“The taxi driver keeps one flip-flop on the dashboard, tapping it against the windshield every time he changes lanes, which is constantly.”

The ride from Cancún airport takes about forty minutes if your driver doesn't stop for gas, which mine does, at a Pemex station where a kid is selling bags of sliced mango with chili from a cooler strapped to a bicycle. North of the hotel zone, the boulevard thins out. The party billboards disappear. The road narrows past the Isla Mujeres ferry terminal at Punta Sam, and the coastline opens into something less curated — scrubby dunes, a few fishing pangas pulled up on the sand, the smell of salt and diesel giving way to just salt. You start to wonder if you've gone too far. Then a low-slung complex appears behind a wall of palms, and the driver says "Planet Hollywood" like he's announcing a bus stop.

The entrance is wide and open-air, with that particular Mexican resort architecture that wants you to see the ocean before you see the front desk. There's a faint soundtrack — something between lounge and reggaeton, low enough to ignore — and a welcome drink that tastes like hibiscus and tequila, though nobody confirms the tequila part. Check-in takes longer than you'd expect. I sit on a bench near a decorative surfboard and watch a family of four negotiate who gets which wristband color. The kids win.

A resort that lets parents pretend

Here's the trick Planet Hollywood pulls off, and it's the reason people like it: the property is technically family-friendly, but it's designed so adults can forget that for hours at a time. The kids' club — a neon-lit space called the Stars Kids Club — swallows children whole. They disappear into it after breakfast and emerge at dinner sunburned and hoarse. Meanwhile, the adults-only pool on the south end of the property operates in a different timezone. It's quieter. The music is better. Someone is always asleep on a daybed with a paperback tented on their chest. I never once saw a pool noodle there.

The rooms are big enough that you don't trip over luggage. Mine had a balcony facing a garden courtyard — not the ocean view, which costs more — and the bed was firm in that way where you think you won't like it but then sleep nine hours straight. The shower had good pressure and a rain head that actually worked, though the bathroom door was frosted glass, which is a design choice that assumes a certain comfort level with your travel companion. The minibar restocks daily, included in the all-inclusive rate, and by day three I'd developed a Modelo-at-four-PM habit I'm not proud of.

Food is the usual all-inclusive roulette. The buffet at Gusto is fine — the chilaquiles at breakfast are genuinely good, crispy where they should be, with a green salsa that has real heat. The à la carte spots require reservations, which you make through an app that crashes roughly every other attempt. The Asian fusion place, Sun Yat, surprised me with a decent pad thai. The steakhouse tried hard and mostly succeeded, though the wine list reads like it was assembled by someone who'd heard of wine but never been personally hurt by a bad one. The beach grill does tacos al pastor that I went back to three times, which tells you everything.

“The adults-only pool operates in a different timezone — quieter, better music, not a single pool noodle in sight.”

The honest thing: the property is big, and it knows it. Walking from the lobby to the far pool takes a solid ten minutes, and the signage isn't always helpful. I got lost twice on the first day, once ending up in what I think was a staff corridor that smelled intensely of bleach and fresh tortillas. The WiFi works in the rooms and near the lobby but gets unreliable by the pools — which you could argue is a feature. The beach is narrow but swimmable, with that impossible Caribbean turquoise that looks filtered in photos but isn't. A guy in a Planet Hollywood polo rakes the seaweed every morning before seven. I know this because the balcony door doesn't seal perfectly, and the scraping sound woke me up. I didn't mind.

One detail with no booking relevance: there's a cat. A gray tabby who lives somewhere near the Italian restaurant and appears at dinner service like clockwork. The staff call her Estrella. She sits under the same table every night — the one by the railing, closest to the garden — and waits for someone to drop shrimp. Someone always does.

The road back

Leaving on the last morning, the road south toward the airport feels different. You notice things you missed on the way in — a taco stand with plastic chairs spilling onto the shoulder, a hand-painted sign advertising boat trips to Isla Contoy, a group of teenagers fishing off a concrete pier with no railing. The Punta Sam ferry terminal is busy now, locals heading to Isla Mujeres for work, and the whole scene has a rhythm that the resort, for all its careful design, can't replicate. If you have an extra day, take that ferry. The crossing is twenty minutes, costs about $17 round trip, and the island's south point — Punta Sur — has cliffs and a sculpture garden and nobody trying to sell you a timeshare.

Rates at Planet Hollywood Cancún start around $463 per night all-inclusive for two adults, which buys you the room, the food roulette, the unlimited Modelo habit, the adults-only pool, and Estrella's nightly dinner theater. Garden-view rooms run less; ocean-facing suites run considerably more. The 42-kilometer ride from the airport runs about $52 by taxi if you negotiate before getting in.