Love this resort!
Jan 25, 2025 Venture758886 Santa Clara, Utah
My husband and I stayed at the Haven Riviera Cancun for 8 nights in January 2025. This is probably my favorite All-Inclusive resort of the ones I’ve tried. We were in the Serenity Club with a partial ocean view swim-out room. Yes, it was a splurge for us, but totally worth it! ROOMS: The rooms at this resort are wonderful! Very spacious with… Read more
My husband and I stayed at the Haven Riviera Cancun for 8 nights in January 2025. This is probably my favorite All-Inclusive resort of the ones I’ve tried. We were in the Serenity Club with a partial ocean view swim-out room. Yes, it was a splurge for us, but totally worth it! ROOMS: The rooms at this resort are wonderful! Very spacious with tons of storage space. And there were no issues - everything worked! There is a large shower in the bathroom and two sinks and a vanity with a magnifying mirror. Lots of snacks are provided and replenished each day. There are a variety of drinks in the mini fridge and several bottles of water. There is also a butler box, which is so great. Room service items are delivered there - we just put a tip in the box in advance. It’s also nice to have a place to put room service dishes and items to get them out of the way until someone comes to pick them up. Many reviewers comment on the slippery floors. We didn’t have a problem with this. We put a pool towel by the door coming in from the swim-out, which seemed sufficient. Another great thing about this resort is that there are many rooms with 2 queen beds. This makes it a great resort for girl’s trips or any trip where you need 2 beds. I believe most of Building 7 rooms have 2 queens. We loved having a swim-out room, and will probably have to splurge every time now, because we can’t give that up. We personally like our privacy and don’t want to hang out at a crowded pool or beach. We avoided the “find a lounger” game as well, although this does not seem to be much of a problem at the Haven. SERENITY CLUB: “Is it worth it?” For us, it was definitely worth it! The perks of Serenity Club are: 1 - An assigned butler 2 - Two free bottles of alcohol of your choice in the room 3 - An upgraded check-in service 4 - Access to the Serenity Lounge, where there are snacks, lots of self-serve alcohol, and just a quiet place to relax 5 - Access to the Serenity Club gym (rooftop of Building 7 - I never saw anybody there) 6 - Top shelf alcohol choices 7 - Access to the Serenity pool (by buildings 7 and 8) 8 - Free 30 minute hydrotherapy sessions at the spa 9 - Access to Vistas and Tahani restaurants My husband and I discussed this after our trip - should we try our next trip without Serenity Club and save some money? This is my feeling about it: I really LOVED having a butler, and I loved those hydrotherapy sessions at the spa. I guess I could go without those though, and several of the other perks I could go without. BUT, the thing I don’t think I could give up is the Vistas and Tahani restaurants! We went to Tahani for breakfast several times and loved it. We went to Vistas for lunch 6 times, and I am totally addicted to the Mango Shrimp salad there!! During our lunches we saw several people “try” to get in who were not Serenity, and they were turned away. There is simply no access if you’re not Serenity. I just could not give that up! So we will be doing Serenity Club when we return. FOOD: We loved the food at the Haven. We were there for 8 nights, and ate at Vora Mar once, Agua Bendita twice, Olios twice, Satsu twice, and Tahini for the new dinner and dance show once. Our favorites were Agua Bendita, Olios and Satsu - they are all so good, we couldn’t choose one favorite! I love it when people mention the foods they liked most in reviews, so I’ll do the same. Agua Bendita: So many things we loved here! There are so many good appetizers, we just ordered a bunch and shared them. Be sure to get the tableside guacamole! We also had the flambeed shrimp, goat cheese salad, stuffed bread, governor tacos, and barbacoa tacos. All were excellent - probably the best was the barbacoa tacos. For a main dish, I had the Beef Tampiquena both times - it’s fabulous! For dessert I would recommend the Vanilla Gericalla with cinnamon ice cream. Olios: Also so many great foods here. The best thing I ate on the entire trip was the Artichoke soup at Olios. I will be craving that for a long time! We also loved the Crab Tien and the Berrie Salad. For the main dish, I had the Picana w/Mushroom Sauce one night and the Beef Tenderloin the other. My preference was the Picana, but they were both wonderful! Something I did not notice until after the trip was that Olios has some specialty drinks listed on the menu on the Haven App. I wish I would have known - I would have loved to try some of those. They sound wonderful. Next time! Satsu: Again, so many wonderful choices. We ordered several things and shared them. Our favorites were the Edamame, Rock Shrimp Tempura, Cheese Kushiague, Beef Skewers, and Beef Yaki Udon. The Pork Wok dish was also good, kind of a sweet and sour pork. The Matcha dessert was wonderful - we did not share that! Vora Mar: I wish I had liked this more. It was fine - just not as good as the other restaurants. The caprese salad and burrata salad were both good. There is also a salad bar, and the long, thin crisp breads they had there were very good. The tiramisu was very good. The main dishes were just OK. Vistas: Again, the Mango Shrimp salad is my second favorite thing at this resort. The Creme Brulee was also good. We loved the beautiful outdoor setting while eating lunch at Vistas. Tahani: Great for breakfast, although nothing really stands out. I love the Mimosa cart. We preferred having a more relaxing breakfast at Tahani to the buffet. Dinner at Tahani is now a dinner show with singing and dancing. You make reservations and choose your food in advance. We really enjoyed it - it was so fun! Even the