FIESTA AMERICANA CONDESA Cancun, Mexico 🇲🇽 4k Resort Tour & Review 🇲🇽 Gray on Gray

Watch this video if you want to see what it’s like to stay at the all inclusive Fiesta Americana Condesa Resort in Cancun. This beachfront five star all inclusive resort has some things going for it- like it’s incredible location- but, how does it compare to it’s “big brother” the Grand Fiesta Americana Coral Beach? That’s what I’m here to compare. This is a full resort tour and review.

🎥 In this video:
-Arrival Experience
-Full Room Tour
-Breakfast Buffet Options
-Quick Bite Lunch Options
-Sit Down Dinner Restaurants with Menus
-Pool & Common Areas
-Primary Lobby Bar
-Hotel Zone Beach

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💸 Rate Paid
Rate: $260.71 USD
Type: Premium King Garden View
Inclusions: All Inclusive

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↪ Video Chapters ↩
0:00 Intro
00:56 Driving to Hotel
01:24 Hotel Arrival & Reception
04:00 Lobby Bar
04:34 Location
04:50 Outdoor Pools
06:20 Quick Lunch Options
06:56 The Beach
09:00 Full King Room Tour
12:35 Dinner at El Mexicano
14:32 Beautiful Cloudy Sunrise
14:52 Full Breakfast Buffet
16:26 The Flip Flop Score

This is NOT a promotional video. I pay for all of my flights and hotels (and I always tell you how much!) so I can be as honest and impartial as possible. I do not receive any special treatment that wouldn’t otherwise be publicly accessible, in fact, the hotels and airlines have no idea about my visit and that’s the way I like it!

#fiestaamericana #cancun #resortreview

This was a very last minute and unexpected stop for me- I wanted to visit to compare it to the Grand Fiesta Americana Coral Beach to help you figure out which is the better value. A quick tour and review is coming up. Welcome to Cancun.

Before we get into it, let me welcome you to the channel if you’re new here. My name is Kevin and I am the Flip Flop Traveller. I’m here to give you honest content about flights, hotels and trains and cruises.

I paid for this trip out of pocket and the price I paid is in the description below, as always. Waldorf Astoria had no prior knowledge I’d be filming and I didn’t receive any compensation from them. Everything in this video is my personal opinion based on my unique experience.

The rest, I’ll let speak for itself. Let’s get started. Right now I’m in an Uber heading to the resort which is smack in the middle of Cancun’s hotel zone. Have you ever been in a situation where for days or weeks you knew let’s say on the

10th of the month you needed to do something- and in parallel you also knew you needed to do something on Tuesday, which must be the 10th, but then on Monday you realize Tuesday isn’t the 10th and now your plans are all screwed up? No? Just me?

Ok, well in this case, I knew my last hotel checkout was on Sunday and I knew I flew to New York on the 25th. I thought those were the same days, they in fact, were not. So I needed to book an extra night in Cancun the night before I checked in.

I know, there are worse circumstances to be in. The reason I chose this for my last, last night in Cancun was because originally when planning the trip, I couldn’t decide between staying here or at the Grand Fiesta Americana Coral Beach just up the road.

I dug through reviews and comparisons online and the best conclusion I could come to was, the Condesa, this one, was recently renovated, but the Grand Coral Beach was larger- otherwise, they’re pretty much the same. No, no they really are not at all the same.

This resort, originally built in 1989 and renovated fully in 2017 has a total of 507 rooms. The Fiesta Americana brand is owned by Posadas, who own or operate around 150 hotels spread across 7 brands. They were also oddly enough the owner of Mexicana- the airline- when it went bankrupt.

I suppose they realized hotels were more their thing. This review is a short one for two reasons- neither of which are the hotel’s fault. First, check in in total probably took a solid four hours. So I booked this via Capital One Travel the night before arrival, Saturday.

