What was decided, and what it beat. Newest first.
Confirmed 18 October 2026. Reservation for 29 December to 3 January, six adults. $3,836.93 all in, which is $634.20 a night for five nights plus $665.91 of tax, or $639.49 each split six ways. Paid $1,585.51 on booking with $2,251.42 auto-charging on 14 December. The confirmation code, street address and host contact are in the gitignored private/ folder.
Two things the confirmation changed.
The rate had risen about 29 percent since the quote. On 12 October the same dates at six guests quoted $2,944 all in. Six days later it booked at $3,836.93, $893 more, or $148 more per person than every figure this repo carried. The receipt works out to $634.20 a night before tax against roughly $490 implied by the earlier quote. Holiday inventory tightening is the likely cause and it is not verifiable after the fact. Mexico City per person went from $1,602 to $1,750, the full trip to $5,024.
There are quiet hours, 22:00 to 08:00. This was never in the listing's rules summary and appeared only on the confirmation. The New Year's Eve plan puts midnight on the rooftop, which is inside that window, and the property has exterior security cameras. That plan is provisional until Manuel agrees in writing, which is now a dated task. It is the one thing the Oasis genuinely did better: it had no quiet hours at all, and that was listed as a reason for choosing it back in September.
What it beat: the 4BRM Coolest flat in Heart of Condesa at $760 each, and a field of cheaper options down to $307 each. Casa KM won on four en-suite bathrooms, a private rooftop and 4.99 from 139 reviews, not on price.
Changed 12 October 2026. One half of one couple dropped. The shape is now two couples and two singles in the accommodation, six people, plus a seventh who books their own hotel. Seven in the city for dinners, the balloon and the flights.
Three consequences, in order of how much they cost:
Pujol's private room is no longer viable as planned. It carries a minimum of eight tasting menus at MX$3,795 each. At seven we either pay for an eighth cover nobody eats, about $223 wasted, or give up the private room. Em takes parties of 3 to 8, so it fits seven with no minimum to pad, and it is now the cleaner booking. See the birthday dinner options.
Casa KM got more expensive per head, not less. Re-quoted at 6 guests the whole flat fell only $111, from $3,055 to $2,944, while the split lost a head. Per person went $436 to $491. This is the same per-unit arithmetic that pushed the Oasis from $483 each at ten guests to $913 at four: shrinking the group raises the lodging line. Mexico City per person lands back at exactly $1,602, the same figure it held when the trip was eight people in the Oasis.
The bed configuration constraint loosened, which reopens cheaper options. Three couples plus one single required three double beds in three separate rooms. Two couples plus two singles needs only two double beds, because the singles will take any room with any bed. Listings previously rejected for having twin-bed rooms now qualify. Re-searching at six found several that undercut Casa KM sharply, the cheapest a four bedroom, three bathroom flat in Anzures at $307 each with 4.86 from 187 reviews, against Casa KM's $491. Casa KM is still the pick on bathrooms and review record; it is no longer the pick on price.
Resolved 19 October: the beach leg stays at six. The person who dropped was one of those flying home after Mexico City rather than a beach traveller, so every Riviera Maya figure stands and The Fives residence still splits six ways. The knock-on is that only one person now leaves after Mexico City instead of two, which halves the group that needs the cheaper 3 January connection out of MEX.
Partly superseded, see the entries above. The choice of Casa KM stands and it is now booked. The prices below were quoted at 7 sharing; the actual booked figures are $3,836.93 and $639.49 each at 6 sharing.
Decided 12 October 2026, reversing the Oasis. Headcount settled at three couples plus one single. An eighth traveller is in Mexico City but books their own hotel, so the house splits 7 ways while dinners, flights and the balloon stay sized for 8. Pujol's eight tasting menu minimum is therefore still met.
The Oasis was dropped on its own reviews, not on price. Guests report no windows in most bedrooms and "very little airflow unless you leave your room door open", musty bedding that one guest said left them unable to rest, visible mold on some bedroom ceilings, and an occasional sewage smell in the lower common area. A separate review notes "there is no real kitchen appliances to use", which the New Year's Eve plan depends on. At 7 guests it also repriced to $3,996, or $571 each, making it the most expensive option considered.
Casa KM is $3,055, $436 each: four bedrooms each with its own full bathroom, a private rooftop with a grill, balconies off three of the four bedrooms, and 4.99 from 139 reviews. Bedroom 4 is described by the host as best suited to one guest, which fits the single traveller exactly. Capacity is a hard 7.
Searched Roma Norte again under a tight map box rather than the keyword, which had been pulling in Condesa and Polanco. Inside Roma Norte proper nothing competes: the places with enough bathrooms run $699 to $773 each, the affordable ones have two bathrooms or split the group across two units, and the one cheap outlier publishes no bed configuration and has no reviews.
One alternative stays on the table: the Coolest flat in Condesa at $4,724, $675 each. Longest review record of anything checked, 4.85 from 193, and a three minute walk to Em. It gives up a bathroom each and the rooftop, and its fourth bedroom is reached through a separate door off the building hallway, which would fall to the single traveller.
Decided. Mexico City for New Year's Eve and the birthday, then Puerto Morelos to decompress. Both anchors happen in the city, so the beach leg carries no scheduling pressure.
