Hotel Riu Palace Pacifico - Adults Only - All Inclusive

The early October weather teetered on stormy, most often sunny with clouds, perfect! It was super hot, between 29 and 32. Hurricane Priscilla passed by without reaching shore but churning up the ocean enough to remove most of our beach and pound the Malecon in Puerto Vallarta. Yellow tape, diligent life guards and massage providers(!) kept most people back and safe, protecting what was left of the fragile edge. Within 3 or 4 days most of the sand had been pushed back inshore. The beach came back. Staff seemed extra kind and efficient, especially Diego at the beach, Tomas at Peninsula Buffet, our unnamed cleaner for room 5025. The only complaint is there needed to be one more server at the quiet pool. Yes it was impressive to see how many drinks she could stack and deliver. Salvadore and Louisa at the Steak House made the effort to keep us happy. Just being there was great. Having staff recognize us and chat made it greater. The staff at Krystal, ditto, Krystalin and the maitre de’ quietly took care of our needs with a smile. This Riu Palace's buffet is one reason we keep returning. The selection at every meal is fresh and higher quality in our opinion. Yes some dishes are too salty, but often a version of a food is available in plain form. Chopped spinach instead of cooked with cheese, or quartered avocado instead of guacamole. Saltiness is the natural state in most resort buffets, so I work around it. The fruit selection was very complete and the cucumbers were amazing. My husband was impressed seeing freshly prepared steak at lunch and dinners. I enjoy grilled fish. Other guests can be idiots late at night and early morning, totally unaware that their happy hallway conversation just woke up X number of fellow guests. Another reminder is to not converse on the balcony when it's obviously quiet elsewhere. We had an air-conditioning leak twice, which was fixed pretty much immediately, the 2nd time around 9 pm. The front desk always had at least 4 staff and we seldom waited long. The main lobby gleamed and a specialty drinks cart changed every night. The theatre was too hot to stay long, but drink service seemed timely. In any case if a drink wasn't forthcoming there was always a properly staffed bar nearby. We tried the 24-hour Sports Bar Restaurant. The first time the food was better, but the staff was good both times. We felt welcome. We would like to return.

Booked 4 nights 5 days at Riu Palace Puerto Vallarta, resort was very stunning, and they had great amenities. Drinks were flowing and everything was good. EXCEPT, on our final day we experienced RACISM!!! We were playing on the small pool with friends and we had a speaker with very low tone music, infact the security had asked us to reduce the volume and we complied. However after like 5 mins, the head of security shows up and starts to harass us at the pool, It took the intervention of some spanish speaking guests who were at the pool and were familiar to them, to leave us alone. Immediately they felt support from everyone at the pool, they apologized and left us to be. We decided to play music because, we saw other guests doing it, there are no signs to say you cannot, we had previously asked if it was okay and we were given a go ahead. The same person who said we can play it, went back and called security on us. That cast a dark cloud on my whole experience at the hotel. I just want to warn anyone of colour, to be careful at this hotel. Be warned!!!

Overall, this resort was amazing! It was very clean; the food was above average and they had a nice variety of dishes (even as a non-meat eater, I had plenty of options). The fitness center was probably one of the best I’ve seen on a resort. The staff was very friendly and welcoming. One thing that needs improvement is the evening entertainment. A variety of nightly entertainment would’ve been nice. But we still had an amazing time! We would definitely stay here again!

Very nice place clean good food and drinks and we enjoyed that it was adults only. Our room was nice but somewhat small and had a terrace not a balcony. Make sure that you clarify that you would like a balcony not a terrace as ours had no chairs and very small as in standing room only. there were 2 pools, one with a swim up bar that was known as the pee-pool as it seemed no one left the pool and just let it go. We enjoyed the other pool and surroundings. Be careful walking around the pool deck as it is very slippery and saw a few people slip and fall. If traveling to the Malecon it takes roughly 35-40 minutes from the hotel, but we were caught in traffic for 2 hours coming back. Not sure if we will book this location again as we attempted to eat at some of their specialty restaurants a couple of different nights but were turned away because we did not make reservations even though they were less than 1/2 capacity.

This was our first time staying here and we was very pleased with everything. The food and variety of restaurants were great. Thank to all the staff who work here, especially Melanie she always had a beautiful smile and attitude. Definitely return here!

I was really looking forward to this stay, but overall, it was quite disappointing. The service throughout the hotel was very slow, and several staff members at the front desk and in the restaurants were not particularly friendly or welcoming. Our room was located directly above the stage area, which made it very noisy at night. Thankfully, the music stopped around 11 p.m., but it still made it hard to relax before then. We had also booked a room with a “partial ocean view,” but the view was mostly obstructed — definitely not worth the extra cost. While the Marlin Bar area had a few nice and attentive staff members, some of them seemed overworked since one person was often left managing the entire bar and making all the drinks. We’ve stayed at the same brand’s location in Cabo, which was far better in terms of both service and overall experience. Unfortunately, this property didn’t live up to that standard.

Everything was amazing! Perfect girls trip!

Awesome stay

They were so limited in the smoking area, and treated very poorly on this matter, which was our concern.

The entire staff was amazing. Everything was clean and very well maintained.