Moon Palace The Grand Cancun

It's super hard to leave a review for this resort. I've been 4 times. But not because I wanted to go to the resort. It's entirely to see one of our favorite bands play there. There are a series of bands that play in their beachside show place area (whatever you call it). Usually in January or February. As we've been to and eaten at the 4 different areas of Moon Palace (Grand, Nizuc, Sunrise and Golf Course), I've got a fairly good feel for the place. Food: Don't get overly excited about "fine dining". It's VERY hit or miss. At the Grand, I think the top honors goes to Habibi. That's probably the best for dinner or breakfast. One very good option that is often overlooked is Cusco which is located at the furthest corner of the resort. When they're open, they have by far the best buffet style (giant peel shrimp, stone crab, etc) in a nice surrounding. The Grand Buffet is awful. And we've gone maybe 4 times over the years thinking it will get better. Never gets better. It's loud, bright, and a ton of kids. The food selection is underwhelming and mostly hot steam tray fare (think of extremely overcooked pieces of salmon sitting in a hot tray). The 24 hour coffee shop is not to be overlooked. Since everything shuts down pretty early (10pm), there are fantastic sandwiches and crepes. Not to mention desserts. Another great food tip is the bar outside the Grand Buffet. I believe they close at 11, but you order little appetizers that are fantastic. That's about it. French place is good. Jade we've never liked, and the Italian place was just too loud and bright for our tastes. Carribeano is 2/5. And The Grill is about the same. We ate at the steakhouse one year. It was maybe 3/5. Casa Mia downstairs is very good. 4/5 Late night room service should be avoided. I mean, you can try it, it's free, but not even worth the gratuity for the person delivering it. Better to go to the coffee shop and get a few items. Go ahead and try it if you don't believe me. You'll see. As for the room. The bed is nice. If you don't like the pillows, you can order from a wide array of different types from the Palace App. The TV is ok. We used a Roku. They have an HDMI port on the table for such a thing, but it hasn't worked for us in a few years, so we connect it right in the back. Works fine (Netflix works in Mexico, but most others do not). There is a giant spa. We've heard of lots of reports of brownish water coming out. I don't think they're thoroughly cleaned. Pack a spa cleaning packet with you. The room lighting is bizarre. If you figure out what switch does what, please let me know! The coffee maker is ok. Make sure you ask for pods. They don't always refill reliably. There can be lots of door slamming, and kids, but this year we got very lucky in our room location and it was generally peaceful. The pools are nice. We like the pool at Los Tacos. Seems quiet and out of the way plus I forgot Los Tacos is a solid lunch place! As a Grand guest, you can go anywhere. We found that the golf course is a fun place to go to and get away from it all. There are two restaurants. An Italian that is very good, and a Yucatan specialized restaurant that is also very good. If you go to the spa, I suggest going here instead of at the Grand. Less busy. The beach is kept up very nicely, but sadly the ocean here is not accommodating. There is often large amounts of seaweed, and it's very very murky. Not swimmable. Every year we've come it has been a RED flag warning for swimming. Not that you'd even want to. But they do what they can to keep the sand nice. It's mother nature doing her thing here. The grounds are kind of a pet peeve with me. There are lots of machinery buildings or main golf cart arteries. When you go out on your deck you will often get a white building with some machine buzzing loud and some outdoor lights. It's almost impossible to get a room with nice foliage or scenery. Most rooms overlook nothing interesting. Why they chose to put these loud and bright utility buildings right in the courtyards is beyond me. Definitely ask to be moved if you get one of them. They may give you a hard time, but persistence will pay off. If our band wasn't playing here, we'd never stay here again. Oh, finally, there are lots of people around to sell you timeshares or discounts for when you come back. Just say "No gracias" and keep walking. It's too much. Also, they most likely will add some "Palace" donation thing to your bill. Just tell them to remove it. It's a sleazy annoying thing to have that automatically added on in the hopes you won't notice. Read less

Had such a great experience at Habibi. They offered an option where we could try a little bit of everything at our table. Yum! Just when we thought we were done, our waiter, Manuel, offered the same option for their desserts 🍮. Great service, delicious food, with some of my favorite people. Thanks, Manuel, Carlos and Daira for great service ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Read less

