to be a huge fan of this resort.
Our vila was a two guest villa, with us occupying the full top floor and balcony over the lagoon.
The property is huge, but there are golf carts constantly coming and going taking you wherever you want (to the beach, for example, wich is a full mile from the lagoon villas).
Sailboating on the ocean and boat tours on the lagoon is free.
Staff were extremely nice and helpful. I'd rate them at the same level of Hyatt's staff, way above top Waldorf Astoria service.
Chabad of Playa delivered to our room warm food every night, they did a wonderful job. And even went out of their way accommodating us.
After a short convo, it turns out the Shliach is a DDFer. Who is not?
It seems to me that both fractions of chabad are represented in Playa.
My experience was with the group that subscribes to the school of thought that Moshiach can come from the dead.
I'll post pics in following posts.
Next up: Hong Kong/Hangzhou