Kathryn C.
Yelp
First, let me start by saying that I rarely write reviews...but our experience at the Mia Reef was so bad that I felt compelled to sit down and write a review. We have been coming to Isla Mujeres for 14 years. This was the 3rd and very LAST time we would ever stay at the dump hotel called Mia Reef..go any place else but here!!! We have visited the island 20+ times and have stayed in everything from a $ 26-a-night room on the beach to renting an entire Villa for a week on the southern point at Punta Sur with private chef service and a pool. We are the type of travelers that can backpack around and just "wing it," or we can check in to the Four Seasons hotel and get room service. It's important to know we are NOT bouge travelers. Honestly, one of our best stays was our $26 per night room with great AC, hot water, and clean sheets, but I digress; onto the Mia Reef review.
So, let me say that we booked it through the site MiaHotelsAndResorts.com. Our booking agent was Gloria Mex, who is based in Cancun.
Here are the FACTS of our booking:
3 Deluxe Ocean View rooms for six nights at $414 a night per room ($7452). Below is the breakdown of what the rooms were supposed to be:
1 room was supposed to be a king bed for my husband and I
1 room was supposed to be two full/queen beds for our sons (grown adult men)
1 room was for our daughter (any bed option was acceptable)
So here's what happened on our arrival. We checked in, and the desk agent handed us the keys to 5014, 5015, and 5016, which I found out later are NOT ocean views; they are bay/lagoon views. I asked if they were king beds or what the bed situation was. He replied, "They all have one queen bed each." Cue to my immediate dissatisfaction with that news...our one son is 6'4", and I don't expect our grown adult sons to share a queen bed, seriously?! Anyway, I said it was unacceptable and not what we had booked. My husband immediately started looking on Airbnb because we would not spend a week with our grown adult children and would sleep uncomfortably. After all, the Mia Reef could not give us the rooms we booked. It was a clear case of misrepresentation, and it left us feeling frustrated and deceived.
Our room: The guy behind the desk finally acted like he was doing us a favor by giving us a different room; he said, "Oh, I'm giving you a very good room with a view." Well, upon arriving at our room 6003 (with a king bed), I looked at my husband and said, "This is supposed to be our view; we paid for the "Deluxe Ocean View" room to begin with."
Moving on, we are in our room. Here are the general issues we had with our room:
Bathroom faucet, when you turn it on, hits the mirror.
There's no counter space at all to lay out a toothbrush and lotion, and all we brought was a toothbrush and sunscreen, again this wasn't a bouge trip by any means.
The shower was moldy and disgusting and leaked everywhere on the bathroom floor.
The bottom dresser drawer in the room was in the open position the whole time and falling away from the wall. We took a throw pillow from the bed and closed the drawer by putting the pillow in front of it to keep it closed so one of us didn't break a leg when we walked by at night.
The door handle on our slider was broken; how hard is it to take a set screw and an Allen wrench and fix it?
Our son's room: Our sons were given a room with two beds, 4023 (lagoon, NOT ocean view, as we paid for). It wasn't until I saw their room on the third day that I saw it wasn't two beds but one full/queen bed with a roll-away cot (twin) for our other son; talk about shady bait and switch-on room reservations.
The hotel, in general, is dinghy, dirty, and in need of significant updates and repairs. I wouldn't be surprised if the hotel owner(s) are literally just pocketing the money and living high on the hog while the hotel continues to turn into an enormous pile of poopoo year after year. Outside by the pool, some jerk put diapers in the table thing to hold drinks, and the diapers were there for over three days along with other dirty glasses. There is plaster from the building just laying outside that has fallen off. Again, the fish stinks from the head and if the owner(s) don't put the money back into the maintenance of the hotel, well shame on them!
Don't even get me started on the sales guys who linger in the lobby, always trying to get your attention so they can sell you a timeshare. I told them the hotel was a POS, and they left us alone after that.
The bottom line is DO NOT STAY HERE. It's way overpriced for what you actually get. AI is NOT worth it here.