Ah, Cancun. How could I (and Teddy) have never been here before? We have no idea, but we are correcting that mistake now. This Independence Day, we spent 4 nights at Le Blanc Cancun Spa Resort, and 6 nights at Haven Riviera Cancun Resort and Spa. Both are 5 star hotels with lots of dining options, nightly shows, and top notch service. Stay tuned to find out which one was our favorite!
Cancun Overview
Cancun is a beautiful city with lots of resort options, culture, and excursions. It’s easy to spend a couple of weeks and not run out of things to do. Like many foreign countries, the driving in Cancun can be a little scary to Americans but overall I found it easier to handle than Jamaica or Guatemala. Cancun is very tourist friendly – English is widely spoken in touristy areas and hotels, US dollars are readily accepted everywhere we went, and the electricity here is 110 Volt, just like in US. Most resorts in Cancun provide guests the return COVID test free of charge – making it very easy to visit and return. Cancun is relatively safe compare to most of Mexico, but there are many warnings on the internet so I recommend staying in groups and staying on resort – only venture out with trustworthy excursion groups, especially if you are a novice traveler. As always, practice common sense and be cautious at all times. The biggest let down for me this trip was I did not expect how hot Cancun is in July. The weather was in the 90’s but with the humidity, it felt more like 100 to 102. I simply could not function with that type of heat so we were not able to do much outside of the resort – I could not stay more than 10 minutes outside no matter how much water I drank or whatever cooling down method I used. I just felt like my throat was shutting and I had trouble breathing. Cancun also had a large amount of merchants/peddlers that frequented tourist hot spots and while that is to be expected, they were more pushy than most other tourist areas I’ve been to.
Le Blanc Cancun
Le Blanc is an older resort but arguably one of the best all-inclusive adult only resorts in the Cancun area. It was about 30 to 40 minute ride for us to get there from the airport.
ROOM
For the room, we paid about $500 a night (before tax and fees) for a Royale Honeymoon Suite Oceanfront. The room was spacious, with a beautiful view of the pool and the ocean. The jacuzzi is large and beautiful, and everything inside the room is still in great condition. The only complaint I have for the room is the bathroom is on the small side, with only one sink.
The most impressive inclusions in the room were full size bottles of liquor, fancy snacks (including Ferrero Rocher chocolates), and a nice Le Blanc beach bag. The room also comes with a very nice menu of artisanal handmade soaps that you can order from the app – all included.
SERVICE
All Le Blanc rooms come with butler service. The level of service really varies but overall they were helpful but not overbearing. The butler has a station at the end of the hallway, next to the elevator, and would always get out from their seat and push the elevator button for you as you approach. (They usually have a good idea if you are going up or down since they know your daily schedule.)
The service at Le Blanc is exceptional and welcoming. Every single employee always said hello and smiled at us each and every time they saw us. For our 4 night stay at the resort, we never saw any employee that was problematic.
DINING
The resort has many dining options ranging from in-room dining, pool side, buffet, to very fancy. We dined at every restaurant and honestly enjoyed each and every one of them. The French restaurant Lumiere had the most impressive wine list I’ve ever seen at a resort – even if you only look at the complimentary list of wines. The breakfast buffet had quite a few fancy items such as fresh squeezed dragon fruit juice, and make-your-own yogurt/parfait station. Service at all of the restaurants were great and wait time was either fast or within reason.
Drink service was sufficient, but drinks around the pool were noticeably weaker than you would get at an inside bar. Also we noticed that the drinks are not made with much consistency – we typically order two of the same drinks at the same time to make things easier for the bartender as we are not picky, but the two drinks can taste very different from each other.
We honestly don’t have a favorite restaurant at this resort. The resort also cooks lunch by the pool everyday – we had seafood paella once and it was delicious as well. The only restaurant we didn’t enjoy QUITE as much was the Terraza but that’s only because it’s outdoors and it was just too hot to be outside.
