Royal Elite Vacation Club - Sandos Caracol - 77710 Playa del Carmen

I have taken my family over to Sandos Mexico a number of times and it is hard to say which one is our favourite resort. The children really enjoy caracol, but I have to say I’m more partial to Playacar for the beach. I wholeheartedly give my seal of approval. The chap who runs the place is a good sport he dresses like Tin Tin but he has great banter.

Jair Valenzuela took very good care of me and my family. He helped me find my speaker that was accidentially left behind on a Cancun Adventure Catamaran to Isla Mujeres. He also made sure we had our dinner reservations and enjoyed the full amenities of the resort. He answered my late night request and questions. He was very helpful and attentive. We are super happy with his service.

Our 90 minute presentation was not a bad experience and we really liked our sales lady. It was, however, much longer than 90mins (if you want to stay at the 90min mark, skip the breakfast, because that time allotment doesn’t count toward your 90min obligation). We even ended up purchasing and we were excited to come back. Then we had a REALLY bad experience on our last excursion (the Cancun Sailing to Isla Mujeres is NOT a family excursion, like we were sold) and our four daughters ended up deciding that they don’t want to come back to Mexico for a long, long time. Thankfully we knew there was a five business days cancellation clause in the Royal Elite contract. Our sales team didn’t tell us this, but we found the info on Google. We signed the contract on Wednesday, and then cancelled it on Sunday, well within the five days. A Royal Elite representative emailed us back that next day and we were hopeful that receiving a credit would be a fairly straight forward process. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. But after two months of emailing, our credit did finally come through.

I recommend that you don’t buy any timeshare associated with Royal elite. My experience was that they will put a high pressure, three hour sales pitch and misslead you. They will quote you all inclusive fees that are not accurate. We repeatedly asked them to confirm the fees when we were signing up and when we tried to book the following year it was much higher. Then you’re stuck. We purchased ours eight years ago and have never returned and will never returned and are stuck with High priced maintenance fees every year. Don’t ever buy a timeshare in Mexico because there is no recourse. Lots of underage drunks there. They put all the owners in a small pool area which is far as I am concerned, is where all the pickpockets and kidnappers go to scope out there next target.

Rating: 3.6 (Good) A member since 19’, and have booked over 10 reservations and have had over 20 guests travel to the resort. They all enjoyed their experiences; a couple even became members themselves. The number one thing for me is safety, and with RE your in good hands. My only critique would be from the sales pitch to after the contract signed. Lol, like you will leave the meeting thinking you got a unreal steal, but gradually come to a more realistic understanding of what you signed up for. With this said, there is value prepaying for future vacations and the membership is worth considering: 1st Safety - Your in good hands 2nd Availability - You may find better deals elsewhere; i.e Cheapcarribean.com but their availability is often limited 3rd Consistency - “Well Oiled Machine”??

Spent a week at Sandos Caracol in Cancun Mexico and had a fantastic time with my family. The food, services and accommodation was A+. It was our first time visiting Mexico and the beautiful people working at the resort went above and beyond to make our stay very comfortable and memorable. The only negative was the beach. The beautiful natural surrounding more than made up for that. Sandos Playa del Carmen however has an absolutely amazing beach and it's only 15 minutes away. Will definitely be going back very soon and using our Royal Elite membership

Spent a weekend at Sandos carosol and spent breakfast and 90 minutes of mine and my wife’s time with salesman Alex learning about what royal elite had to offer . I have to say was a pleasure listening to his sales pitch , was very up front ,placed no pressure on us and treated us exactly the same even after we told him that we just couldn’t afford it at this time. If situation was different I would have been perfectly comfortable with doing business with him thanks Alex.hope the champagne corks popped for you later that day

We went to Sandos Carocal where we were invited to join a 90 minute (took 3 hours) presentation about their vacation club. We have attended these before but never chose to sign up. Don’t like timeshares! This was presented as a point system instead of a ‘buy one week’ timeshare. We don’t drink alcohol so they didn’t get us drunk to agree, as some reviews state. We decided, on our own that this would be a nice fit for our family, as we take them on vacation often. The benefits of the club at Sandos Carocal were very nice, and worth the upgrade for our 20 family members. Karim was kind and very attentive to our family needs and took great care of us throughout our 12 day stay. Meaghan was also a great asset. They say it will save you between 25-35%. And for us, that’s about $5000 a vacation because we travel with big groups. You get the room ‘free’ when you use your nights but need to pay the resorts ‘all-inclusive’ fee, which we were told was $59 for Sandos Caracol. Turns out that rate was $115 a night, not $59! Just ask to see all-inclusive rates in writing to verify what you paid verses what you’ll save. The current price per night for the rooms we had is $317 for 2 people. With the all-inclusive rate at $230 plus fees, it is a savings of about $50 per night. We had 4 rooms. The concept is: you pay for your Sandos rooms ahead of time through your membership signup( comes to about $25 a night for 2 people) and then pay for them again when you use the rooms you paid for ahead of time (about $200/up a night) For us, the Royal Elite benefits and the approximate 25% savings is worth it if we only want to travel to Mexico or Spain. It also comes with equal amounts of RCI points. We haven’t attempted to use those so no review yet! We will update this review, as needed, over our time of usage. We are semi-retired and travel monthly. We will most likely be using 300+ nights a year with our big family.