waiters got into it and everybody was up dancing by the end. Personally I wish they would do the dinner show half of the nights, and go back to the regular restaurant the other nights so we had more options. My understanding is the dinner show is a new thing they’re trying out, so it may change. Right now, it is included for Serenity guests and an additional charge for others. Flavours Buffet: Not our favorite, but we only tried it twice. There are many other options, especially for Serenity guests. Room Service: We heard it’s great, but the only time we tried it was one night for a couple of desserts. We did get coffee delivered to our butler box every morning, and that was great. Our butler arranged it. Coffee shop: Coffees were so good, and they had lots of snacks and ice cream as well. My favorite thing there was the Eclair Croissants! They didn’t have them all the time - I think they run out, so get there early. DRINKS: We thought the drinks and drink options were great! We are not heavy drinkers, but we found several drinks we really liked. My husband’s favorite was the Iguana, blended (I think this is one of Petro’s creations). We also loved the Mini Beer shots, Mango Margaritas, and Spicy Margaritas. I had an Espresso Martini several times from the Lobby Bar. I prefer them with decaf espresso in the evenings, and the bartenders were alway great to run to the coffee shop and get the decaf espresso for them. On our last day, Petro at Dock’s pool bar made us a drink that I forgot the name of. It was green and had kiwi puree in it. It was so good - we’ll have to hit him up next time for another one of those! A lot of reviewers have commented that they thought the drinks were a downfall of this resort. I agree that sometimes the drinks seemed too weak, but you can always ask them to add extra alcohol, or get a shot on the side of alcohol and add it yourself. A couple of times I added more alcohol to my drinks from the bottles we had in our room. SERVICE: Carlos was our butler, and I do think he is the best there is! We loved him and by the end of our trip, felt like he was our friend. He helped us with a couple of glitches along the way and set up all our dinner reservations. He stopped by to see us every day, just to chat and make sure everything was going well. I will request him when we return for sure! Other staff that we particularly appreciated for great service were Santiago at Olios (our favorite waiter of all), Miguel, assistant waiter at Olios and guacamole maker at Agua Bendita, Petro at Docks pool bar, Richar at Vistas and Flavours, and Russell at Tahani (he was so fun during the dinner show!) Eleazar at the spa was wonderful. The waiters in the pool area are great to take orders and bring drinks to the swim-outs. Also, at the Serenity pool they now serve snacks - just ask them for the snack menu. They will also bring those to the swim-outs. All of the staff at this resort are great! We never had a negative experience. I was impressed from the very beginning when we were checking in. They were trying so hard to make accommodations for a request I had made to get a room that did not have too much sun on the swim-out deck. They were truly concerned and let me know that if the assigned room didn’t work out, they would gladly move us. The wonderful service is one of the best things about this resort. SPA: We went to the spa twice during our trip for the hydrotherapy circuit. A 30-min session is included for Serenity guests, twice during the week I believe. You can upgrade to 60 minutes for $19, which is a great deal. We loved it. The second time we upgraded to a 90 minute session for $59, which included a scalp and shoulder massage on a heated bed. I think this is one of the best perks for Serenity guests. ACTIVITIES: There were two afternoon activities that we attended. One was the Macrame class (Thursday at 1:15) and the other was the cooking class (Friday at 1:15). We loved them both! There was no charge for either and no need to sign up in advance. We just tipped the people running the class. Both were held in the Flavours Buffet area. We especially loved the macrame class. There was a couple they brought in from outside the resort (I think their business is Mavana Macrame). They were great and it was really fun to have a little macrame souvenir to take home! At the cooking class we made guacamole, with audience members doing the “cooking”. Then we got to eat the resulting product. Very fun! SHOWS: Most nights there is a show at Moons Cabaret. We went to the magic show and Karaoke twice. Those were all fun! We heard the Michael Jackson show was great, but we didn’t make it. (Maybe we are just a boring older couple, but we like to turn in early!) BEACH: It is true what you hear - Haven does not have the best beach. But it’s not bad at all! We didn’t spend a lot of time out there because we had our swim-out, but it’s nice and it’s not crowded. I think it gets a worse rap than it deserves. They do their best to deal with the seaweed. I feel really bad when I hear of people deciding not to come to this resort because the beach isn’t the best. They are missing out! TRANSPORTATION: We used Kalido for a round-trip transfer from the airport to the Haven, and then back to the airport after our trip. This was a private transport, so we didn’t have to worry about extra stops on the way to pick up or drop off other people. This is totally the way to go! The Kalido rep was waiting for us when we exited the airport and we were on our way! It cost $96 total, which included a couple of Modelo’s for our trip to the resort. There are a lot of good transportation companies to choose from - we just had a great experience with Kalido. Overall, we loved the Haven Riviera Cancun and I can’t wait for my next trip back! I love it when people make recommendations in their reviews of the best things to eat at the restaurants, so hopefully other reviewers will do the same! Read less
