Perfect Day, the Royal Caribbean water park that threatens to devour Mexico’s Mahahual ecosystem

More than 30 water slides, projected to be the tallest in Latin America, six swimming pools, three beaches, 12 restaurants, and 24 bars. That and more will be at Perfect Day, the water park that the international cruise line Royal Caribbean plans to build in the fishing village of Mahahual, Quintana Roo, on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, covering just over 107 hectares. Since 2025, the land and permits have been in place to pave the way for the complex, in which the company will invest $1 billion. This follows the company’s move to take administrative control of the Costa Maya port with another investment of more than $221 million. Some members of the Mahahual community have already raised concerns about the irreversible impact of the project. Others, however, fear that the company will withdraw its investment from the area, and jeopardize their livelihoods.

The Costa Maya port was acquired by Royal Caribbean in July 2025. It was bought by Promociones Turísticas Mahahual, a subsidiary of the cruise line, after a multi-million dollar investment was finalized. Since then, several modifications have been made to the port’s operations. At the same time, the businesspeople involved announced the creation of Perfect Day, a project aimed at replicating the success of the company’s CocoCay theme park — a resort complex on a private island also purchased by Royal Caribbean — in the Bahamas. According to the firm, Perfect Day will open in 2027 and will receive approximately 20,000 visitors daily in Mahahual, which currently has a population of just over 2,600.

“[It will be] the biggest, boldest and most daring destination ever imagined [...] a mind-blowing, record-breaking experience like no other,” Royal Caribbean describes on its website, which lists all the attractions the park will feature once it opens to the public.

More than 932 miles away, six members of the international environmental organization Greenpeace unfurled a giant banner on Tuesday with a message for Mexico’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat): “Perfect Day, water slides or environmental protection, that is the question.” The banner was part of a campaign to protect the Mexican jungle called México al grito de ¡Selva! — a twist on the patriotic cry ¡México al grito de guerra! (Mexico, answering the call to war).

Through this initiative, Greenpeace has denounced a long list of irregularities and legal violations committed by the company — violations they say have been allowed by authorities in Quintana Roo and overlooked by the Federal Government. According to the organization, the project will devastate the mangrove ecosystem, harm the 300 species that live there, and unleash a waste crisis involving hundreds of thousands of tons of debris from the moment construction begins.

A few hours after the media reported on the protest, Semarnat published a statement saying that “the Perfect Day project in Mahahual is still undergoing environmental assessment and, to date, does not have any environmental authorization for its development, construction or operation.”

When asked about the response, Carlos Samayoa, Greenpeace campaign coordinator, replied: “We already know that. The message is that we will be watching them and that we will be calling on people to pay attention to the outcome of the decision. They cannot continue authorizing more projects like this; we have also said that we are not against job creation, we are not against development, as long as it doesn’t tip the scales in favor of economic benefits concentrated in the hands of a few and with severe repercussions for ecosystems,” he says.

Greenpeace submitted a document of more than 100 pages to Semarnat back in February, analyzing the company’s Environmental Impact Statement and detailing the inconsistencies and gaps it contains. They argue these omissions put a fragile ecosystem at risk — one whose destruction would not only devastate the area but also leave it more vulnerable to extreme weather events such as hurricanes.

The promise of this multimillion‑dollar investment, however, had been endorsed and announced from the first days of Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration, with the involvement of then–economy secretary Marcelo Ebrard. They presented the upcoming investment operations — with companies such as Amazon, Mexico Pacific, Woodside Energy, and Royal Caribbean — as proof of international confidence in the new government. “At least four major investments of around $20 billion were announced for our country by 2025. The Royal Caribbean investment is important because southern Quintana Roo needs development; it’s a tourism investment that will be linked to the Maya Train and all the tourism development underway in the southeast,” Sheinbaum said on October 16, 2024.

On Wednesday, when questioned again after the complaints and criticism surrounding the project, Sheinbaum responded: “In this case, the most important thing is to conserve the reef; there cannot be a project that damages the reef in that area. So, if it’s going to be done, it has to be in another location that allows the project to be developed, or under certain conditions set by Semarnat. Some criticisms are simply for the sake of criticizing everything, but others do have to do with environmental protection, and that’s what they’re reviewing.” EL PAÍS requested a statement from the company regarding the complaints and questions about the project, but had not received a response by the time of publication.

