Nickelodeon Hotels & Resorts Riviera Maya: The Best Water Park at Any All-Inclusive in Mexico

By Mark and Clare, Pack With Purpose. We haven’t stayed at Nickelodeon Hotels & Resorts Riviera Maya ourselves yet, so this is our researched guide, not a firsthand review. Everything below comes from current guest reviews and the resort’s own information. When we get there, we’ll come back and tell you how it actually felt.

The photos sell you a beach holiday. Slime-green slides in the background, Caribbean water in the foreground, kids in the sand. Book it for the beach and you’ll be disappointed. Book it for the six acres of water park, and for the fact that SpongeBob will come and eat breakfast with your four-year-old, and you’ll understand why families keep going back to Nickelodeon Hotels & Resorts Riviera Maya. Guests rate it 4.7 out of 5 on TripAdvisor across 2,708 reviews. The question isn’t whether it’s good. It’s whether your kids are the right age and your budget is the right size.

Getting there

You fly into Cancún International, and the resort sits in Puerto Morelos about 25 to 30 minutes south of the terminal. That’s one of the shortest transfers on the Riviera Maya, and it matters more than it sounds when you’re travelling with a toddler who’s been awake since four in the morning.

The roundtrip airport shuttle is included. Nothing to arrange, nothing to pay when you land, which is not something most resorts at this price bother to do.

One thing to know before you get there. Check-in doesn’t open until 4 p.m., and guests are consistent that asking for an early room usually doesn’t get anywhere. Pack your swimsuits at the top of the case, drop the bags, and go straight to the water park.

The setting and who it’s for

This is three separate places joined by free shuttles. The seaside suite building, Nickelodeon Place where the characters and the theatre live, and Aqua Nick, the water park. The ride between them is about five minutes, and at busy times you wait for one. Reviewers keep making the same point, that the resort isn’t walkable, and they’re right.

The sweet spot here is roughly four to ten years old. That’s the band the whole place is built around. Under two, the slime shows and the character crowds can be more than a small child wants. Twelve and up, most kids have quietly aged out of the Nickelodeon lineup, and you’re paying a premium for characters they’ll walk past.

Skip it if you want a quiet beach week, an adults-only stretch, or a resort where you can walk from your room to dinner. Nobody comes here for calm, and the resort has never pretended otherwise. If a proper swimming beach is the point of the trip, our Hotel Xcaret México guide is the better fit.

What the all-inclusive covers

The Gourmet All Inclusive plan by Karisma is genuinely thorough, and that’s part of what carries the price.

Included: every meal at all six on-site restaurants, premium alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks across the resort, 24-hour room service, unlimited Aqua Nick access, Club Nick, daily character meet-and-greets, the Slime Time show, nightly entertainment, the 24-hour fitness centre with classes, sauna and steam room, beach loungers, free Wi-Fi, a stocked minibar, twice-daily housekeeping, free self parking, and baby gear on request including cribs, bottle warmers, sterilisers and monitors. Taxes and gratuities are in the rate.

Costs extra ($): the Pajama Jam character breakfast, roughly $30 to $50 US a head, which is the one where PAW Patrol, SpongeBob, Dora and the Fairly OddParents come to your table. Private sliming sessions run about $85 US with the photos and video. Treatments at Náay Spa. Supervised childcare. Off-resort excursions. The gift shop, which guests describe as steeply priced.

The character breakfast is the one to budget for. It’s worth doing once. Do it every morning and you’ll spend a small fortune teaching your kids that characters arrive with a bill.

Amenities

The suites

There are 280 suites and every one of them faces the Caribbean. The standard is 581 square feet, sleeps five, and has two full bathrooms, which is the detail that quietly makes or breaks a family week. Beds are either a king with a Murphy bed and a sofa bed, or two queens and a sofa bed. Frette sheets, memory foam mattresses, a Nespresso machine, children’s slippers and children’s dinnerware in the room.

Ground-floor suites walk straight out into the pool. Upper floors get a plunge pool on the balcony, though those sit in the shade of the balcony above and guests report the water stays cool. The themed suites are the splurge: the Pineapple Suite is the SpongeBob one, and the Lair Suite is 3,000 square feet of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the roof, sleeping seven.

Two small complaints come up often enough to mention. The minibar and Nespresso pods don’t reliably restock without asking, and two televisions in one room turns out to be more argument than convenience.

Pools

Two large beachfront pools run the length of the suite building, both with swim-up bars, plus a shallow baby pool and a hot tub. Between those, the swim-outs from the ground-floor suites, and the water park, nobody in your family is short of somewhere to get wet.

