Is the dinner with Cirque de Soleil worth the cost?
We did not do the dinner, but in hindsight, we should have. I think the dinner worked out to around $80 US at the time, so we figured we could eat at the "nice" restaurants on resort for less than that. The problem:
None of the restaurants open until 5:30 p.m.
We went to the 6:00 p.m. show which really means the SHOW doesn't start until 7:00 p.m. (the 6:00 p.m. is ONLY for dinner+show).
HOWEVER, the shuttle to the Cirque du Soleil only leaves every 30 minutes at 6:15, 6:45, etc.
So we really had, 1 hour and 15 minutes for dinner. Unfortunately dinner service was slow as there was another party ahead of us, so we had like 15 minutes to wolf down our food, get a shuttle to the Mayan Palace, where we had to pick up the OTHER shuttle to get to Cirque du Soleil.
So unless you go to the LATE show, I would suggest doing the dinner+show. The desserts looked phenomenal, although judging by how many people didn't eat theirs, they were well fed.
Oh, and if you order drinks at the Cirque:
READ CAREFULLY
For example, order a rum and coke. It says something like:
comes with bottle and 3 sides or something.
You get a large bottle (not one of the little airplane sized bottle) of rum and 3 cans of coke.
You can split that among the entire group.
Alternatively you could eat at Nektar which is in the Cirque du Soleil complex, and then would have more time to eat, but the cuisine is Yucatan (good, but different).