Me and the Ms. decided to take our 4 kids with us on our first cruise ever to Costa maya and cozumel. Me and her have been to resorts on the carribean beaches of mexico twice and loved every minute. We decided on a cruise with our kids due to cost and more entertainment. Be advised that all i have to compare with is my stays at El Cid and Catalonia Royal Tulum. I did not think the staff was nearly as friendly on the ship as the resorts. This excludes 2 waiters we had at dinner (Worwit and Milena) who were easily the best servers of my life. The 5 stars on "dining" is solely due to them. The rest seemed grumpy and were not helpful at all. The ship was amazing, though my kids were too small for the funnest attractions (flowrider for 9 and 10 year old and water slides and skypad for 4 year old). Food at dinner was great, fun menu with some new things to try. Rest was average. It was hard to find a table for 6 at all meals other than dinner when our table was reserved. We felt the ship was overly crowded compared to resorts, which felt much more relaxing to us. All though the cruise was booked as "all-inclusive", we felt Royal Carib try to nickel and dime you where they can. We never had anybody explain to us how things worked and spent the majority of the 5 days trying to figure that out. We had a lot of fun, i cant deny that. But next time i will spend more money on a resort where staff is legitimately friendly and we dont feel so crowded.
The cabins were small but quaint. I felt our stateroom attendant was ok, generally friendly, but would have appreciated if he introduced himself right at jump and let me know he would bring me ice. Spent 2 days looking for ice machine everywhere we went, then when i found out i needed to ask our attendant, i still did not know that was the guy who cleaned our room.
Be ready to say no to alot of people who are super determined to sale you something. The port at Costa Maya was awesome though. In town at the beach was rougher.