Barceló Maya Colonial

My extended family - 12 in all - went to the Barcelo Maya resort from 1/1/26 - 1/6/26. Overall, it was a great stay. To put it in perspective, nobody argued the whole time! Not even once! - The weather was perfect. Warm during the day, no clouds, and not too hot or humid. - The grounds and facilities were clean and well kept. The whole resort is massive - I've never been to one anywhere close to this size. - The rooms are large and in generally good condition. The only issue we had was that our room didn't have any hand towels or wash cloths, but the resort addressed this quickly. I will say, though, that we spent very little time in our rooms. All our rooms were close, though. - There are multiple large pools with abundant chairs and hammocks. They even have a large kids pool that where we spent a lot of time. People do reserve chairs fairly early, but you should not have an issue getting a chair as long as you get there before 9 or 10 am. If you reserve a chair with your pool towel, the "reservation" is generally respected. If you reserve it with an empty water bottle or a flip flop, good luck. Sorry, but using a piece of trash to reserve a chair isn't going to work. - The beach is HUGE and perfect - it extends for around a mile. Beach chairs do fill up faster than pool chairs. The snorkeling is great, especially the area in front of the Palace. We went snorkeling every day and always saw sea turtles and stingrays. - The drinks they serve at all the bars are good. They use middle shelf liquor at the pool bars and top shelf (kind of) liquor at the indoor bars. The service at all the bars is great, but don't forget to tip a little. - Finally, the food. The food at the Colonial buffet was always awful. Usually just a bunch of trays of stewed meats. We ate there the first night and checked in a few other times, but it was always the same. The buffets at the Beach and Caribe were much better. We only had meals there or at the pool restaurants after the first night. - The a la carte restaurant system is actually worse than what other reviews have stated. We were only able to get two dinner reservations, one at 9:30 pm and one at 7:30 pm at our 4th and 5th choices, even though we offered to split up our party and times, and we had to wait and work with the Customer Service desk for 90 minutes our first night just to get those. Once you go into the restaurants, you see why - they are tiny and there is no way the a la carte restaurants could host anywhere close to the number of people who stay there. Barcelo Maya should invest in an online reservation system and give every room a certain number of reservations. Despite the issues with the dinner reservations and food, it was a great and memorable stay. In the end, the food didn't really matter; it was a very small part of the trip and wasn't why we came. Everything else was great. We would definitely consider returning.

Warmer pool water please.The pool water was a bit too chilly for us to use. The rest of the resort was excellent.

We just returned from a trip to Barcelo Colonial. Overall, the resort is great and the service is wonderful. The food and drinks were great, especially the a la carte’s that we booked. The resort layout, pools and outdoor spaces are some of the best we’ve seen at a resort, and having activities like the Maya Mall, bowling, mini golf etc were all a hit with the kids. We really loved the fact that the whole complex was built with the mindset of moving in between the resorts. The walking pathway and shuttles that take you between resorts were great to use. Lastly, the ocean had some of the whitest sand out there, and yes, there were some rocks and coral in some areas but it didn’t bother us at all and actually held a lot of fish to see when snorkeling. The only downside that we found were that the rooms were very humid and difficult to sleep in sometimes. A trick for this is to keep your AC unit and fan on all day and you should come back to a less humid room. It would be helpful for the resort to install bathroom fans in the units as well to help with keeping humidity in rooms lower. Great stay! Definitely recommend.

Rooms are outdated a lo. Strong smell of chemicals initially. Other room kept losimg power, had to call in maintenance. Due to left chemicals (bleach) on the bathroom counter couple clothe got damaged.