I would give 100 stars if I could!!! I have been meaning to write a review for this great company…read morethat helped make my wedding an absolute dream. Prior to getting married, I was glued to a show called "Platinum Weddings". The wedding that caught my eye involved a cave reception in a Mayan ruin...The cave was surrounded by crystal blue water and it could fit up to 400 people or still be intimate enough for 75. I made it my quest to find the coordinators for this event. I found SOLEN, the "Event Masterminds"...and what a gem of a find. I spoke with Claudia Alanis Rios who immediately won me over. She is very professional, honest, sweet, detail-oriented, loves her job and is extremely creative. She takes your ideas and makes them a reality greater than what you could have ever imagined. She surprised me with extra little perks that she knew would just melt my heart, never charging me an extra penny and just doing it because she knew it would add a special touch. She helped me with ideas that I never knew were even possible. The biggest perk is that she studied in San Diego, she is a chef and a wine aficionado. She speaks perfect english and has impeccable taste. Planning a wedding in Mexico from the US is very difficult, especially when you want something that is a little non-conventional and unique (like a cave wedding). You don't know vendors, you can't really strike a bargain from afar and you want someone like a David Tutera that you can trust to just make it all happen. I never stressed. Claudia kept me posted almost daily about all the details...and she stressed for me. I only traveled to Mexico once for a food tasting and to pick table settings and flowers....the rest which included: coordinating lodging for all of my guests, airport travel, shuttles to the wedding, rehearsal dinner, cocktail party, post-wedding catamaran snorkeling cruise....was all handled by SOLEN and if you can believe it...the amount of money that I spend for one week in Mexico for the wedding, my family's travel, their hotel stay and post wedding fun was equivalent to what I would have spent for a one day wedding in Los Angeles. I can go on and on. Contact them if you are considering getting married essentially anywhere in Mexico, they have contacts everywhere. Best part about it, they don't just coordinate weddings...they are the "go-to" planners for many corporate events & concerts. They recently coordinated all the events for "Bachelor in Paradise" which took place in Tulum. You will not be disappointed. -Elena

WOW This is our…read morefirst resort in Cancun and I don't think we will ever choose another one. FOOD Wow. We did our homework before our trip and saw Zilara Cancun had good/decent reviews about their food. Let me tell you, this is probably the best food I've had in a long long time. Top dishes for me are the octopus with mole and lobster tostada from Maria Marie. If you like/can eat seafood, trust me on this. The drinks are phenomenal as well. There are signature drinks at all the restaurants. Those are mostly hits but some are misses (depends on your taste buds) PRO TIP: sign up for alcohol tastings at The Den first day you get there. We did tequila and wine tasting. It was quite a unique experience. SERVICE I've never gotten treated like this in any hotel I've been at. Chef's kiss for sure. The bellhop/front desk usually can break your 20s/100s into 1s so don't feel the need to exchange pesos (unless you want to of course). The workers at the hotel (and around Cancun overall) takes USD PRO TIP: there are a lot of activities hosted by the hotel. Morning exercise classes are really fun and the night shows are just okay. The crowd is definitely on the older side that just want to come to Cancun and chill not party. From hearing the reviews, Zilara had the most amount of activities from various first hand reviews from our friends All in all, solid resort. You won't regret it!

We typically go to the excellence Cancun, but they didn't have two club rooms the weeks we wanted…read moreto go so we picked the Zilara and overall I'm glad we did. FOOD- I overall liked the food. I wish they would have advertised/told us the buffet had different theme dinners. They were our favorite for dinner. There were good dishes at each, but nothing phenomenal. I really liked the lunches they had set up by the pool. It was overall good and on par with my expectations for an all inclusive. BEACH- this is honestly one of the highlights. The resort had one of the best beaches and ability to get in the ocean. If you want to get in the ocean, this is the spot. SERVICE - this was the most disappointing. At Excellence you cannot breathe without someone asking if you need something. It took a long time for people to check on us and we tip well. Day 4 we finally found Humberto who was THE BEST! Find him and tip him well. ROOMS- they were good and I was happy with them! POOLS- the pools were fine. A little shaded. The most annoying part was the cabana situation. Some are free, some are always paid, and some are paid on certain days. I get up at like 6AM every day anyways so I got good cabanas but if you're not an early riser you're screwed. Overall, I'd return!!

My first all-inclusive resort experience, and it's so good that I think it would be hard to top…read more Six days and 5 nights is a good length to stay with children. Besides the price (extra $127/night for a toddler), we had a wonderful experience - the food (both quality and variety), the well-kepted grounds, the amenities (Kid's Club, gym, pools) and the service are all top-notch. Food: there are food available from 6AM to 11PM. Some places I visited multiple times are: The cafe (opens from 6AM to 11PM) - coffee, tea and Frappe available all day. I usually stopped by after the gym (yoga near the beach at 7AM) to grab a iced latte and freshly baked pastires (dulce de leches cruffin is my favorite). Habaneros (opens from 12-6PM) - this is a casual spot serving tacos and ceviche on the beach. Even my toddler enjoyed the mixed ceviche with octupus. I enjoyed the ceviche, salmon toastada, and octopus tacos, while my toddler playyed with sand on the beach next to the table. Moongate (opens after 5PM) - the only restaurant that requires reservation, but for Teppanyaki ONLY. We were able to make a reservation for 5PM about 3 days in advance. The Teppanyaki chefs are all super energetic and made the experience fun for both kids and adults. We went back for dinner, and enjoyed some Asian Fusion dinner of ramen and sushi/rolls. My favorites include Short-rib, Teriyaki Salmon and the Omakase Nigiri. Trade Winds (opens for breakfast and dinner) - best steak in the resort. Last but not least, it took me 3 days to find my non-alcoholic drink of choice - strawberry mojito. I'm not a fan of the pina colada here, just FYI. One thing I don't like is the dolphins in captivity. I know it's a major attraction of the resort, and my kids honestly enjoyed watching the dolphins swim around and being trained. But it still makes me sad to see them contained in such a limited area.

One of the best vacations I've ever taken. 6 days here and it flew by so quickly. Everyone in my…read moregroup said the same thing. The property is MASSIVE. There are about 7-8 different restaurants and they all have their own theme/specialty. For the most part, the food here is amazing.. Like, I would come back as a regular paying customer. The people who work here appear to have a lot of pride and certainly make you feel well cared for. The service has been nothing but amazing. Highly recommend renting a cabana for a day or more. It comes with its own food/drink service (although sometimes we didn't see them for long stretches of time). You also get a free 5 minute facial for two people and two complimentary coconuts. Highly recommend because the bench chairs get taken up early in the day with people who simply put towels on them and walk away. The views here are amazing. The water is warm and blue. Everything I learned about cancun was real lol. I'd definitely come back here again in the future!