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A wary mom's first experience with an All-Inclusive beach getaway in Tulum, Mexico turns out to be a success, and won't be her last.

I admit that we are an unlikely family to spend our vacation at an all-inclusive resort.  My husband and I like to explore the local food, culture and people whenever we travel.  Our favorite family trips have been home exchanges that allow us to live like natives and experience the place as insiders, not beach getaways.

The generic feeling of sameness that we imagined at all-inclusive resorts was not something that we sought from a family vacation.  We enjoy shopping at local markets and cooking food ourselves, not waiting on buffet lines for bland, unadventurous food.  Add to this my husband’s disdain of crowds.  Some of his happiest holiday memories involve the semi-solitude of sailing for weeks with only his brother for company.

My two teenaged children do not share our idea of fun.  Yes, they have seen the Eiffel Tower and gone to a local summer camp in France.

Yes, they have travelled to a multitude of foreign destinations including London, Melbourne and Sardinia, but they often remind me that we have never taken them to Disney World.  Amongst their peers this is seen as bordering on deprivation. 

Kids Crave Choice & Freedom from Frugal Parents

As they have grown into the teen years, Alec, 16, and Madeleine, 14, recently stopped trying to get us to take them to Disneyworld and started aiming for an all-inclusive resort.  According to them, they were practically the only kids to have not experienced the joy of this type of vacation, where anything that you could want is yours for the asking.

I will take at least partial responsibility for this attitude.  I love to travel, and we travel frequently as a family, often on a tight budget.  My kids know better than to ask for cool refreshments on a hot summer day, as there is usually a water fountain in the vicinity, free of charge. 

Shared bathrooms are the norm at many of the youth hostels that we have stayed in, and though they have grudgingly accepted this, they have not stopped complaining.  It was only last year, while studying a list of vocabulary for the PSAT exam that Alec realized that the word hostel was not spelled hostile. 

For them, an all-inclusive symbolized the luxury to get what you want when you want it, in stark contrast to our frugal travel habits.

Giving the "All-Inclusive" a Try

The summer of 2009, Palace Resorts was offering a special rate where kids under age 18 stayed and ate free at several of its all-inclusive Mexican properties.  The newly renovated Aventura Cove, located south of Cancun on the Riviera Maya, was offering two-room family suites at a bargain price. We were going to be in that part of Mexico on a two-week trip, and had a few unplanned days left to fill. 

What tipped the scale for me was that guided tours of sites such as Chitzén Itzá, Tulum and Cobá were included in the rate for guests staying at least three nights, as part of the Palace Passport program.  If we didn’t like the resort, we could spend our three days touring the Mayan ruins of Quintana Roo and the Yucatan.  It seemed too good to pass up. Although we are not big drinkers, I reminded my husband of his fondness for tequila, unlimited for guests over 18, and the reservation was made.