I recently stayed at the moon palace grand and unfortunately, my experience did not meet expectations for a luxury resort. While the property has potential, there were several significant issues that impacted my stay. Check-in Process: The check-in process was frustratingly slow, with a long wait time of over 30 minutes. For a resort that advertises luxury, I expected more efficiency, especially after a long day of travel. Room Issues – Flooding and Safety Hazards: Our room was charming, but we faced a serious problem with flooding. After a day of rain, water began to seep into our first-floor room, making the floor dangerously slippery. My young daughter actually slipped and fell, which was a scary experience. We were told by staff this is a recurring issue, which made it even more concerning. I would have appreciated a heads-up about this potential hazard before being assigned to a room in that area. Resort Credits – Misleading: The resort offered a $200 beach bag as part of their resort credit program, but when we looked closer, we found the same item on Amazon for less than $30. They also charge a 15% tax which makes the bag actually cost you $30.00. It felt like a deceptive tactic to make you feel like you were getting a better deal than you actually were. Similarly, we encountered overpriced spa services that required us to pay extra even after using the resort credits. Promotions – Confusing and Misleading: On the way out, I was offered a $299 certificate that supposedly gave 50% off our next stay. However, when I looked into it further, I found that the prices on the website were already comparable to or lower than the discounted certificate price. When I called to inquire, I was told the 50% off would not apply, leaving me confused and disappointed. Overall Thoughts: While the property itself is beautiful, these issues made it hard to enjoy our stay fully. The lack of transparency with resort credits and promotional offers, combined with the flooding problem and safety hazard, was disappointing. I hope the management takes these concerns seriously and improves their communication and services in the future. Read less

The Grand is an outstanding vacation experience and it is an upgrade in comparison to Moon Palace Sunrise and Nizuc. The myriad of pools and restaurants afforded to Grand vacationers are many and all superb. The resort is especially great if one is a Palace Company Diamond member. Our Diamond concierge, Edwin Villanueva, made our week-long stay wonderful. He was super attentive, and he was even responsive on his day off. He anticipated all our needs and always provided professional service. Our pool concierge, Carlos, who attended to our pool needs at the pool outside the Grill restaurant, made every pool visit special. His customer service and infectious attitude was truly outstanding. Overall, the Grand is the best. Read less

