Where should we tell the grandparents we're staying?

[tropez]

They are pretty conservative and will have our kiddos so we need to keep the real name on the down low.

[oldseadog]

We get round this problem by saying "times are hard in Mexico, folk are not vacationing as much as they used to, resorts are not full and are happy to take customers off the street. So we are just going to hire a car, drive around and stay where we end up that day; and maybe stay a few nights if we like it." But you need to have memory lapses about resort names. And the real problem comes if you say, for example, "We stayed at Azul", (when you didn't), and your friend down the street says "We were there then, we didn't see you".
For communication, we switch on the mobile phone every day for a while and if something urgent has happened, there will be a text saying "please phone me". Remember in dire emergency there are scheduled flights every day back to USA or Canada (and indeed Europe most days) if you have to get home fast.
Or you can leave at home the Desire dedicated "vanilla" phone number which is answered with the name of the company so gives nothing away. You can get this number from the resort only by asking for it and identifying yourself.

[swspice]

oldeadog has some excellent suggestions. We'd add a couple of things to consider. We have Blackberry cell phones, and tuned them on and checked our email several times each day, and the data charge for 8 days was less than $3.00 total. We told all our family that was the best way to reach us. Also, the "family friendly number" is a great idea, but you also need to realize it is not totally anonymous. We simply googled the phone number and it brought up four references to Desire Resort, so any inquiring minds can easily find out the resort name, if they are so inclined... Yikes!!!

[tout.prest]

Tis true that the family phone # isn't perfect. They will answer the phone as "Good morning, Original resorts"'and a quick search on any search engine will inevitably bring up Desire as one of the resorts in the original chain (along with temptations, which our friends already think is the main lifestyle resort in the world . Ahhh, if only they knew...ha ha )'

Our preference,which has always worked great, is always to use the wi-fi and stay connected with our kids via email. that way they can send us a note when THEY want, and we can reply when WE want, as apposed to having to leave the hotub early to make phone calls. That way work can also contact me in an EMERGENCY, cause I refuse to carry around my blackberry while i'm naked !!!

If anyone asks this year, we are staying at the Secrets Excellence down the beach.

Steve

[tropez]

My wife is using Excellence as our front as well. She is so cool.

[allstatemd]

We use Excellence as well...will be our 3rd time using the same story in the past 14 months...and never pictures to share with our vanilla friends or family...oops!

[Rusty]

It's funny I had to fill in some paper work this week about where I would be for our trip, So I did use Original resort Cancun, and looking at Google this gives you a couple of resorts in Cancun. So hopefully no one will be the wiser, But I don't feel like I’ve told an untruth either and yes we use our email and Skype, but being from down under we have the added bonus of the time change make email a much more attractive option when trying to contacts us. If we got catch out I guess we could say we got bumped (moved between resorts) from the family resort because we had no kids with us (this kind of makes sense because everybody knows Desire is the place that reminds you where they come from in the first place, not that we need a lot of practice or anything)

[Powderfinger]

We just "stay" at the Azul, their beach is pretty much dead in the morning and we've gone over and taken some "proof" pics....if someone needs to contact us, Verizon works fine.....and I can sit at the pool and keep track of football and hoops scores, lol......

[tout.prest]

We have pic's from when we "stayed at Azul" as well. Great resort we say.....with awesome amenities .

Steve

[ej]

What is the family-friendly number? We'll be there in a couple of weeks and, even though we have our cell phones and email, I'd still like to have a local number to leave the family.

[FloridaFun]

I was just going to tell my family that I'm staying at my friend's timeshare condo in Cancun...Royal something...

[CokeMann]

What is the family-friendly number? We'll be there in a couple of weeks and, even though we have our cell phones and email, I'd still like to have a local number to leave the family.

Always check the FAQ section, most of these types of questions have been answered before
http://desireresorts.19.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=454&sid=42e15a8400ecc1f1ead17fef5482823c