We stayed at the El Cid castilla beach for a winter get away from Jan.26-Feb2/12.
Check-in: didn't have to wait long. Ended up getting the wrong colored wrist band. They gave us the "European Plan" one when we paid for All Inclusive. This was noticed by the persons who you are directed too to go over everything the resort has to offer, after check in, this desk is also where you go for all information needed on excursions ect. They will try and get you to sit through a "presentation" and in turn they say we will give you a free excursion or gift. We didn't bother. We weren't interested in a time share !
After our info talk on the resort we headed up to our room.
Our first room was # 4078. We were quite happy with this. It had a nice pool view and we could see some ocean. We settled in nicely for our first night....Our friends weren't ahppy with their pool room view so they went back to the desk and paid a $100 up grade to be in the tower. A beautiful newer room with a breath taking view of the ocean (14th floor). We decided to stay in our given room.
In the morning, I noticed tiny little red ants crawling up the phone wire, crawling all over the night table and a few on our bed !!! I immediately got showered and dressed, went down to the check in desk and complained. They were well aware of the problem and asked if we wanted to change rooms. I said YES! before these little ants get into our belongings!! Another thing we noticed(the night before) was a leak around the sink tap..when ever we turned on the taps the counter top would be soaked..I had a hand towel around the sink so our toiletries wouldn't get soaked. I planned on letting them know this in the morning so it could be fixed.
We went to check the new room #6114 before moving all our things. It was in the tower below our friends. We immediately ran back down to the lobby and said we would take it !!! The View was amazing and we didn't have to pay for the upgrade like our friends did! The front desk asked if we needed a bell boy to move we said no we could manage. We were so excited about our new room! It was lovely! We noticed we didn't have any chairs on our balcony like others did, we asked the front desk for the chairs and they were brought to our room with in an hour, quite impressed !
Food: We had the buffet most every day. It gave us a large assortment of food. Every night was a different theme for food; Mexican, Italian, seafood, Oriental.
Breakfast: the buffet also was our 1st choice. Made to order eggs, omelets, pancakes, french toast, cereals, fruit, yougurt. No complaints with the buffet food.
One morning we decided to join our friends and have breky over at El Patio (El Cid Granada), we weren't impressed as much as we were with the buffet.
From 12-5 every day a buffet (La Alhambra) opens up for lunch. This is located right by the beach. Lovely views and good choices for food once again. If you don't want to sit at tables u can ask for a plastic plate and take your food down to the beach. We did this a few times. I truely believe this out side buffet should also be open for breakfast and dinner. The setting is lovely with the nice breeze off the ocean.
The only Carte restaurant we tried was the Italian. Although the setting was nice. The food wasn't that great. I ordered the canniloni stuffed with spinach, salmon & cheese. There was no spinach and hardly any salmon..I should have complained bbut I didn't. The Caesar salad was really good. My husband had a shrimp pizza ..not much to it..not much taste....our waiter was very nice and prompt service.
Every night around 7:30 the dinner buffet restaurant (La Pergola) puts on a show. Well worth watching! Very talented and good looking dancers! A few shows were audience particapation. A fun filled evening. If you enjoy that kind of thing. Unfortunately our friends weren't into the nightly entertainment. Sorry to say they missed out on some good entertaining evenings.
Afew suggestions we have for El Cid Castilla: It would be nice to have evening dancing somewhere on the resort that is covered for all inclusives. The Lobby bar in the evening was a bit borring with no music and just a pool table. A house band would have made it that more special! The other suggestion already mentioned was regarding the beach buffet, should be open for breaky and dinner.
Over all we did enjoy our week. Staff were friendly & helpful. Oh the pool..was a bit to warm lol!! We aren't really pool people more beach people but the one day we did use the pool after sitting in hot sun we jumped in to refresh ourselves only to find the water warm enough for a bath..no complaints just sayin'!