I wanted to write this review specifically for anyone who is vegan as of 2025. Note that from an ethical standpoint, the Palace Resorts company supports keeping dolphins captive for the entertainment of their guests, which is heartbreaking. But if you’re concerned about what you will eat there, here are my notes from our stay during mid-January 2025. Heads up that you should download the Palace Resorts app where you can click through their restaurants and for lunch and dinner, they have links to menus at the bottom of each write-up. You can’t make reservations for anything until you get there but we didn’t have any problems when we wanted to make reservations after we arrived. Breakfast: The Grand Buffet has lots of fruit, plus savory items like sautéed spinach, a really yummy lentil dish, sautéed mushrooms (could use some seasoning), roasted fingerling and sweet potatoes, and fried plantains. Your server will get you Not Milk (from the company Not Co.) upon request (I believe almond milk is also available but I never requested it). They also have some breads and peanut butter and jelly if you wanted to make yourself a little toast or something. Lunch Option #1 - Buffet: One day we went to the Grand Buffet and they had sushi, of which there was some labeled as vegetarian - but the labels and the sushi rolls were definitely not matched up. I had to ask someone which rolls were the veggie ones. They also had some summer rolls labeled as veggie but when I went back for seconds I accidentally grabbed one that had chicken in it because the new tray didn’t have the items laid out the same way. (Thankfully I realized before I tried to eat it!) They didn’t have the sushi the other day we went there for lunch, but they had all of the same savory stuff they have at breakfast. Lunch Option #2 - Water Park Snack Bar (NOTE: La Selva, which should have the same menu, appeared to be closed because they were doing some maintenance on that pool? I couldn’t even find it and the staff I asked had no idea what it was.) Don’t be starving when you order from here because you’re going to still have to wait a while until you actually get your food - mine took 30 minutes. They have a coconut tinga tostada, jackfruit libel panucho, and a NotBurger. The first two things are TINY, like two bites each, so don’t feel bad about ordering one of all 3 things! Oh and they have guacamole and chips. It’s not labeled as vegan so who knows what might be in there but it didn’t taste that it had anything non-vegan in it… Lunch Option #3 - Los Tacos. We had never ventured to this side of the resort but needed some food late in the afternoon and it was basically the only thing we could find that would be open. It ended up being an amazing meal: a couple of small veggie tacos, guacamole and chips, “snacking cucumbers” with chile powder, and they brought us a plate of roasted veggies unsolicited! It did have a piece of cheese on it, but we just ate around that. Lunch/Dinner Option - Habibi: We went here for a late lunch on our last afternoon and it was fantastic. They said the pita has egg in it but they gave us another kind of bread with it. The tomato salad was THE best thing I had the whole trip. They had a Kafka skewer made with NotBurger meat, and a chicken shish taouk dish with some kind of NotMeat. (It was a little soft in texture but we still enjoyed it because it was spiced nicely.) They had a dessert option of a vegan banana ice cream as well as a sorbet and the banana ice cream was really, really yummy. I was STUFFED. Dinner option - Jade: It’s Asian so they had tons of options. We tried a bunch of dishes which was good because they’re all pretty small. My husband got the green curry and that was the only dish I didn’t like because something about it tasted a little dairy-ish to me but that’s probably just me being super sensitive to the taste of dairy. I would’ve gone back here again if it had just been us but my non-vegan teenaged stepsons were with us and became obsessed with the buffet for every meal the second half of the trip. Dinner option - La Cantina: We had a reservation at JC Steakhouse for my stepsons’ sake and I knew from looking at their menu that I wasn’t going to be able to order enough things to get full so I went to La Cantina for dinner by myself beforehand. My waiter probably felt bad for me eating by myself and was really attentive and helpful. He brought chips and guacamole (I think they do that for all of the tables?) and then I ordered both the “Eating Healthy” veggie tacos (2) and the vegetarian burrito. He even came back to tell me that he had been talking to the chef about the preparation of my burrito and they wanted to know if it’d like some NotMeat in it. I said sure! By the time I left I was stuffed!! At the steakhouse I didn’t want to be awkward with NO food so I modified their beetroot carpaccio to have no blue cheese and it was a giant plate of so. Many. Beets. Tasty but wow, that was a lot of beets. Dinner option - Casa Mia: This is the fancy side of La Cantina. We didn’t go here this time but when we came back in 2020 right before the pandemic started, they were as wonderful as my server at La Cantina was this time around - I remember they even had the chef make me a special vegan birthday dessert. Dessert: We stopped by the coffee shop the first night and I asked the woman behind the counter if they had anything vegan. She told me they only had a dark chocolate thing (it’s like shaved into a roll like a cigar) or some ice cream. Then she asked if I would like for them to make me something special each day to be picked up each evening! I said that would be lovely! So each night I would swing by there and tell them I was there for my vegan dessert, and they always recognized me and would present me with something. They made a flan (?) with fruit, some small “cakes” with chocolate and fruit, a tapioca-type pudding, and a chocolate pudding. They don’t seem to have any knowledge of egg-substitutes in baking so - not to sound ungrateful but - the couple times the dessert involved small pieces of “cake” it was honestly pretty gross. But I really appreciated their efforts!!! Dinner option warning - Tavola: We went here the first night we arrived because the kids were starving and the buffet was closed and it was right there in the main lobby area as one of the first places we saw. I was going to get pizza without cheese but then they said they could make it with “tofu cheese”. I was really excited but when it came I saw that it was just huge chunks of silken or soft tofu on top of the pizza. Not even seasoned at all. I ate it because I was really hungry but…no bueno! Excursions: We went on a couple of excursions to keep stepsons entertained and they both had veggie options. “Off Road Challenge” had veggie or chicken fajita options, and the veggie option was just sautéed veggies (there wasn’t any cheese or anything that we had to request stay off). It was a small meal though so we ate again when we got back to the resort. “Tulum Adventure” was a loooong day and the lunch was a buffet where I was able to fill myself with a random mix of plain pasta with veggies on top, and some salsa as my pasta sauce, plus some tortilla chips and refried black beans. Read less