We just returned from the Paraiso Lindo in Mexico, and we had a blast. My husband and I, and our 3 children, ages 17, 13, and 6, all really enjoyed ourselves. As soon as we arrived, we were impressed with the cleanliness of the resort. This is one of the biggest resorts I've ever seen, and absolutely one of the cleanest.
If you are willing to get involved with all of the activities that are offered, then you won't ever get bored. Pool games, beach party, beach soccer, dance lessons, and nightly entertainment are just some of the offerings. You can select your level of activity. We love to get involved, and we all got to know the "star friends", and I can honestly say that my children wanted to take them home with us! They became like members of the family. Any implication that they will spend more time with you if you tip them is ridiculous. These people work 12 hour days, and always have a smile at the ready.
The hotel staff is amazing, and always available. Our concierge took care of all of the restaurant bookings, and even gave us an excellent recommendation in Playa del Carmen. We needed to make up the sofa in our room, and when I called for extra sheets and pillows at midnight, they responded "with pleasure", and arrived within 10 minutes.
The food was okay, but try to remember that tings might taste a little different than what we're used to here in the states. We all found things to eat for the week. We are not big drinkers, so the alcohol is not a big issue for us. Ice cream was available around the pool all day, which my children loved, and the beach was gorgeous, with an abundance of chairs. The staff would greet us by name, and everyone from the bartenders, to the maids, to the management, was extremely friendly and helpful. My family has traveled every year for the last five years to places like Jamaica, Miami, and Disney. This was one of our favorites, and I would highly recommend this trip to anyone who loves sun, swimming, shopping, golf ,and relaxation. It's all here!

We were recommended to stay at this 5 star resort from our travel agent. We took her advice , since her last recommendation worked out great.
The Paraiso Lindo was a beautiful resort, the grounds were maticulous, but there were big problems, Our room had ants, and after the resort tried to clean they were still there. They came in a fruit basket that was waiting for us in a hot room . Nice idea but the fruit had ants. The mini bar fridge was warm, and they never gave us fresh glasses daily. I realized it after 2 days that they must have just rinsed them out, but it was too late, we all came home with pneumonia. After I asked for fresh glasses, I got them but again they did not change them out, after a while they stopped giving us glasses. They should use disposable plastic.
Many people in the resort seems sick also, bronchitis and pneumonia, and I feel their cleanliness looked good on the outside but was not really good. Plastic reusable drinking cups were used at the bars around the pool area, and it appeared they were not really washed well either. I think there plastic cups were just rinsed not fully washed to get germs out.
Our toilet in the room never worked right, even after we called 4 times and the resort attempted to fix it. It was finally fixed on our last day there.
The beds were as hard as a rock, not comfortable at all.
I expected so mush more from a 5 star resort and for the money we payed for this trip.
Buffet food was not good at all, and every source of food was closed from 4:30 or 5pm until 6pm so they could get ready for the dinner crowd. This is the worst time for kids not to be able to eat.
We stayed at the Palladium 2 years ago, and it was fantastic!! I'd go back there in a heartbeat and for a lot less money!

This resort is very nice, clean, well maintained and HUGE. Be prepared to do a lot of walking if you're going to stay here.

I went with my 17 year old daughter and we stayed for 3 days before heading to Cancun. This is definitely a resort for families and specifically, families with young children. The pool area is nice and very large, but what they don't tell you is that the "wave pool" is geared for 8-10 year olds. The lazy river is small and would be enjoyable with young kids. The swimup bar is a nice feature, but the water is kind of cold, at least when we were there. But, the drinks at the pool were HORRIBLE!! We tried everything from Blue Margs, to rum and coke to Pina Coladas and all were terrible. The mixes were bad and I don't know if the liquor they used made it worse, but I was hard pressed to find a good drink. I went to the Lobby Bar where they had name brand liquor and finally had a decent drink, but this really isn't an option when you're lazing around the pool.

The food is good. We ate at several of the ala carte places. The steak at the steakhouse was tough, but overall, the food was well prepared, a nice variety and quite good.

The beach is splendid. Lots of it, many chairs, no problems. But again, bad drinks!

Although there are 5 hotels on this property, we only found 1 Disco and it was empty. At night this place is a real snooze! It's really geared towards couples and families with young kids. Even the activities around the pool during the day were boring.

