A friend got married recently and invited a group of us to head down to Mexico and share in the wedding festivities, as well as a few days of drinking and sunning. This was my first experience ever staying at an all-inclusive resort-in this case, the Grand Palladium resort in the Riviera Maya area, about an hour south of Cancun. Here are my impressions of the all-inclusive experience, or at least my all-inclusive experience.

The all-inclusive setup is nice in that you pay for the whole ball of wax upfront and then you don't have to worry about having money with you all the time (although tipping was still fine and dandy where we were, so we still carried dollars around, which were appreciated by our Mexican hosts). We had nice big buffet breakfasts, lunches and dinners, and you could drink as much as you wanted. And we did. The food was generally good, and the service was really excellent, overall the resort was well-run, it's very beautiful, etc and so forth. Although I was with a group of adults, I saw that there were many planned activities for kids (including rehearsals for a production of Vaselina, which you would know as Grease), so families would do well there, too.

So, mostly a good experience. A couple of complaints, though.

First, although the alcohol was free-flowing, the selection was not entirely to my liking. If you wanted beach drinks like pina coladas and such, you were in heaven. (Funny side note: I heard a girl try out her Spanish by asking the bartender for "dos strawberry daiquiris.") However, if you wanted wine and beer... eh. The house wines were lousy, and if you wanted something different, it cost more. The beer was generally Sol, and you could get a Dos Equis at some of the bars. Not horrible at all, but I would have preferred a bit more selection here. They should understand that the gringos expect Corona, even if we couldn't tell the difference in a blind taste test.

Second, in addition to the buffets, there were many sit-down restaurants within the resort, from Chinese to Italian to BBQ, but in order to go to them, you had to make a reservation 24 hours in advance and you had to go find the people making the reservations, instead of just calling from your room. Even if the restaurant is empty, they don't seat you unless you've made the reservation, or at least that was my understanding. There's no way to read that other than to assume they would rather you go to the buffet than go to restaurants-it's probably much cheaper for them if you buffet. To me, if it's all-inclusive, you should either let people in the sit-down restaurants without reservations if space is available, or just not have the restaurants at all. It leaves a bad taste (so to speak) when you feel like there are roadblocks being put up to stop you from doing things that cost the resort more money.

One final thought - not enough Mexican food at this all-inclusive. I don't really come to Mexico for Chinese food. I get that it's a resort that offers a lot of variety, but foodwise I think a little more local color could've been incorporated. There were some Mexican food choices at most of the buffets, but not quite to the level I would've expected (or hoped, as I love Mexican food, or at least the Americanized version of Mexican food).

I've heard that all-inclusives can be run many different ways, with some being kinda-inclusive, or half-price inclusive, or other variations. Do you have thoughts on the all-inclusive experience, or all-inclusives you'd recommend or ones you hated?