We booked the trip through Xcaret and thoroughly enjoyed it!
I would highly recommend, but also have a few pieces of advice/recommendations for improvement, thus, the 4 stars.
The positives:
1. Our tour guide (Silvestre) was excellent - he was not only informative and funny but very passionate/engaged in what he was doing. His partner (a lady whose name I am forgetting, was also nice, but did not engage in any of the bus presentation and her English was a bit hard to understand when we started the pyramid tour (we got split into 2 groups - a Spanish and an English speaking one).
2. The whole operation was extremely well organized - from pick up, to bus transfer, to drop off, to timing, to guiding you through each place.
3. After you get to the transfer station (if you are picked up from any of the resorts in Cancun or Playa del Carmen, you travel to Tulum to transfer buses) you travel for 2+ hours to get to the Chichen Itza site, where you spend about 2 hours (2/3rds of the time is getting tickets/through the entrance and listening to the history, the remaining 1/3 is for self-exploration/pictures/souvenirs. It is an EXTREMELY busy place). Then, after another 30 min drive, you get to the cenote/cave, which is magical and heavenly!!!!! I highly recommend swimming in it. You spend an hour there. Then you travel on the bus for another 60-90 min and get to Valladolid, where you eat at a super nice outdoors restaurant/buffet style and get to explore the city - you have 90 min only, so eat fast!
Then you get back on the bus and spend the remaining 2-3 hours there, depending on which resort you are to be dropped off at.
4. They offered us cold beer and and cool wet wipes after the extreme heat at Chicken Itza.
Here is my advice to future customers/suggestions for improvement to the operators:
1. Plan for a VERY long day - 13-14 hours.
2. Plan for EXTREME heat - we visited on 4/1, which is not even the "hot season" and had 99F before humidity factor, which brought it to about 105F. I was extremely happy that they offered us an umbrella - if you can, take it!!!!
3. Bring a LOT of WATER - all you get is the gift water bottle at Chichen Itza, which is maybe 16 ounces. They offer soda on the bus, but soda doesn't hydrate. Also, we were offered beer, after the hot tour of the pyramid, which was a nice touch!
4. Bring food/snacks. They picked us up before our resort breakfast was open (at 7 am). We got served "breakfast" (which was a small sandwich, a mini-muffin and a boxed juice) around 9:30. The next time we ate was at 4:00 at the buffet. Then again at 9 pm, when we got back to our resort.
5. Bring cash for tips at the restaurant, the cenote (if you want to see/taste a tortilla being made from scratch), souvenirs/t-shirts if you care and the tour guides, and a credit card if you think you may want to buy a more expensive/quality item on the bus. You can also use a CC in some of the stores in Valladolid.
6. It would have been nice to hear more of the history of Chichen Itza, possibly watch a video of the inside, while traveling on the bus. We were completely clueless (our own fault for not reading about it) and the 15-20 min brief summary at the site, which was hard to hear at times, gave us very little information. read more