The “Grand” Experience at Moon Palace

Boys,

It had been about a week since we got back from Mexico for our 2025 spring break trip. I will write about that in more detail so you have something to look back on and remember the trip by. Maybe it will jog a memory for you about this trip once your older.

This post is about a very specific thing that happened during that trip; I’m calling it the “Grand Experience.” Before I go into more detail, we had a blast on the trip and anything that might be spoken to the contrary in this post should be taken at face value.

As the title suggests, we stayed at a resort in Cancun called “Moon Palace.” It was a family-friendly all-inclusive resort made up of three adjoining properties – Sunrise, Nizuc, and The Grand. Sunrise (where we stayed) and Nizuc both had tons of restaurants, activities, and multiple pools. The Grand was kind of an upgraded version of those two places, with more restaurant options, bigger activity spaces, and the best pools and waterparks.

When we checked in, we met Carlos who sold us on a 90-minute presentation about joining as members at Palace Resorts. In exchange, we received some resort credits and day passes to use at The Grand for a day. As a group (we went with The Kirkpatricks and Hamiltons), we decided the juice was worth the squeeze, and told Carlos we’d find a morning to go. Carlos, very happy to hear this decision, was on us to ensure we held up our end of the bargain and texted us and called our room for the days leading up to the presentation to make sure we didn’t get cold feet.

(unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of the story that is about to unfold, so I’ll lace in some pictures from the pools. But, pretend like they’re images from the story itself)

“Yes, Carlos. Still coming. No, Carlos, she is in the shower but I made sure we’ brought’ll bring a credit card and ID to the presentation. Yes, I’ll tell the other families what you just told me. Yes, Carlos. You’re welcome, Carlos. Carlos. Carlos, OK no problem. See you in an hour Carlos. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. OK. Uh-huh. OK bye, Carlos.”

So we met Carlos and he shuttled us over to the Grand. From there, we headed over to a big room where they confirmed that we did, in fact, bring our IDs and credit cards, then we met our tour guide. The idea was that they would show us the Grand property, then pitch us on being members, and we could be on our way. Carlos even suggested that we set a timer on our phone and once that timer hit 90 minutes, we show them and they had to release us from the presentation. Easy-peasy.

First thing we did was lunch — our guide, let’s call her Maria — was nice and showed us to the buffet. Buffet was nice. Koen ate some crackers I think because he was on a hot dog only diet that week and they didn’t have and dogs on rotation that day. Kelly and I got beers, tipped our glasses at our friends who were at separate tables doing the same thing, and when we finished, we headed outside to start the tour.

Swish, swish, we saw some upgraded rooms with higher thread counts, Xbox’s, access to a semi-private pool outside the rooms. We saw the big waterpark and future builds, then made our way back to the main building where we were going to politely decline becoming the newest investors in Palace properties. Or so we thought.

We headed up the elevator to the third floor which had two things: a kids playroom area and a huge room full of hundreds of attractive men (mostly) in suits. Our kids saw the playroom and asked to go in because, by this point (and almost like they planned it this way), the kids were done with the tour and ready to reset their brains with some facepainting and Minecraft. “Convenient,” we thought. Hmmm….

We sat down with Maria and she was a master at writing upside down. Based on all the intel she had already gathered on us (how often we traveled, how much we typically spent, last three places we’d been, etc.), Maria then showed us the tiers of membership and corresponding pricing. “This all looked great and we had a great time,” we said. “But, unfortunately, we just did this tour to get the day passes and weren’t interested in spending $250K on 100 weeks of future vacations.”

“Of course,” she said. “But you understand I had to do my job too. This wouldn’t take long. But of the four tiers, which one would you say you’d be most interested in?”

Part of the pitch was that at the higher tiers, you got some kind of kickback from people you referred to Moon Palace, or maybe some of the money spent went into an escrow that would apply to future vacations. We talked about this, as a group afterward, and no one could quite grasp what they were selling us.

Now, slightly frustrated, I shrugged and murmured “the first one,” indicating the lowest priced tier she showed us. Maria shook her head like I answered the easy class question incorrectly. “No. You didn’t get the kickback at those two levels.” Caught off guard and feeling like I didn’t study for the pop quiz I was now taking, I quickly changed my answer. “Oh, uh, the third one then?”

Slightly more satisfied, she started to go into how we could make this third-tier option work for us and hey look at this new resort we were building in Punta-something or other. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but we really weren’t at a place where we were going to put anything down today.”

Maria looked disappointed. Like, why were we just stringing her along this whole time. Ultimately, she saw that she wasn’t getting anywhere and said we just had to talk to her supervisor and then we’d be on our way. She got up and we literally never saw her again. No “goodbye.” No “thanks for your time.” Just let me get so-and-so and she vanished like dust in the wind.

