This property has been on our bucket list since we started doing award travel and we finally did our long awaited trip last week. It absolutely lived up to the hype and was such an amazing experience! I’ll break down how we used points to book this trip and our reviews of everything below.
How We Got There: We were a part of the Southwest meltdown around Christmas 2022 so we had 25,000 gifted points each to use for a future flight. We used that to book two flights for me and my husband and then our kids flew free as our Companions. Taxes were about $100 each so the total cost of our flights for all four of us was $400.
Where We Stayed: The Hyatt Ziva Cancun is located on the end of the Cancun hotel zone and is at the top of just about every list for all-inclusives to use points in Mexico. We booked a basic resort view room for 45,000 points/night (the going cash rate was $900+/night so I felt pretty good about that) and then paid cash to add each of our kids. The daily rate per kid is $127 so for five days, we paid about $1300 for the kids. This is a lot of money for the six strawberry daiquiris, two chicken tenders, and four ice creams they ate daily but honestly it was worth it for the service and kids’ activities alone.
Our Review: The property was absolutely amazing! Its location on the end of the Cancun hotel zone means it has water on three sides and beautiful views of the turquoise ocean. There are beautiful trails around the property and almost every room in the resort has an ocean view!
The Food: The food and drinks were great overall and our kids loved eating the hamburgers seafood, and fresh fruit/veggies they had by the pool each day. The breakfast buffet was HUGE and had literally anything you could possibly imagine. It was one of our favorite parts of each day!
Our favorite restaurant was Habaneros because it is right on the water, has amazing ceviche, and is so close to the beach that we could sit and enjoy our drinks while the kids snorkeled 20 feet away in the crystal clear water. Those moments with our feet in the sand while the kids played in the sunshine were probably my biggest “Pinch me, is this real?” moments of the trip.
The only complaint we had with the food is that we wish there were another option or two for dinner. I felt like with kids our options were limited (basically just the buffet, Italian, Hibachi, or a Steakhouse) and it would have been nice to have the diner open for dinner or have a traditional Mexican restaurant!
Kids Activities: I’d say what really makes this resort stand out is the kids activities. The kids club was great and had fun activities planned all day long! Our kids spent a few hours there each day playing in the water park, doing their planned activities, etc and it was so nice for us as parents to have a little break. One night each week they do a “teepee night” where parents can pay extra to have the kids do a special teepee dance party with superheroes and dinner. It was totally worth the money and we loved having that time to do a fancy date night! The entertainment staff really were amazing and made our stay fun from morning until night.
Maybe our favorite thing we did was the dolphin encounter. We sat through an hourlong presentation about the Playa Resorts vacation club to get a huge discount on this and ended up spending just $170 total for the four of us (full price would have been around $600). It was truly incredible and definitely one of my favorite memories from the trip! My kids have talked about it multiple times since and the look on their faces when we got to touch and be close to the dolphins is one I’ll never forget.
Overall we loved the resort and would definitely go back! I don’t think I would go here without kids because so much of the entertainment (including the nighttime shows) was geared toward kids BUT for families, it really was incredible and we’d recommend it without hesitation.
Total Cost: Here are all of our expenses from our trip so you can get a sense of what this trip might cost for your family.
- Flights: 90,000 Rapid Reward points and $400 cash (taxes/fees)
- Hotel: 225,000 Ultimate Rewards points and $1300 cash
- Transport to hotel: $100 round trip
- Tips for Hotel Staff: $200
- Excursions/Activities: $300
Added together, the total cost for this five night trip to Cancun at a luxury, all-inclusive resort for four people was 225,000 Ultimate Reward points, 90,000 ish Rapid Reward points (and two Companion Passes), and $2300 in cash. Considering that the cash rate would have been at least $9,300 for the flights and hotel, I’d say that’s a great amount of money saved!
All-inclusives are definitely one of the more expensive ways to use your points but we love that once we get there, every single thing is covered. We weren’t shelling out hundreds every day for food and drinks and got to just enjoy the trip without thinking about the budget.
Ziva Cancun is one of the more expensive properties and we went at peak time so if you wanted to do a similar trip for less, you could look into something like Hyatt Ziva Riviera Cancun, Hyatt Ziva Puerto Vallarta, or one of the Dreams brand hotels and potentially go on an off-peak time. The points rate per night at those resorts will be in the 29k-40k range and the cash rate per kid might be closer to $80-100/night.
If you have questions or comments about this post or others, send us an email at kcsavvytravelers@gmail.com. We’d love to help!
