We had great time at GM, we had 1 bdrm and plenty room for 4 of us.We rented a car from National (reserved it ahead of time on the Internet), with taxes and some additional insurance it cost us $288.xx. for a week. We went grocery shopping at Playa del Carmen, right on the main route on the left hand side when you coming from Riviera Maya, large supermarket. Fridge is not full size but it was enough for our needs. We had all breakfasts in the room, some lunches but went out for dinners most of the time. Food in the resort is good and not extremely expensive, but it is much cheaper in Playa. Take advantage of Happy Hour, LOL!!!
One thing I missed was a washer/dryer in the unit. There is one on each floor, but they lock it for the night and by the time I figured out I need special tokens that are being sold on different floor, we were almost out of clothes!
There is a show (free) every night at the resort, they were nice, you can just order a drink and enjoy. Thursday was the only night you had to purchase dinner during the show.
My kids LOVED Mayan! We went to Playa del Carmen (just to walk around, do some shopping, eat), to Cancun (to visit friends who were vacationing in Royals), and Xel-Ha, Xcaret and Loma Bonita ranch.
Loma Bonita is about 3 minutes drive from the resort, they have horse riding and ATV's. My husband with 4 year old son went riding through the jungle on he ATV while myself with my 11 year old daughter went horse riding. We all had so much fun! They let you ride a horse in the water, bareback. My daughter loved it and so did I. Boys had a lot of fun, too.
Xel-Ha was wonderful. I purchased all-inclusive tickets (about $56 per adult and 1/2 price for 11 year old, 4 year old free). For about $30 difference (adult ticket) you get all meals you can eat, snorkeling equipment rental, towels, locker, drinks. We all snorkelled there for the first time in our lives and all loved it. You can also do swim with dolphin there but we were planning to do it later at Puerto Aventures (sp)...
Xcaret was also great while more expensive - the tickets were about the same price but nothing but entry included. There is much more to see there: snorkel in underground river, take a boat in another river, visit aquarium, dolphins (again you can swim with them there), monkeys, jaguars, butterflies, deers, bats, parrots, turtle farm, many shows with great big show at closing (shows start after 4 pm with the largest one at 7 pm). There is also a little lagoon where you can snorkel and there is so many fish that my 4 year old was a little intimidated by them. They also have a little beach where you can just relax. With all this we still liked Xel-Ha more, it was more relaxing and snorkeling was much better (the price was right, too). Xel-Ha is about 45 min - 1 hour drive, Xcaret about 1/2 hour fro the resort. I recommend you purchase tickets on line, they are more expensive to buy there.
on line:
Xcaret:
Basic Admission
*Adult US $49.00
*Child US $25.00 (ages 5-12)
Xel-Ha
Basic Addmission
$19 adults, $11.40 age 4-12
www.xelha.com
www.xcaret.com
www.lomabonita.com
We were also going to do dolphin swim in Puerto Aventuras, but we ran out of time.
http://www.dolphindiscovery.com/activities/encounter.asp
As previously mentioned you can just stay at the resort and relax at the pool (which is wonderful), but our family likes more adventurous kind of vacations.
Either way you will have a lot of fun!
By the way, we did not have any major problems with communicating, they all try their best and since you are in Mexico, you need to expect to have to deal with people who DO NOT speak English. That reminds me of one (and only) time we had hard time communicating. It was in the grocery store in Playa del Carmen. We could not find milk and everybody kept pointing us at certain direction, but there were no refrigerators there. We passed the milk section several times never realizing they do not refrigerate it. It is packed in boxes and kept outside the fridge. It also tastes a little different and our kids refused to drink it.
Both of our children want to go back every year and are begging us to buy a timeshare there (after I explained to them that we could exchange only 1 in 4 years)....