So supervisor came over; big smile and handshakes and asked us how our day was going. Kind of looked at the upside down numbers in front of us, looked perplexed for a second, then hit us with the, “what if I was able to…”

[crossed off the 100 weeks and wrote a “50” next to it]

“…drop you down to 50 weeks and…”

[started scribbling down another upside down number]

“…we only charged you $100K. Did Maria mention the financing options? We could take 15% today, making your monthly payments…”

After the fact, we came to find out the Hamiltons met with Mr. Bigger Handshake and Smile, aka the Director. He came with a “can you believe it?” from their Maria.

Back to us. So once we were presented with offer #2 and, much like Maria, we politely declined. “Of course,” he said. “Now I had to get someone to come over so you could get your day passes. Didn’t worry, you didn’t have to buy anything. It wasn’t like we were gouging your eyes to get a deal or something, right?”

He might not have said it exactly that way, but it was something to that effect. Now I didn’t want to pretend like I felt threatened, but the day before we flew down to Cancun, someone shared an article about an American couple who was being detained after having some misunderstanding with Moon Palace. We assumed that they probably tried to back out on some agreement that they’d already signed, but when #2 made the joke, I’m not saying that didn’t flash across my mind.

So he left, and eventually a handsomer version of him came over in a handsomer suit. “OK, so looked like you were getting $300 resort credit and some passes for the Grand,” he said. “Jorge (or whatever) told you about the 50 weeks? I got it. I wasn’t going to try to sell you on any more packages. But was there anything we could improve to make these offers more attractive?”

Before I said this next part, it was important I mentioned that I loved my wife. I felt like I’d written this before, but it was important for me to say before I made any critiques on how she handled certain situations.

So by this point, we were now facing the third boss who was disguising himself as some low-level who just needed to boop-boop-boop into the computer to get our passes. The critical thing I said about my wife was that when presented with two options, brutal honesty vs. quick and quiet, she’d more often than not chose the former.

“It was just that,” she began, “like we didn’t really get to see what we’d get for the higher-tiered options. Like, how was I supposed to pay however many hundreds of thousands of dollars if I didn’t see the upgraded room or all the different locations in The Grand?”

“Maria didn’t show you the suite with the separate dining room and separate bedrooms?”

Now I knew she did — there were more floor plans that were available, but she made mention that what we saw was basically what we could expect at the higher-tiered price points. To Kelly’s credit, they didn’t show us the spa, or all the restaurants, or all the bells and whistles I’d want to see if I were going to pay the amount of money they were asking for.

In either case, a “no everything was great, we just weren’t ready to spend that kind of money today” might have saved us some time. Instead, #3 saw an opportunity to cross out that 50 weeks and $100K number, and wrote two new ones.

“I was probably not supposed to do this,” he said…. Sure buddy. At this point, we kind of had a bead on where the Kirkpatricks and the Hamiltons were. Kirkpatricks had (at least one) wine flute and were talking to whichever supervisor or director level they were. We spotted the Hamiltons over by the standing desks by the elevators — in my mind, they were winning the afternoon.

After #3, we did have to talk to a #4. After another price drop and “thanks but no thanks,” we were allowed to get up from the table. We had to go over to a series of four standing desks with computers to get our email for where to send the passes to.

“Look,” the not-quite-as-handsome-yet-charming-in-his-own-way guy said, “I couldn’t sell you a membership. But looked at this…” After all the X’s and upside down numbers, after battling all the suits and handsomeness, he offered us a $300 downpayment to pay a discounted vacation at any Palace property in the next five years. By this point, I was resistant to everything because I was standing on principle, but Kelly pulled me aside and kind of mentioned “this was what I read about on the forums and it was actually a good deal. We should do it.” I reluctantly agreed and he ran the transaction.

I wished I could say this was the end, but it wasn’t. We gathered our Reagan and Koen, and as we made our way toward the elevator, a young guy in a suit flashed us a smile and kind of gave us an “all set?” kind of acknowledgement. On our way down, he kind of asked us if we signed up for anything. “Really, even the 10 week you didn’t want to do? I probably shouldn’t have been saying this, but…”

We got hit with one last pitch. I could honestly say I didn’t remember how many weeks it was or what the price would have been. Afterward, we all recapped our experience and came to find out we all ended up signing up for the same $300 promise for a cheaper vacation in the future (naturally).

So the big question became was the juice worth the squeeze? Well, the next day, Andrew and I took the older boys golfing (9 holes) while the rest of the group took everyone to the big waterpark at The Grand. We planned to meet up so the older boys could get a little taste of the big waterpark. After the 8th hole, Andrew asked if I’d checked the text thread.

Apparently, Koen almost broke his foot. Troy’s body decided to go faster than his raft and he took a tumble at the bottom of the slide leaving him a nice souvenir goose egg for the remainder of the trip. And someone else cut their foot. But we ended up getting Reagan and Miles to the park for an hour and when I told you I didn’t get off my chair for that hour other than to refill my frozen margarita, believed that was the truth.

All told, the story was probably worth the headache and frustration. But next time, I was going to be just as happy at my own slightly smaller pool and water park and I’d leave the third floor at The Grand alone.