Joel Boily and Cheryl Mains, a couple who work as wedding photographers, had the opportunity to document a special family event when they were asked to photograph a wedding in Mexico earlier this month.
Based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and operating Black and Gold Photography, the pair usually stick to local gigs, but they couldn’t pass up the chance to travel to Playa del Carmen for this destination wedding. The groom’s brother is in a relationship with Joel’s sister and was a member of the wedding party, making it a perfect excuse for a family trip.
To ensure they could focus on their photography duties, Joel and Cheryl decided to bring their two young sons, aged 2 and 4, along for the journey. They even flew in Joel’s parents, who don’t get to see the kids often due to living in another province, to help watch the boys on the big day while the photographers worked on capturing the wedding moments.
‘We were excited to do a big trip with our family – they could [make] amazing memories with their grandparents, their auntie,’ he says.
‘My parents could have a full day with our kids on the beach and just an experience that they’ll probably never get again.’
The day on the beach didn’t happen, but the family certainly left with an unforgettable experience – albeit a nightmarish one.
So did the bride and groom, the majority of the wedding party and hundreds of other guests who’ve fallen violently ill this month for days during stays at Sandos Playacar Beach Resort, on Mexico’s Caribbean coast.
Symptoms included explosive diarrhea and vomiting, fever, chills and debilitating fatigue. Multiple small children and elderly relatives had been hospitalized both in Mexico and upon return to Canada, according to family reports; the majority of complainants have been Canadian, as the resort is a popular package trip destination served by the country’s airlines and travel companies.
Hundreds have guests, mostly visitors from Canada, have complained of severe illness suffered while staying this month at the five-star Sandos Playacar Beach Resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico
Joel Boily and his wife, Cheryl Mains, are wedding photographers based in Winnipeg; they arrived on February 12 at Sandos Playacar with their two sons, aged 2 and 4, along with Joel’s parents, who could watch the children as the couple photographed the wedding — which was postponed a day after the bride and groom fell violently ill, along with many of their guests
A grassroots Facebook support group with nearly 750 members has been established for visitors who fell ill, saw their vacations ruined and felt abandoned by resort staff
Some guests have already tested positive for E. coli, norovirus, parasites and salmonella, Joel says; others, like his family, are still awaiting results they expect to show similarly severe maladies.
In the meantime, he and fellow victims are on a mission to spread warnings about their brutal sicknesses and abysmal experience abroad. It started with fellow tourists swapping numbers and stories while still at Sandos Playacar, where March room rates start at $484 per night; now the photographer is an admin for a ‘support and information-sharing’ Facebook group for recent visitors affected by severe health issues at the same location.
The group, created on February 21, already has nearly 750 members.
‘We’ve been able to spread the story quite a bit to warn future couples trying to plan a destination wedding at this place, or just families trying to go on vacation with their kids,’ Joel says.
‘This is a clear case of really bad management.’
In a statement Thursday to DailyMail.com, Sandos Playacar placed blame outside its walls, writing that it had ‘last week’ received reports of illness ‘affecting several resorts in the region, including ours.
‘Given the rapid spread of such viruses, unfortunately, many of our guests were affected.’
‘Last week we received reports of illness affecting several resorts in the region, including ours. Given the rapid spread of such viruses, unfortunately, many of our guests were affected,’ the statement reads.
It maintained that the resort had been in full collaboration with doctors and local health authorities, took ‘immediate action,’ reinforced ‘our already strict sanitary protocols’ and shut down ‘non-essential access to the property to minimize further exposure and prevent the spread.’
‘Additionally, we ensured close and personalized follow-ups with each affected family, providing them with the necessary support to ensure their well-being and recovery.’
The statement claimed that no additional guests had shown symptoms since the initial wave of complaints, despite reports from sick guests on the Facebook group dating back to at least December and continuing through this week.
The statement added: ‘We are conducting a thorough review, but to date have found no evidence of contamination.’
Joel and his family arrived on the evening of Wednesday, February 12; the following day, they explored the resort, its pools and buffet options – but already feared something was awry.