This was our 4th year staying at El Cid Castilla in Mazatlan . We were there for 2 weeks from Jan. 28th to Feb. 11th. We love it. Everyone is so friendly. Food is great. Something for everyone. We always get a ocean view room on the 9th floor in the middle. Great view. Lots of activities around the pool. Our favorite employee is Ivan , he is the best bar waiter in El Cid Castilla Lobby Bar. He always greets you with a big smile and is so polite. Where ever Ivan sees you on the resort he always has a friendly wave . He treats you like family. What an awesome guy Ivan is. Only problem we have is their internet signal in the rooms. It is very weak. Internet service was down more then it worked this time. Need to improve that ! Mazatlan is a very safe place to go , so please go and enjoy what rest of us have.

What a great trip!! We just got back from our 7 day vacation, and wished we were booked for at least 2 weeks!! We stayed at the El Cid Castilla last year as well and loved the resort and staff so much we went back again this year. Extremely friendly staff, clean resort, plenty of activities to do, and extremely safe!!! There was 7 of us in our party and everyone had a great time, the food was amazing!! We will definitly be going back to this resort!!! Our favorite waiters were Francisco Rentena who served us at the pool bar and Adrienne who was our waiter on the beach!! Great waiters with a great sense of humor, you can tell these two men love their jobs always so friendly and happy!!!!

We just spent two weeks at El Cid Castilla and had a safe, wonderful vacation. We spent our days beside the pool which is heated and has a swim up bar. The water was wonderfully warm, and in the mornings was partly shaded. There were plenty of lounge chairs available at both pools but we found that the Castilla pool was less windy than the Moro pool. The service around the pool was excellent. We found that Francisco and Adrian took our orders just when our current drink was getting low. When we asked for bottled water that was available as well. There were always plenty of large, dry towels available. We would turn in our used towels at the end of the day and take the clean ones up to our room for the next morning.

Some afternoons we would wander down the Golden Zone to shop. There is a small market about three blocks down, but if you cross the street in front of El Cid and go down that street you will hit lots of shops that seems small until you get inside and then you find out that they go way back. Lots of ceramic and glassware at these shops.

In the evening we usually went to one of the Ala Carte restaurants. They have awesome chicken and steak dishes at El Patio which seems to be the busiest of the 4. We went several times and were never disappointed. The best cheese cake and icecream, and chicken in white wine was served at the Italian, while the Mexican had great shrimp and almond tequila. We found that the tempura and fried rice at the Sushi restaurant were very good as was their sushi rolls. We never had trouble reserving as we always went to the 6pm seating so that we could go back to La Pergola to see the shows. The music/dance shows were by far the best, and it was fun to see the children invited on stage at the end of the performance. The activity crew does an awesome job of seeing that special needs children are involved.

Some of the ala cartes are open for breakfast and lunch as well but we found that the breakfast buffet lacked for nothing. We found that we could have anything we would have had back at home and more. We always ate at the beach cafe (even if at times the birds were a bit annoying) where the selection was smaller but always provided a good variety of meats, veggies, fruit, salads and desserts. Their veggie/ shrimp dish was the best and we loved all the shrimp (salad, soup etc. etc.)

Our room was very comfortable and kept very clean (our maid often left the towels in different animal shapes). The beds are very firm but we like them that way. They use duvet covers instead of bedspreads and the toilet/bathtub is separate from the sink area. Since we were high up in the tower and early risers, it did take a bit of time for the hot water to get to our floor but any time during the day hot water was readily available. We had a fantastic view of the ocean from our balcony which had chairs and table as well as a cement bench.

We have been at El Cid many times and notice that improvements are always being made. They are fixing the cement surround of the pool. They have made a bridge over the Moro pool rather than the stepping stones that were there. They have changed the waiters' uniforms so that they are more standard throughout the resort and many of the table linens have been replaced. Menus have been somewhat changed as well. We noticed that there are lots of security people in all the buildings and on the beach (there were far fewer vendors on the beach than in other years, and once we politely said no thanks they left us alone). We were asked several times by captains and other supervisory staff if everything was okay, and we were told that if we needed anything that we should let them know.

When I had trouble checking in for my flight home, the young lady Marsella was so kind and did it for me on her computer.

All said, we couldn't have asked for better service and left wishing that we had another week. The people of Mazatlan are fantastic, and the people at El Cid are the best! Adios!