Isla Mujeres-cruise met strandclub, snorkelen, lunch en open bar

Tired employees right from checkin till bartender. All are unhappy doing lot of trips everyday. No happy and welcoming faces . It is what it is.

We booked this tour through Viator while celebrating our anniversary in Playa del Carmen. It was the first of four tours we booked during our 8-day trip, and unfortunately, it was by far the worst experience we had. To be fair, several parts started off great: Booking through the app: Super easy Driver pickup: Easy and very friendly Check-in: Friendly, organized, and efficient Then we got on the catamaran. When we boarded, there were no seats left. I found a seat for my wife, but there was nowhere for me to sit. I asked a crew member for help, and he was nice and genuinely tried to find a solution. He eventually got the person in charge, Denis. I explained to Denis that there were no seats left. At first he was smiling and joking and told me to just sit on the floor. I told him absolutely not. I didn’t pay for a tour to sit on the floor while everyone else had a seat. His attitude immediately changed. He basically said, “Well, what do you want to do? We have to leave.” I told him I was perfectly willing to get off the boat and would just need a refund. At that point, some of the other passengers realized what was happening and actually made room for me themselves. Everyone had to squeeze together, and I really appreciated them doing that because they shouldn’t have had to. Unfortunately, that interaction seemed to set the tone for how Denis treated my wife and me for the rest of the trip. This tour included unlimited drinks. Denis was serving drinks to passengers throughout the boat but repeatedly skipped both my wife and me. We weren’t even sitting together, so this wasn’t a case of accidentally overlooking one area. Neither of us was offered a single drink. At the snorkeling stop, things got worse. As everyone was getting ready to enter the water, Denis was yelling at my wife to hurry up while she was moving around on a wet, slippery boat. I didn’t say anything because we were trying to avoid an argument and enjoy our anniversary. We had brought our own snorkeling equipment. I entered the water first, followed by my wife. She cannot swim, and when she entered, water immediately went up her nose and she panicked and wanted to get back on the boat. I grabbed her by her life vest and moved us to the side so we wouldn’t block everyone else from entering the water. We signaled to Denis for help because there were no stairs in the water. Instead of helping her back onto the boat, he ignored us. We struggled and eventually managed to get her back onto the boat ourselves. What happened seconds later was unbelievable. Two other passengers decided they didn’t want to snorkel, and Denis immediately lowered stairs into the water for them. My wife and I just looked at each other in shock. Later, Denis asked who spoke Spanish. We were the only people who didn’t. This was advertised as an English/Spanish tour, but from that point forward, he appeared to make a point of giving instructions primarily or exclusively in Spanish. Thankfully, I had a translator running on my phone. At the beach/food stop, he again gave the group instructions in Spanish without explaining anything directly to us. By this point, we weren’t interested in arguing with him. We kept to ourselves and tried to enjoy our day. Back on the boat, the drinks continued flowing to everyone around us. We still weren’t offered a single one. On the way back, Denis went around asking everyone if they had enjoyed themselves and soliciting tips. To be clear, I’m sure many passengers had a great experience and felt the crew deserved a tip. Then Denis came over to us. After barely speaking to us and never offering either of us a drink the entire trip, he put the tip bucket in front of me and said, “Tip.” I looked him directly in the face and said, “No.” But the worst part happened when we returned to the dock. Denis began calling passengers’ names and telling them which bus to take for their return transportation. When he called my name, I raised my hand. He said, “No transportation,” smiled, and then said something in Spanish. I turned on my translator quickly enough to catch the end of what he was saying. The translation I received was essentially, “See if they like it when they have to take a taxi back.” I immediately called Viator and explained that we were being told we had no transportation back. Viator contacted the operator and got us the correct bus number. Our transportation WAS included. That was the final straw. I’m very careful about accusing someone of discrimination because that’s a serious accusation. But after the repeated pattern of how we were treated compared with the other passengers, my wife and I both walked away feeling that we were being singled out, and that our race may have played a role. It wasn’t one isolated misunderstanding. It was the combination of being told to sit on the floor, the change in attitude when I objected, repeatedly skipping both of us for drinks, refusing to help my wife out of the water and then immediately lowering the stairs for other passengers, excluding us from English instructions on an advertised English/Spanish tour, and finally falsely telling us we had no transportation back while apparently joking about us having to pay for a taxi. We booked four tours during our stay in Playa del Carmen. The other three were NOTHING like this. We met wonderful people and had great experiences, which made the treatment on this particular tour stand out even more. I can’t speak for everyone’s experience, but I can absolutely speak about ours. If you’re assigned to a boat being run by Denis, I would personally ask to be placed on another boat. This should have been a fun anniversary excursion. Instead, it became the worst experience of our vacation.

It was a good experience but I little messy at the beginning and through it, at the beginning there's not signal to the entrance, you can get lost, I did, some group took me in and I wasn't even from that group the crew and everything else was good made the experience reliable but the only thing I recommend is buy new equipment for snorkel the one they had seems very old a

Horrendous check in, took hours in a shack on the beach with super long queues at the back of a run down hotel…. Good staff but revolting buffet lunch and way too long in Isla Mujeres being sold overpriced items … a full on day and a shame as quality could have been better, very happy to finally dock!

It was a very pleasant experience, great staff and the ride was incredible

Maui was excellent, the tour was really cool and the island was beautiful, Isla Mujeres! The boat was super clean and excellent crew

Nice excursion to book. Crew good vibes Beverages plentiful. Seats oversold not enough equipment for everyone to snorkel.

Very expensive for what they offer And the tour was not good since they did not give time to buy souvenirs

Excellent day out, boat was incredible and the crew were super attentive, Robert(o) is an excellent captain / host. The snorkelling was incredible and the extra stop for swimming and diving was brilliant. Crew always kept drinks flowing and checking on passengers, keeping the energy high, even on the way back to Cancun. The stop in Isla Mujeres was maybe a bit too long, as it gets exhausting being constantly peddled to, and it was a brutally hot day, which didn't help. Tour was great value for money, and I felt that I got what I paid for, as i said, the bar wasn't stingy and there was lots of time for snorkelling and swimming. The food at the buffet was excellent, with drinks included, however there was a definite lack of loungers / shade, only about 8 loungers for about 40 odd people in the beach club. The transfers themselves were ok I guess, very cramped minibuses, silent drivers and slightly chaotic finding the one to get home. All in all, none of the negatives really distracted from how great the boat, Robert and his crew and the experience was.

Such an awesome time. The island was beautiful. Snorkeling was fun as well. The crew made the catamaran ride a party.