By the time I arrived on Sunday afternoon, being Sunday and all, they had not received payment. So, very long and drawn out story short, I needed to some how get Capital One to guarantee to the hotel that the payment would come through during the next business hours, if not- the

Hotel was going to charge me for the full amount, again. This sounds simple enough, but the very lovely reception staff told me if it was double paid, they can refund the money, but I would need to be present with my card for the refund. Not an option.

So I spent 3 hours on the phone with Capital One. In the end, I got it done, but not before 17:30. Second part is, it rained- and I mean like cats dogs and donkeys rained for 70% of my time here. And so, shorter than normal video.

Now we are in the primary bar on site which was a big centerpiece in the lobby. Just so I don’t forget later on, I’ll say staff throughout the property were cheerful and eager to help out. The resort advertises having 16 different food venues, which honestly I didn’t really

Believe at first, but it is true as long as you are a bit fast and loose with what you’d consider a venue. Before we head outside to look around let’s very quickly take a look at the location.

Today we are focusing on the massive hotel zone just to the east of the city of Cancun itself. The hotel zone is a big D shaped string of resorts and is what the vast majority of travelers are referring to when they simply say, Cancun.

For this resort, it is as centrally located as you could possibly be and what it perhaps lacks in tropical vibes and charm, it makes up for in convenience and access. Like all hotels in the zone, the beach is public access, kept incredible clean and the resort maintains it’s own seating area as well.

*This is El Rincon de Don Roberto which is a snack bar of sorts serving Tacos and the like, located just off of the lobby. While this resort is all inclusive, this place is what I’d call all inclusive of 2010.

As we walk around outside, let me explain- and by the way, don’t blame the gray skies on them please. The gray and white tiling in a tropical resort- that you can go ahead and blame on them. I mentioned in my Hyatt Zilara review linked above and below that this year I am leaning

Into all inclusive resorts in the Americans simply because the niche is improving so quickly and many of them now provide food experiences which we would only expect at an a la carte restaurant in the past. But, this Fiesta Americana didn’t get the memo yet.

Their sit down restaurants have fairly limited and basic menus which don’t really scream premium resort and the number of items they have at every turn available for an additional charge got to be a bit much, especially after hardly seeing much of the practice in the previous resorts I stayed at.

The food, whether at the buffet or not, all had a bit of an elevated cafeteria vibe to it. Still tasty, but basic as. For example, I had a quick bite for lunch at the Cevicheria in between down pours. The ceviche was simply scooped onto the plate before me from a premade batch.

Is there anything wrong with this? Nah, not really, but have most resorts in this category moved past practices like this? Yeah, they have. Some of the other light bite options open during lunch time include small outlets such as The Grill which has burgers, the Healthy Corner, a Deli, the Sweet Corner, a Pizzeria,

Sushi Corner and a casual Italian Trattoria. Grey skies or not, I’m not really sure how much more vibrant the property would feel even if it was a beautiful day. It’s just a very basic and somewhat bland design which is missing a big old dose of foliage in the lounging areas.

Something you’ll see in a bit, they do do well when they try. As for the beach, this is as good as it gets in the Hotel Zone. Plenty of chairs, beautiful clear blue waters, clean as a whistle and a really nice deep part of the hotel zone beach.

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Thanks very much in advance. Ok, let’s go explore my room. Booking hotels in Cancun last minute is normally not the best financial decision, so I just went with a basic lagoon view room, meaning, the opposite direction of the ocean. But, I was actually pleasantly surprised.

Had it not been for the monsoon, I would have really enjoyed that lagoon view. Is an ocean view better? Sure, but everything has it’s price. Not to mention, the interior courtyard here is probably the most beautiful, lush and tropical view anywhere in the resort.

The rooms are basic but well outfitted for a hotel of this age. While I was here I was thinking about the Hilton Copacabana- thinking this is how the rooms there should look by this point, but I digress. As we take a look at the extra bits, I’ll get into my likes and dislikes.

Oh, by the way, if you hear a bit of music bleeding through in the background, it’s because I filmed this over the course of a few hours each time I was on hold with Capital One. Things I do like first.