Fast-tracked process

According to lawyer Irma Morales, from the organization Defending the Right to a Healthy Environment (DMAS), the legal battle against the Perfect Day project began when members of the Save Mahahual collective contacted them. After analyzing how the permits were granted, they discovered several inconsistencies in the process.

“They [Royal Caribbean] modified an Urban Development Program [PDU] in less than three weeks without following the procedure established by the state’s human settlements law,” the lawyer explains. “This needs to be spelled out because it’s a bit technical, but when you modify land‑use designations — even at the request of a private party — if that use wasn’t contemplated in the original plan, you must go through a full legal procedure as if you were drafting a new PDU, and that wasn’t done, much less was there any citizen participation. It all happened almost overnight, so to speak. That is, Royal Caribbean requests the land-use change, then the Urban Development Department grants it without further analysis. Then the city council fast-tracks its approval, and then the mayor does too, and it’s published in the state’s official gazette.”

The document Morales is referring to was published on December 5, 2025, and authorizes the land-use change “and development parameters regarding the request submitted through a road and urban impact assessment, by the companies Cielo Asoleado S. de R.L. de C.V. and Promociones Turísticas Mahahual S.A. de C.V. — both owned by Royal Caribbean — on a total area of ​​107.67 hectares,” according to the resolution, which reproduces the information signed by the municipal council headed by the mayor of Othón P. Blanco, Yensunni Idalia Martínez Hernández.

It was the organization DMAS that mobilized against the illegal land‑use changes granted to the company — in other words, against the municipality — by filing four amparo lawsuits [a constitutional injunction that allows a person or organization to challenge a government act that violates their rights]: one on its own behalf and three on behalf of eight other residents of Mahahual. Of those four filings, three were dismissed by the First District Judge in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, leaving only the organization’s case alive. That remaining petition obtained a definitive injunction last February, which barred the company from requesting municipal, state, or federal environmental permits needed to begin construction.

“That was very good news because, in the end, the company argued that since the land‑use change had already been authorized, they could go ahead and request their permit from Semarnat. But then both the injunction and even DMAS’s lawsuit were challenged by every authority involved — and by Royal Caribbean. The first to come out in defense of the company were the authorities themselves,” Morales explains.

A couple of weeks ago, the case was dismissed on the grounds that DMAS had not filed its amparo within the required timeframe. The lawsuit was thrown out, and the injunction was lifted. “The magistrates sided with the authorities. In fact, one of the main arguments from both the authorities and the company was that DMAS lacked legitimate interest because DMAS doesn’t live in Mahahual. And with the recent amendment to the Amparo Law, everything has become extremely narrow and restrictive — we now have to prove that the harm affects us ‘directly,’ even when we’re talking about a collective right.”

Last January, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa) ordered a total and temporary shutdown of the tourism project for lacking federal environmental‑impact authorization and for destroying mangroves. “The closure was ordered after documenting filling and compaction work on a rustic road in a coastal low‑forest area with mangroves, as well as demolition and debris‑removal activities, all carried out without the environmental‑impact authorization required from the competent federal authority. The affected area covers 17,115 square meters,” the agency said in a statement.

DMAS and Greenpeace agree that Royal Caribbean has not clearly answered all the questions raised — even during public consultations — about the project’s long‑term environmental impacts in the region. The company has also drawn scrutiny for hiring Ari Adler Brotman less than a year after he left his position as director of the Quintana Roo Institute for Development and Financing (IDEFIN); in August 2025, he was appointed president of Royal Caribbean Mexico.

Luciana moved to Mahahual 15 years ago. She lives in an area where basic public services are still not fully available. She gets her water from a well and uses two batteries for electricity. She doesn’t work in the tourism industry, built around cruise‑ship traffic — the main source of employment for people living nearby. Instead, she has stayed independent, offering her diving services as a freelancer.

Even so, she understands why most people who depend on tourism fear losing their jobs if the project doesn’t go ahead. Still, she insists that Perfect Day is bad news for everyone: “It’s a sign of disrespect toward the community, toward the town’s identity, toward the environment where they want to build it, toward the ecosystem. It’s a social, environmental, and cultural affront. There is nothing they respect with this project they’re proposing. Nothing,” she says.

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