Head Tale

As I said in an earlier post, Moon Palace Cancun nails pretty much everything on my “10 Things I Want in An All-Inclusive” list except that the nearest city (Cancun) is a bit further away then I’d like and Moon Palace Cancun doesn’t have a great beach/swimmable ocean  (which then becomes a deal-breaker in terms of whether I’d ever go back since a good beach is pretty important to us when we go on holiday – not withstanding that our last two holidays were to places without this feature – Moon Palace and Sandos Caracol.)

Even though Moon Palace has 8.5/10 of the things we want (and most of those done really well), there are still going to be some regrets after every trip – even after being away for two weeks instead of our usual one week and even with all the research and planning I did beforehand.

(My family laughs because I always create a tentative agenda for our trips – what we’ll do each morning/afternoon/evening.  We never stick to it but it’s a good way to keep track of shows we really want to see or activities that only happen at certain times or whatever and to try to make sure we don’t miss something really cool.)

1. We Should’ve Made Two Trips to Isla Mujeres Instead of One 
Considering it was probably the highlight of our trip, both when we first visited Cancun in 2004 and again this trip, I’m disappointed that we didn’t find a way to get to Isla Mujeres (and its “Top 10 in the World” beach – Playa Norte) a second time, especially since we could’ve used resort credits for our second trip to go very inexpensively compared to paying our own way (which we did our first time to maximize our time on the island and control our agenda.

2.  Didn’t Get To A (Real) Sunrise
One of the resorts is named “Sunrise” and we went there lots.  But I never got my butt out of bed to go watch a real sunrise, even though I was often up early enough in the morning to do so.  Resting in bed, drinking room service coffee was too big of a temptation.

3. No Coconut For You!
During their first week at the resort, Grandpa and Grandma had a gardener offer them a coconut to drink from but we forgot to seek out the same thing during our time there.

4. No Paddle Boarding/Hobey Cat 
With a crappy beach/ocean, we only went out in the water a couple times in the “green box” in front of Sunrise where there’s no seaweed.  We still could’ve taken advantage of the non-motorized water sports but since we were rarely on the beach, we kept forgetting and then the one day we did walk the beach, it was too windy to go out.

5. Belly Dancing
I’ve mentioned a couple times that Habibi was our best meal of the week but it would’ve been even better if we’d been seated in time for their nightly belly dance show which is apparently very early – around 6:30pm – and only runs once (I would’ve thought it might run a couple times per evening.)  (Oh, and I just realised that doing a post about things we regret not doing means I won’t actually have pictures of some things we didn’t do.  So here’s my son doing a yoga pose instead…)

6. MiniGolf/Bowling
I’ve always said I don’t like to do things at all-inclusives that I can do at home. So we didn’t make a point of doing the mini-golf at Nizuc or the indoor glow mini-golf in the kids club in the Grand.  But funny enough, Sasha got to mini-golf one day when we left her at the Kids Club and we didn’t even know until she later told us! Pace also went to the glow golf by himself one day while we went to the Spa at the Grand.  We also didn’t do bowling at The Grand but I wish I’d at least popped my head in to see it.  However, we *did* do a couple activities I wouldn’t normally do – basketball one evening with Pace and riding bikes around the resort – both things we can do at home but still fun (but sweaty!) to do at a tropical resort!  I’d also read there was a rock climbing wall somewhere between Nizuc/Sunrise but we forgot to try to find that.

7.  Sasha Snorkeling (With Lots of Fish)
Sasha picked up snorkeling at Isla Mujeres very quickly but only did it in front of our beach chairs where there was less to see.  She said she even saw some small fish but I wish I would’ve taken her up to the point near the Mia Reef Hotel where the snorkeling was much better like I did with her brother!

8. Poolside Activities
I’m never a big one for participating in poolside activities – games, cooking lessons, Spanish lessons, etc. – but I do occasionally wish I did more of that type of stuff, especially when I see a Zumba class being led by one guy in a Lucha Libre mask! 😉

9. Tequila/Wine Tasting
The resort apparently had both a tequila tasting (booked through the gift shop maybe?) and also a wine tasting, hosted by a professional sommelier (er, is there another kind?) and paired with various foods, both of which might be payable with Resort Credits to make them very good values.

10. More Excursions
Being there for two weeks, I thought we’d probably end up doing more excursions – both to see some of the nearby Palace sister resorts but also to other places we hadn’t visited – Ek Balam pyramids and Xenses Activity Park were two that were high on my list.  But a combination of enjoying the resort so much, not wanting to spend much after paying for our second week, and knowing that some excursions would tire us out, even as we enjoyed them, kept us close to Moon Palace except for one day at sister resort Beach Palace and one day at Isla Mujeres (plus two days using day passes at The Grand which felt like excursions in a way as well!)

(Sorry this pic is so blurry – either the cabbie had a shaky hand or I got sunscreen on the lens!) 😉