Aqua Nick

This is the reason to book. Six acres, two lazy rivers running at different speeds, a slide tower with raft and body slides, an activity pool, and two dedicated play zones. Bikini Bottom Beach is the multi-level playground for bigger kids. Adventure Bay is the PAW Patrol area, shallow water and small slides for the little ones.

The daily Super Sliming happens around 1:30 p.m. at Bikini Bottom Beach. Pack something you don’t mind losing. In peak weeks the queue at the slide tower gets long, which is the honest cost of going while school is out.

Food and dining

Le Spatula in the lobby does breakfast, and it’s one of the bigger buffets you’ll meet at an all-inclusive. It’s also the only real breakfast option, so a ten or fifteen minute wait for a table is normal. Nick Bistro at the water park handles the lunch buffet.

Piazza is the Ninja Turtles Italian room and the only restaurant that takes reservations. Good Burger is the retro burger place in the suite building, with a VW van serving ice cream and milkshakes from 3:30 p.m. Bikini Bottom Bar covers coffee, breakfast most days, lunch and cocktails until 11 p.m. Yacht Club sits on the beachfront.

Reviewers put the food well above the all-inclusive average, and the Mexican and seafood dishes draw the most praise. The burgers are the weak link, with several guests noting the options taste much the same as one another.

Bars

Two swim-up bars in the seafront pools, the Snick Lounge with arcade games and live entertainment, and service through the water park. Premium liquor is included, which isn’t a given even at this price.

The beach

Here’s the part that catches people out. The beach is small, the seating is limited, and it works better for wading, walking and building things in the sand than for swimming. There’s an artificial reef offshore, put in to control erosion. Guests who turn up expecting a wide Riviera Maya beach say so plainly, and thin beach facilities is one of the more common complaints in the reviews. You can see it in the aerial at the top of this page: a narrow strip of sand, a handful of loungers, and rock at the waterline.

Add sargassum season, which runs roughly May through August along this coast, and the beach is not the reason to choose this resort. Before you swim anywhere on this coastline, it’s worth reading our guide to Mexico’s beach flags and currents.

Kids and characters

Club Nick sits beside the water park with free-play areas, slides, a ball pit, video games and scheduled crafts. Character meet-and-greets run daily across all three parts of the resort. SpongeBob pulls the biggest crowd, so get there fifteen or twenty minutes early. Staff take the photos on your own phone, which we like a great deal more than the paid photo-package model most theme resorts run.

Slime Time Live is the main-stage show, part game show and part physical stunts, with the audience pulled into it. The Karisma app carries the daily schedule and you’ll want it open.

Spa, fitness and service

Náay Spa is full service and charges on top. The 24-hour fitness centre includes classes, yoga, a sauna and a steam room at no extra cost. Service scores 4.6 from guests and the staff draw steady praise. What pulls it down is the check-in queue, and a concierge desk that pushes timeshare presentations harder than anyone on holiday enjoys.

Our take

This is the best water park attached to any all-inclusive in Mexico, bolted onto a resort that has thought properly about family logistics. Two bathrooms in every suite. Baby gear waiting in the room. Gratuities in the rate. A free airport shuttle. Twenty-five minutes from the plane to the pool. Characters your kids already love. For a family with children between four and ten, that combination is hard to beat anywhere in the country.

What you’re paying for is the theming and the water park. Not the beach, and not the location. Guests score value at 4.3, the lowest of every category they rate, and that number is telling you something real. This is one of the more expensive family all-inclusives on the Riviera Maya, and it earns the money when you catch a promotion and your kids are the right age. Book it at full rate for a twelve-year-old who’s over SpongeBob and you’ll feel every dollar.

Look hard at the shoulder seasons, and check current pricing on Expedia before you commit, because the difference between a school holiday week and the one either side of it is substantial.

What to pack for Nickelodeon Riviera Maya

Kanu Surf Mirage swim trunksSix acres of water park means shoulders in the sun all day. The built-in UPF 50 does the work sunscreen keeps washing off.

LAPHEE ROSE ruched one-pieceYou’re going down the slides with them, not watching from a lounger. A one-piece stays where you put it.

GUBARUN flip flopsThree areas, free shuttles between them, and wet concrete the whole way. These grip. Order a size up, they run small.

FURTALK straw sun visorOpen crown, so it doesn’t cook your head, and it rolls up in the case. The shade at Aqua Nick is limited.

Trtl travel pillowCheck-in isn’t until 4 p.m. and you’ll land long before that. Somebody in your party is sleeping sitting up.

Resort Reviews: Our Star Ratings

These ratings are based on aggregated guest reviews and the resort’s own information. Five stars is excellent, one is poor, and half-stars are allowed.

TRAVEL INSURANCE

The unglamorous thing that saves a trip

A hospital bill abroad is not covered the way it is at home in Canada. One policy fixes that before you fly.

See how travel insurance works →