‘Everywhere you went, you would just get hit with this raw sewage smell,’ he says. ‘It seemed to permeate the food, like it was just stuck with you the whole time.’
By Friday morning, they began hearing reports of illness from others who’d traveled for the wedding but attributed it to hangovers or the usual stomach upsets that often accompany travel abroad.
Then they began spotting obviously sick guests unaffiliated with their party and learning that the violent symptoms – such as intense diarrhea and vomiting – seemed widespread.
‘We started to see zombie people kind of just like green in the face wandering around,’ he says. ‘We saw this one teen girl that was leaned up against a post vomiting right in front of everybody.’
Hours later, after dinner and while putting their sons to bed, the symptoms hit their family.
‘My two-year-old was the first to get hit with it – violent projectile vomiting. He had never vomited before in his life,’ Joel says. ‘He was terrified. He didn’t know what was happening.
‘That [was] followed by three straight days of like acid diarrhea coming out of him every half an hour to hour … screaming, crying in pain.
Joel’s wife was ‘terrified.
‘We hear these stories of people dying on these trips, so she’s freaking out.’
Not long after the toddler got sick, Joel – who says he never suffers digestive distress – started feeling woozy and nauseous.
‘I lay down and pass out for like 16 hours straight,’ he says. His 58-year-old father ‘apparently was down for about 36 hours, as well.’
The bride and the groom were felled by the same vicious symptoms on Friday, ‘both up all night’ – prompting the postponement of Saturday’s scheduled wedding until the following day after much fraught negotiation about change fees.
The bride and other guests were treated by an off-site doctor who came to the resort and told them ‘he’s been back and forth to this resort for months, delivering a suitcase full of shots … and that he believed it was the water and we should stay away from anything that wasn’t sealed,’ he says.
Sheena Robinson, of British Columbia, arrived at Sandos Playacar last week with her husband and three children for the destination wedding of a family friend. Except for her 17-year-old daughter, who has a nut allergy and avoided the same foods and utensils, everyone became ill
Photographer Boily, pictured with his wife and their two sons, says: ‘If somebody is considering bringing their family there, saving money, sacrificing to have an amazing family vacation, planning your destination wedding … I want them to know the story and consider, why not choose a different resort who doesn’t have a history of this type of neglect?’
Sheena Robinson’s family only enjoyed one full day at the resort’s pool and beach before illness struck her family; her nine-year-old son, pictured, barely made it to the wedding they’d flown down for, holding a cup the entire time in case he vomited
On Saturday night, Joel’s wife got sick, suffering symptoms until the next morning – when she pumped herself full of medication to join him capturing the big day. Other sick guests were also attempting to power through and put on a brave face for the nuptials.
‘It was a bit of a dystopian view on that day … all that kind of typical wedding vibe was just replaced with everybody sharing how sick they were and how terrible this resort is,’ Joel says.
‘The wedding meals went untouched. Nobody ate them. Nobody was drinking and partying [like] you’d normally see at a wedding,’ he says.
‘At 3.24am on the night after that wedding, after carrying my two-year-old to the bathroom and he’s crying on the toilet, I decided: I’m doing everything I can,’ Joel tells DailyMail.com – so he started researching how to involve local health officials in the resort crisis.
Around the same time, back in Canada, another 32-strong wedding party was getting ready for their February 17 arrival at the resort.
Sheena Robinson, of British Columbia, had saved with her family for more than six months to attend the nuptials of a long-time family friend with her husband and their three children, ages 22, 17 and 9.
They arrived at the resort to find black mold and broken appliances in their rooms but spent the first full day exploring and enjoying the beach, pool and amenities.
Then, on the second day full of planned off-site excursions, ‘around 5am I woke up with severe nausea, and I was quickly running to the bathroom to throw up,’ she tells DailyMail.com.
‘And then right behind me, my husband was there knocking on the door, [yelling] “Get out, I need to use the washroom as well,”’ she says.
