MAYA LOST MAYAN KINGDOM
Click here for Maya Lost Mayan Kingdom website:
COSTA MAYA, MEXICO 8-5PM
We've been here many times and was looking for something new to do. At first I booked an excursion going to Blue Lagoon. It looked like such a beautiful place and had kayaking and so on. It's also called 7 color lagoon because of the various beautiful colors you will find there. However, I decided to let Sakari pick what she wanted to do. After all, it's all about the kids and their enjoyment while on vacation and I want her to have wonderful memories to look back on when I'm gone.
So, she decided she wanted to go to Maya Lost Maya Kingdom right there close to the port...the water park they built a few years ago. Since she has turned into this daredevil lately, she wanted to go for the zip lines and water slides. She promised that she would "do them all". Yea...we'll see about that once she see's just how big and tall they are in person. It's pretty expensive there but hey...whatever makes her happy and has a memorable time I guess.
I booked the excursion using NCL. It's the same price as if you pay at the doors so I figured why not. The cost is $99 per adult and $89 for a child. So, a total of $287 worth of fun was thrown out of my pocket for the day. Since it was so close to the port, I knew we would have very little time lost in getting there and back from the port (unlike the Blue Lagoon, which was over an hour drive each way). So, we'd at least get to make the most of our time there and get our monies worth...even if it involved her chickening out and just using it as a pool and lazy river day. Now for some reason when I booked with NCL, the total cost ended up being $267.20. Loving a discount, even if it's only $19.80.
We scoured the internet looking at pictures and videos of the place (and their official website) and the more I looked, the more I was glad we booked this place. It looked really cool and I knew we were going to have a good time. As the months went by, it was all Sakari could talk about. She asked every day on the cruise "is this the day we get to go to the water park and zip lining?" Well...the day was finally here that I could tell her "YES!"
I know a lot of people on these boards don't like the place because it's not your "true authentic" idea of visiting a port and what Costa Maya is like. It's a commercialized place and not the "real deal". But, that's ok. It's our vacation and it's what would make our daughter happy, then I'm going to do it. We've been to plenty of places in Costa Maya including Blue Kay several times (my favorite but has been changing over the years), Nohoch Kay (which I honestly didn't care for even though many enjoy it here on the boards), Maya Chan (popular with the boards and the food and place is amazing...but I don't care for the brown murky looking water) and Almaplena (gorgeous beach and water but didn't care for the food we had). To me, the Malecon is the Malecon no matter where you go...and I honestly don't care for the Malecon other than Blue Kay and I feel that it has run it's course with us now. So....off to do something new and exciting...even if it's commercialized. 🙂
It didn't seem like the shuttles were running yet (was $3 pp to use but I'm not sure if that's still the same or not) but our tickets said that included transportation (using this shuttle I'm sure) but it wasn't until 9:45am. I wasn't about to wait that long to get there. That meant an arrival time of around 10am. No thank you. So my plans were to just walk there. We've done it before and it's a fairly easy walk...only it was very hot and humid out. If you cross over, into the middle of the street, you'll find a sidewalk to walk on. There's several places that are covered and will keep you out of the sun.
When you get to the end of the street, you will see this huge ruins replica.
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Traffic goes around this and heads off either right or left. Once we got there, I looked around like...Hmmm, where do we go now? It's different when you are on the ship and can see the park towering over everything, but on land, I thought you would still see it and you couldn't so I wasn't sure.
We stopped to ask a local and he pointed ------> So right we went down the street. I figured that way but it was just too hot to be guessing at that point.
This is what you see when you look right....can't see the towering zip lines or water slides.
We have arrived...
Of course as soon as we arrived, a huge bus of people pulled up and jumped out (we are talking huge bus like a Greyhound) and that stuck us close to the end. We waited out in the hot sun and waited and waited. We seen some people with Royal Caribbean tickets and assumed that's who got off the bus. They started having us fill out the waiver form while we stood in line. Then they started taking people from BEHIND us around and into the line right by the windows where you check in. Um...ok.
Then before long, another bus pulls up (smaller) and I assume that might have been the NCL bus or Carnival. I did see a few people with NCL tickets, but they were a totally different color than ours and I have no idea what the difference was. I also seen them pull some people up in line and when I turned around and looked behind us, there was no longer a line and we were last. Now wait a minute. I flagged down a worker and showed her we already had tickets and didn't need to buy any. She said we were in the right line and everyone had to check in at the ticket office for wrist bands. Grrr
Finally we got checked in and entered the park. I know it seemed like forever when we were standing in the sun and heat, but honestly it was probably maybe a 15 minute wait. We just happened to be the ones stuck behind a family of 13...go figure.
One of the pools
We decided not to stop at the first pool and head on back. It wasn't very crowded yet...thank goodness.
There are several pools in the back and we decided we wanted to be back that way.
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We found a row of chairs with no one in that section yet. We decided this is where we would claim our stake for the day.
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Later in the day people around us would come and go but it never felt too crowded for some reason. Maybe they were all off doing the water park and zip lining.
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We had a view of the pyramid from our chairs. Man it looked so high!
It took less than 30 minutes for Sakari to start jumping up and down wanting to head to the zip lines. I had already jumped in the pool to cool down from the walk here and standing in line. So, since I had cooled down, I figured why not. More and more people would be coming in and we might as well start now before it got crowded.
We headed to the pyramid and knew that had to be the place to go for all the fun since everything seemed to be protruding out of every orifice of it from above.
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Inside this place was really cool and so many things to see. It was just really neat. The lazy river comes inside this huge pyramid as well.