ENTERTAINMENT
Le Blanc provides daily and nightly entertainment. During the day, there are music types of shows in the lobby and pool areas. During the night, there would be one nightly show in different areas depending on the type of show it is. The entertainment schedule is posted on the Le Blanc app as well as on the TV in the lobby area. The nightly shows vary but can include acrobatics, circus, or party type of acts. Since our stay was over the July 4th holiday, the resort threw a big July 4th bash at the main pool, with performances like the Elvis Presley impersonator, lots of rock n’ roll music performances, beautiful renditions of famous patriotic American songs, etc. The night ended with a local artist singing the Star Spangled Banner, proceeded by fireworks. The show was amazing and moving. I had never seen a live performance of a patriotic show before, and here I was, in a foreign country, one that isn’t much of an ally. The feelings were hard to describe, but there was definitely some sense of guilt.
Accompanying the show was a large outdoor buffet spread with American favorites like hot dog, ribs, steak, hamburgers, lots and lots of desserts, etc. The resort did not cut corners on anything.
I’m not sure how other resorts nearby handled American Independence Day, but I can say that one other resort nearby also had fireworks. Based on the location, I assume it was the JW Marriott.
SPA
One of the benefits of staying at Le Blanc is that the room rate comes with free hydrotherapy at the spa. We have never done hydrotherapy before and really weren’t sure what to expect but we have heard many people raving about it so we decided to give it a whirl. Due to COVID, you have to book your therapy session ahead of time, and the slots do fill up fast. We were only able to snatch the 8am slot on our day of departure but it worked well for us. You will have a spa attendant that leads you to the back and instructs you on what to do every step of the way. The therapy takes about an hour and includes hot rooms (steam room, sauna room etc) as well as cold rooms (ice room, cool pool). It was a great experience and I thought Teddy’s skin looked amazing after it was over.
We did not try other items offered by the spa because we only had 4 nights there and the prices for the spa were on the high end, but the entire spa area was absolutely beautiful and clean. I don’t think you can go wrong here.
BEACH
Le Blanc is ocean front and the beach is beautiful. They do a good job to keep the seaweed at bay. The beach here isn’t really swimmable but it’s definitely very walkable. There are also a lot of open cabanas for you to use.
HAVEN RIVIERA CANCUN
We stayed 6 nights at Haven Riviera Cancun. The transfer was easy as Le Blanc had a taxi scheduled for us. The prices to different destinations are all printed on a large whiteboard next to the bell hop station so we knew we weren’t being gouged. The Haven Riviera Cancun is located much closer to the airport than Le Blanc so this worked out well for us as the second/final resort of our trip. The resort is located inside a LOOOONNNNGGGG driveway, which made it very quiet and serene. It almost felt like you were in the jungle and the beach at the same time. There was also an abundance of beach chairs and beds that you don’t have to play the towel game in order to get a place by the pool.
ROOM
We booked a Serenity Club Junior Suite Ocean Front room through Priceline for $360 a night plus tax and fees. This is noticeably cheaper than Le Blanc but they still tout it as a 5 star adult only resort. The room is quite spacious, and the bathroom is also larger this time, with two sinks and walk-in shower. As a Serenity Club level room, you have some added perks like butler service, serenity club access, dining at the a-la-carte restaurant Vistas, etc. Our butler spoke surprisingly good English and our stay was a smooth one. The best part of the room is the proximity to the ocean. These rooms aren’t just Ocean Front, they are literally ON the ocean. There’s nothing between you and the ocean. Out of all of the resorts I’ve stayed, this is the closest I’ve been to an ocean. The ocean front rooms also have a jacuzzi tub on the deck. Due to the fact we were in building 1, it was very secluded and you can absolutely go out on the deck without clothes on and no one would be able to see you.
For our final two nights, we decided to upgrade to a swim-out room. The weather was so hot and I had so much struggle cooling down that I just wanted to lay in the pool all day so this was a great upgrade for us. The pool water was very warm which is exactly how I like it. Most surprisingly, there was drink service all the way to your swimout pool.
As you may have noticed from these pictures, the seaweed was really in abundance here and there’s no way to avoid the ugly brown color in the ocean. The smell wasn’t unbearable but the beach definitely wasn’t pretty to look at. The resort does try to clean it up but there was just way too much to be possible. I’ve been told that this is caused by global warming but I don’t know if that’s been proven.