Decided, against the price. The Fives Beach Hotel and Residences priced lower, at $6,434 for the whole unit all-inclusive for a true 3BR with 3 baths, and it had 3BR inventory for the exact dates while the Oceanfront's 3BR was sold out. Chose the Oceanfront anyway for the boutique character and the walkable village. Worth knowing the decision cost money rather than saved it.
Decided, and the dates are load bearing. The Fives runs a holiday rate band from 24 December 2026 to 2 January 2027, with the next band starting exactly 3 January. The identical unit is $7,895 for 29 December to 3 January versus $4,990 for 3 to 8 January, both whole-unit prices. A stay that includes 2 January has no all-inclusive board available at all.
Superseded 12 October 2026 by Casa KM, see the entry at the top. Recorded because the reasoning below still holds on bed configuration, and because the lodging correction it contains is worth keeping.
Decided at the time. The bed configuration was the binding constraint: three couples plus two singles who need separate rooms. Every Roma Norte and Condesa boutique offers a single king, which forces five rooms and adds roughly $375 to $440 each.
The Oasis solves it with six bedrooms and one spare, adds a private rooftop for midnight, has no quiet hours, and costs $491 each, $3,927 for the whole house.
It also corrected a much larger error. An earlier pass had quoted $1,790 to $2,340 each for Mexico City lodging. Colima 71's own direct rate for an ordinary week in February 2027 back-solves to about the same per-room-night as its New Year quote, and Roma Norte hotels were running active discounts into the holiday window. Nobody discounts into a demand spike. The genuine holiday premium is 0 to 20 percent, not the 10x the quote implied. The rest was the decision to buy five boutique rooms at roughly $572 a night.
Decided, against a stated preference. The group wanted early-to-mid afternoon departures. On DTW to MEX that is impossible: the route is 4h50 nonstop and 7 to 8 hours connecting, so every afternoon departure lands between 21:50 and 01:15. Flying out 28 December instead does not fix it and adds a night.
29 December is one of only two free evenings in Mexico City. Trading it for $728 each is a poor deal on a trip already spending $223 a head on one dinner. One 6 AM alarm across ten days.
Corrected. The original Google Flights search returned CUN to DTW on 7 January, which is a four night beach stay. 8 January costs the same $493 on two of the three flights, so fly the 8th and keep the fifth night.
Decided. Krysta asked for a day of just eating at taco trucks. 1 January is the only otherwise-free day and it is the worst possible choice, because many places close after lunch on the 31st and do not reopen until the 2nd.
30 December works, and swapping the guided Sabores tour for a self-guided crawl saves about $115 each and is closer to the actual request. It also keeps 29 December free for Ling Ling, which matters because 29 December is the only open upscale slot in the week.
Ryan's call. Sunrise balloon over Teotihuacan on the birthday itself, or skip it.
That decision makes the weather terms critical, because 2 January has no rebooking slot: on the 3rd the group flies at 13:55 and a balloon day does not return until about 14:00.
The day it sits on is laid out on the itinerary. Volare is the operator, chosen specifically for one published sentence: weather cancellations may be rescheduled or cancelled with no extra fee. WE FLY publishes no refund terms at all and Sky Balloons publishes no cancellation policy and appears to require self-transport to their airport for a 6 AM appointment. Volare's family private basket is MX$3,600 per person, takes 2 to 16, includes hotel pickup, and cancels free to 48 hours.
Side benefit: the package includes Teotihuacan entry, which closes a gap the itinerary could not otherwise fit.
Approach decided, orders not placed. A potluck pickup run, with a private chef as the zero-effort fallback. The gala is demoted.
Driven by the street closures rather than by cost: Reforma shuts in both directions, the free party draws about 250,000, and midnight is already on the Oasis rooftop. A restaurant forces a choice between leaving dinner early and missing midnight. See the New Year's Eve options.
Settled 2 October 2026. It caps at 6 in the main dining room and 1 to 3 at the kitchen counter, and it explicitly asks guests not to book multiple tables intending to be seated together. Earlier notes had this as disputed because every scrape of its Tock page returned a Cloudflare interstitial. It is not disputed.
Settled 2 October 2026. Two research passes had contradicted each other on this, and the gross-up won. It was wrong.
The rate-selection page prints the breakdown directly: subtotal $3,739, VAT 21% $785, total $4,525, taxes included. Every beach figure that had been grossed up by 21% was overstated by about 17%, roughly $250 each on the lodging line.
Worth remembering why the error survived: a Booking.com figure agreed with the grossed-up total to within 0.8 percent, which looked like independent corroboration. It was not. The arithmetic was fine and the interpretation was wrong, and matching numbers cannot tell those apart.
Recommended, not locked. At the current 32 percent discount, all-inclusive is $84.30 per adult per night, so full board costs only $98 more each than room-only plus eating in the village. That gap used to be $239 each.
Break-even is about $19.57 per adult per day, roughly two resort cocktails. The full arithmetic is on the costs page. Room-only still wins on the merits, because the village is a 16 minute walk with 19 restaurants inside a kilometre and the resort has three on-site venues with documented closure problems. But it is close enough now that the group should be asked rather than told.