I think the style, layout and quality of materials used fit the brand and the price point. Second thing I liked was the minibar service which I see some non-north American brands do. It’s a separate service from housekeeping and they come by once a day to restock, but

If you happen to be there when they come, they have a bunch of other things on their cart as well and just let you pick and choose exactly what you’d like in your bar, a small, but smart touch. Last up, as always, love me some CO Bigelow products.

As for the things I wasn’t a fan of, the room had really poor lighting- not quite Andaz Mayakoba poor, but 2 or 3 more lights would definitely be appreciated. Next up, I’m not sure how much it had to do with the weather and the winds, but the

Wifi was crappy and dropped my calls a couple of times. Last thing I didn’t like was the lack of privacy in the bathroom. For a family, this would be a difficult room to share. If you head down to the description you’ll find my next five videos to come out as well

As other bits and pieces like the soundtrack titles featured in this video. On your way down there, don’t forget to subscribe- I release full length videos every Thursday and Saturday. Alright, let’s head down to dinner. I went to the aptly named, El Mexicano for dinner.

Inside, it’s a fresh, vibrant space with staff to match. Reservations are required and everything from reservations to menus to activity schedules can be organized on their guest access website. Here is the menu for El Mexicano. You can see, the selections are slim pickings.

For appetizers I went with the fried tortilla taco, essentially a taquito, and a cream corn soup. The taquito was very basic, tasty, but I mean, it could have come from the frozen food aisle. The soup was delicious, but again, super basic.

For the main dish I chose the Cochinita Pibil which was served as deconstructed tacos, but that wasn’t mentioned on the menu. Again, sorry for being repetitive but there aren’t many synonyms for tasty and basic- let me pull out my Thesaurus. These were delectable and no-frills.

For the dessert, I went with the avocado mousse with tequila. I don’t know where the tequila was, but the flavors here felt artificial and- let me just… artificial and incipid. There are other full service restaurants available as well of course, including Rosata, a formal

Italian venue, San Telmo and Argentinian steakhouse and Thai Kunn, all of which I’m showing you the menus for now. Also, this QR code at the time of writing will bring you to the guest only website I mentioned before.

To fully use it you would need to login, but without logging in you can still access parts of it including all of the menus. This is Thai Kunn, which besides El Mexicano was the other restaurant which I thought had an interesting interior.

I watched the lightning storm for a bit and then made sure my flight really really was tomorrow and then headed in. The next morning, there were more beautiful clouds still but the sun was having a hard time breaking through them.

I was also having a hard time breaking through to the beach since the gates are locked until near 7:00. Let’s head to Kalima for breakfast. Kalima is their all day buffet dining venue and has the breakfast buffet split into two identical setups- one on the upper level and one on the lower level.

Overall the selection of food was decent, better than the other two meals I had for sure, but they definitely could have used a few more staff behind the line when it got busier. The buffet here is what pulled their overall food score up from the bottom.

As we look around the buffet, I’ll remind you, my food rankings are just 11 hotels compared to each other. Only the last place hotel which will be revealed in the coming weeks had truly poor food, everything else was just a sliding scale of fantastic to decent.

So, overall, I suppose the Fiesta Americana provided an experience similar to what I would have expected had I not got the comparisons to the Grand Coral Beach property in my head. I’d previously stayed at the Fiesta Americana in Puerto Vallarta some years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, but it wasn’t all inclusive.

This one here in Cancun, I’d potentially consider for the right price if it wasn’t all inclusive for a quick trip, but given how good some all inclusives are these days, there’s no reason to settle for the food here when maybe $50 more per night can get you

Significantly better food- perhaps at the Grand Fiesta Americana which in every way shape and form, couldn’t have been more different from my experience here. That wonderful review will be coming out in the weeks ahead. So, I really do hope you enjoyed today’s video and found it helpful.

If you did, please be sure to click that like button, subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications so you don’t miss out on any of my twice weekly videos. I’ll see you next time for an absolute game changer of a video, in Emirates’ incredible

New First Class from Brussels to Dubai, you don’t want to miss that one. Oh and as always, thanks for watching until the end.