Her husband dressed and made it to the lobby before turning back for the planned men’s fishing trip; Sheena still hauled herself on a snorkeling excursion because she didn’t want her children to miss it.
‘Those 12 hours on that trip were the worst 12 hours of my life,’ says Sheena. ‘I struggled the whole time. I was throwing up in the ocean. I was throwing up in the boat’s bathroom.
‘At one point, I actually did jump into the Caribbean,’ she says. ‘I asked for a life jacket and I literally floated around in the ocean and threw up.’
Her oldest daughter started throwing up during the trip, too, as did a friend from Arizona – followed by ‘a domino effect’ on the hour-long bus ride back to the resort where ‘everyone just started to feel sick.’
Her 17-year-old daughter, who has a nut allergy and had neither eaten much food nor used the same restaurant utensils, was the only one of Sheena’s family to escape illness.
Compounding the misery was the inability to get help from staff, visitors complain; they say they were repeatedly told there was no problem at the resort, that visitors must all be sick with viruses brought from outside. Suffering and dehydrated guests were directed to the small resort store selling small bottles for $12 each. Most guests resorted to having food and drink delivered from outside.
But other necessities were denied sick guests, too, Sheena says.
‘At one point, we had no sheets on the bed, we had no clean towels, and all of our garbage cans were full of vomit,’ she says. ‘We called to have housekeeping come down, and it took them six hours.’
The wedding was the next day, on Thursday, February 20. Sheena’s nine-year-old nearly missed it but pushed himself to go, holding a cup the entire time in case he needed to vomit.
‘The groom did not attend one moment of the reception or cocktail hour,’ Sheena says. ‘I think there may have been about 15 or 20 people that kind of just popped in … we all felt like we had to try, even though we were feeling so sick.
‘Nobody really ate, no one drank. It was just a big waste of money and a big heartbreak for them.
In the days after the wedding, Sheena’s family and other guests watched as uniformed officials descended on the resort, restaurants were shut down and, unhelpfully, the water was sporadically turned off.
Joel Boily, with the help of AI, had relentlessly been pushing for outside investigation.
‘I did something funny that kind of led to all this – ChatGPT,’ he tells DailyMail.com, using the tool after he found it hard to google resources ‘in a foreign country.’
‘I explained, as I started writing, everything that’s happened and what can I do,’ he says. And ChatGPT ‘laid out a plan, showed me who the regulatory board is that would be responsible for doing something … it showed me how to file a complaint.
‘It showed me how to put the email together in Spanish. It showed me the emails I needed to send it to.’
After he’d left the resort – the week Sheena arrived – he and hundreds of other guests he’d mobilized sent those emails, and officials were on site within days.
‘We really hoped that there would be an inspection done with integrity,’ Joel says. ‘Although the inspection was done, it seems like early reports are that they are kind of just brushing it off.’
The Facebook group is also filled with anxious holidaymakers who’ve already booked trips to Sandos Playacar, asking others if conditions have changed; guests currently there and sick this week are offering each other help and swapping tips for how to get food and water delivered while complaining about long lines for medical attention.
Joel says there’s been talk of lawsuits or a class action, but he doesn’t have too much hope for that; he’s just incensed not only on behalf of his family but for the wedding couples who’ve had their celebrations ruined. He’d like to see those bereft newlyweds offered some type of recompense.
‘Not everybody is these wealthy people that go on vacation five times a year … you save money for these things and sacrifice and take your time off of work,’ he says. ‘This is a serious, negligent issue that affected real people who looked forward to this trip for years, months.
‘It’s all these stories of: I went there with my whole family, my parents and my siblings and their kids, and it was supposed to be this epic memory-making thing.’
He’s committed to holding the resort accountable in any way he can – even if that’s just posting honest reviews of the horrific experience.
‘This is my new hobby,’ he says.
‘Once a week, I will spend five minutes reminding everybody on every social media platform, my own national wedding platform in Canada, to make sure that a year down the line, two years down the line, if somebody is considering bringing their family there, saving money, sacrificing to have an amazing family vacation, planning your destination wedding … I want them to know the story.’