DINING
Haven has a lot of dining options and we didn’t have a bad meal here. The only dining that required reservation was Olios, which is the one they tout as their fanciest restaurant, although it didn’t feel much different than their other restaurants as far as the level of gourmet goes. The Japanese restaurant Satsu can really be considered two separate restaurants, as there is the hibachi option, and the regular dine-in option. The Hibachi table requires reservation as well, and only seats very limited number of people (10 an hour, on the hour). If you do have a reservation for the hibachi table, make sure you arrive on time as everyone only has an hour for the whole experience. We were 1 minute late and some other patrons were QUITE upset.
Olios also has a dining experience called Chef’s Table. The Chef’s Table is a 9-course meal (with wine pairings) and it is $95 a person. It is by reservation only and requires a minimum of 4 people. We were able to find another couple that wanted to join us so we did it together. The experience was good, but not amazing, so I wouldn’t do it again. It is a little similar to the Leap of Faith experience we had at Lautrec, but Lautrec was definitely much better, although it was also much more expensive.
Overall the dining experiences met our expectations. Breakfast buffet had many great offerings and the Vistas restaurant had beef carpaccio on the menu – one of my favorite foods.
The drinks were all very good, but top shelf liquors were hard to come by and blended drinks were not available at all restaurants. The biggest caveat was that there was no straw given around the pool bars, so unless you packed your own, you would be sucking down your frozen drink with your tongue (or wait till it melted, which didn’t take long in the 100+ degree heat.)
SPA
With our serenity club perks, we received 30-minute per day hydrotherapy sessions for free., which is called Water Journey here. The experience is similar to Le Blanc but there were some different massage jets in the pools and it was so relaxing and fun. I did one session and Teddy did two sessions over two days. Great experience. We also did a couples’ massage. The masseuse here were strong! I chose “relaxing” for my massage, which I believe is the code word for “don’t knead too hard”. It wasn’t really hard but I definitely wouldn’t want anything harder. Teddy wanted something more of a medium level and he had to tell the masseuse to go a little lighter. The biggest tip I would share is that ask for the massage inside the spa if you are visiting during super hot weather like we did. They offer massages by the beach but it would be way too hot. Massage by the beach is a little cheaper, not sure why.
I also got a conditioning treatment for my hair. I’m not sure if the stylist totally knew what she was doing – there were times I felt like she was yanking my hair, but I was happy with the end result as my hair did feel very soft and shiny.
ENTERTAINMENT
Haven has entertainment every night, in the Cabaret, the onsite theater. The entertainment varied from magic shows, karaoke, to casino night etc. I strongly recommend to not miss the magic show as it was quite impressive. The seating is EXTREMELY limited so arrive early. If you want a half way decent seat, you may have to be there 1 hour early.
FINAL VERDICT
Ah, this is a hard one. Considering the price difference, it makes it very hard to say which resort is better. The small bathroom at Le Blanc is something that is hard for me to get over. If we stay again, I would try to stay in the next level up on the room options which would be the Royale Governors Suite Oceanfront, which has dual sinks but of course more costly. The service at both resorts were impressively good, but both had weaker drinks by the pool, perhaps for safety reasons. I was annoyed by having no straws for frozen drinks at Haven, but if I go again, I’ll know to bring my own. The shows were impressive at both resorts, but I’m sure Le Blanc had the bigger celebration for America’s Independence Day. The better amenities at Le Blanc (full bottles of liquor in room, better snacks, toiletry items etc.) are balanced by the higher price it charges. Pool service was definitely better at Le Blanc but Haven has swim-out rooms and servers went all the way there. Both resorts’ butler services were good but not great, and while the food may be slightly better at Le Blanc, the food at Haven really exceeded my expectations overall. Comes down to it, I would have to choose Le Blanc over Haven, only because of the seaweed issue at Haven, which really isn’t their fault. So all in all, a small margin, and if you know about all the pros and cons of each resort and are comfortable with it, you can’t really go wrong with either one.