Getting around in this area of Mexico is also not easy. Your only real option is by taxi, which is expensive. It would've cost $40 USD to get a cab to and from Playa. BEWARE: The hotel states that it has free shuttle service to and from Playa, THEY DON'T! This was an attractive feature for staying at this hotel, but apparently they don't offer it anymore. So, if you're planning on doing any sightseeing or going into town, it'll cost you.

This is a nice resort for couples or families with small kids, but for anyone who is looking for excitement, nightlife and an invigorating atmosphere, you may be better off looking somewhere else.

I stayed at the Lindo for one week from February 9th-16th. I went down with 9 other people and everyone was in 100% agreement at the end of the trip that it was one of the best vacations ever. Mind you we’ve traveled a lot and have been a lot of places, including a trip last year to the Iberostar Tucan in Playacar, but this one was one to remember.

I’ll start with the staff, I can’t think of any hotel in the U.S. that would have a staff as friendly and willing to accommodate as you will find at the Iberostar resorts. Everyone was very helpful and always had a smile on their face from the concierge desk down to the gardeners working the grounds. I can’t complain about the service. Some of our party had issues with their rooms, such as malfunctioning safes or mini-fridges, all of which were fixed within a reasonable amount of time after notifying the concierge. And having a concierge in each dorm building on the resort was great, we booked our restaurants the first day there for the entire week and had no issues. With a party of 10 we were able to get just about everything we wanted and even made several changes throughout the week with no problems, it was very convenient.

With the mention of booking the restaurants I’ll jump to the food. I’ve read a lot of posts about the inadequacy of the food there and I would have to disagree with most. What I’d say is if you go there expecting fine dining you are probably going to be disappointed. They have to feed large numbers of people and do so rather quickly, so in the process the food quality will drop a bit. However, that being said, I never had a bad dish there, other then from my own responsibility in trying some new things and not fully enjoying all of them, which is more an issue with my taste buds then the Lindo food. We ate at the Steakhouse at the Maya, the Cajun restaurant as well as the Italian, Seafood and the Japanese. All were pretty good, and I was very impressed with my meals at the Cajun and Japanese restaurants. We never had any trouble with the waiters or waitresses all were extremely friendly and did what they could to keep us happy. I’ve read a lot about how the restaurants are half empty and I’m no expert but my guess is this is because they need to keep peoples reservations, while at the same time allowing people to enjoy a leisurely meal. So if someone goes at 6:30 to dinner and wants to hang out for a long time they need to be sure they have a table available for the 7:30 folks without being rude and kicking people out of their seats. I found we staid much longer at table some nights then we’d be allowed to at a restaurant in the US that is more about packing people in then allowing them fully enjoy their meal at a relaxing pace. I could be wrong about this, but that is my guess. Oh and the hamburger stand up at the shopping center has amazing French fries, my wife, a fry connoisseur was in love with them. We were also fans of the creperie as well.

The grounds of the resort were kept in amazingly great shape. Everything was very clean and orderly, and quite beautiful as well. There is plenty of vegetation around the resort, which I greatly appreciated being a bit of a bird watcher and enjoying the habitat it provided for the birds as I explored the resort early mornings. All kinds of cool birds around the place too should anyone else find that sort of thing interesting. The pools were a lot of fun, even the wave pool which I believe is more geared towards the kids had a lot of people from our party (ages 20’s-60’s) enjoying the artificial waves. The beaches on the resort were clean, though sadly as soon as you got to the end of the resort they were full of garbage and looked terrible. But that isn’t the fault of the resort so much as the local government I suppose. Everything on the resort was spotless and in tip top shape.

As for the area (the Yucatan Peninsula) there is lots to do, we’ve done trips to Tulum, Chichen Itza, Xcaret and explored Playa Del Carmen some as well. All were worth the time and money to visit. We also participated in some extra off the resort that were a lot of fun as well like four wheeling through the jungle and parasailing over the Caribbean Sea. Just tons of stuff to keep you occupied that is for sure, even if you didn’t want to pay for the extra trips there is easily enough going on at the resort itself to occupy your time.

So, all that being said, if you’re looking for a place to go on vacation that is both relaxing and entertaining I would highly recommend the Iberostar Lindo. We’re already planning a return trip and have even more people wanting to go with us on the next round after hearing our stories.