Desire Resort Forums

Just returning from our umteenth trip to DRM. (Have also been to Pearl and Cabo [RIP] in the past.) For the first time in over 10 years going to Desire, we feel we saw a real decline in the resort, especially the food. I know, I know, no one goes to Desire for the food. Sahlo and Suki were up to past standards (tho still kinda slow and drawn out), but the main buffet and the lunch buffet were in decline IMO. Other friends who were there just ahead of our trip dates have written us and reported the same. We had lobster several times, which was perfect on a couple occasions and not so on the others. The flounder, salmon, and shrimp "curry" were great (tho we and others with us didn't taste any curry).

Breakfast is still awesome as far as Matilda's omelets and the variety of fresh fruits, and how can anyone f*ckup bacon, but the majority of buffet items were lacking in quality. Most of these buffet items were not kept hot enough on the serving table (which should be a concern) and some items appeared to be left-over food from the previous night, which is OK and obviously cost-effective, but it shouldn't seem old and dried out.

Such was the case with the lunch buffet items too. Worst of all---- they have quit serving made-in-house guacamole. The pre-packaged stuff (confirmed by staff members who seemed embarrassed about it) is like you'd get in a low-end Mexican chain restaurant in the States. The sliced beef, pork, and chicken dishes in gravies or sauces would be rejected by McDonalds as too tough to grind for burger. I saw fresh tuna being offered one time, which I think was on Caribbean Night in the main buffet. (The last time we were at Temptation two years ago, there was fresh tuna and salmon every day for lunch.) We were told there has been a rotation in chefs and I suspect it's to improve/boost things at Pearl, which seems to be "floundering". (We say we've been to Pearl twice -- first time and last time.) NONE of this is deal-breaker. We LOVE Desire. It is, however, a "concern".

I think this is the highest turn-over in staff that we've seen. We were just there in August, and while the bartender staff seemed consistent, many of the waiters are new. Leo is still there of course, and the absolute best. This man is OCD. It's a challenge to get your coffee cup empty and the 1/2 pack of sugar from the last cup disappears before the refill as Leo whisks it away when you're not looking. He should definitely be training the new staff.

ALL but TWO of the entertainment crew members are new. Anna has been there 2 years, and Didi is now there 1 year. This is obviously hard work and subject to burnout. They are getting more time off (1 full day and 2 additional nights) which is helping morale, but we have seen some incredible entertainment people move on and hopefully it was for better opportunities rather than poor pay or working conditions at Desire. We customarily have not tipped the entertainment crew, but this year we decided we should start doing so. They are an important part in making our trips special.

This is the first time we have seen shot glasses used in making drinks (just on our last few days on site). We got the impression this is a new policy. It wasn't new, inexperienced bartenders. Perhaps someone can confirm if it is still the case? Is this to make drinks consistent? Or, has it been implemented for cost-cutting purposes? We've never had any complaint about the drink quality or the booze selection. Still don't. Just curious about this.

Again, nothing that is a deal-breaker, but enough to cause us to raise eyebrows. We were booked for Desire Cabo when it closed "overnight". Lots of folks got "burned" on their airfare when that happened, even though they were offered to move their reservations to Cancun. We also were fans of Superclubs (Jamaica) -- Hedo III, GLBraco, BreezesRB (Hedo Lite) -- and saw them all close within about a year. These are some of the things that prevented me from "investing" in the membership program for over 10 years and over a dozen trips to Desire. It is definitely a concern in my decision in not "upgrading" and dropping (investing) another $20K. We see lots more sales people for the membership sales pitch, and we see many more guests with gold armbands. We sat for the upgrade spiel and it was said that there might be some changes in policy towards the "old" membership. THAT was a big concern as we have already felt that some things are not as was promised in our original presentation. (Yes, read the fine print.)

An annual Disney World trip for the grandkids seems to be crowding out one of our Desire trips lately, but we will without doubt be booking for next December to see all of our Desire Friends again, and most likely at least one other trip prior to that. We'll be watching to see if this trend (that we think we see) continues or if Management fixes any problems that there are. Very curious if we are in the minority in this observation, or if other frequent Desire guests see it too?

On our trip back in October we noticed some of the things you mentioned. The guacamole thing was noticed by a lot of people, bad guac in Mexico is a cardinal sin. As with you it's not deal breaker or anything but does make you wonder what the deal is. At a time where they are trying to expand this is the one area where it would seem most important not only to not decline but to find ways to be even better. Their product is fairly high end price wise when compared to normal resorts, and despite having things that few other resorts offer people do still care about service and amenities.

Some of your comments are certainly cause for concern. We hope everyone with these specific complaints and concerns notes them on their exit survey. In addition, emails to customer service are in order. Writing about these things on here doesn't really help, as this is not an official site set up by Original Resorts.
Bad Gauc will make us VERY unhappy, as will consistent B or C level food items, in general. We know it's not The Four Seasons, but we do expect that the things that convinced us to become members (including good quality food) don't go too far downhill!

Our first trip will be in June of this year and we are super excited...however...my wife needs good guac when in Mexico. That's been her favorite thing on our last two "vanilla" trips to Mexico and if we go here and she has less than stellar guac...pretty sure I'll be in trouble...

I hope they go back to making it fresh.

Mrs Tommer loves her guac and in the past, she has been very happy with it at both RM and Pearl. In fact, she eats it with every meal. Likewise, we have found the food to be very good and I hope that other current visitors will comment/confirm. Our next visit to RM will be in March and we will plan to do a quick trip report; one addressing the anticipated great time we will have, the terrific drinks/entertainment, and the wonderful food ...... Yes > Guac! Cheers!

brewandsue wrote:Some of your comments are certainly cause for concern. We hope everyone with these specific complaints and concerns notes them on their exit survey. In addition, emails to customer service are in order. Writing about these things on here doesn't really help, as this is not an official site set up by Original Resorts.
Bad Gauc will make us VERY unhappy, as will consistent B or C level food items, in general. We know it's not The Four Seasons, but we do expect that the things that convinced us to become members (including good quality food) don't go too far downhill!

We did note these issues in our comments (on the iPad) while checking out, and we did share them with some of (middle) management, and most importantly I think, we told the membership managers that we would NOT dare invest more in the company with the downtrend that we see happening. We are very concerned because of what we saw suddenly happen to Desire Cabo (which was our favorite). We are very concerned about the massive turnover in staff. The staff, who is there day-in and day-out, sees things happening long before even frequent guests can see it.

If Desire Management does not monitory this site, well then . . . . . that' s just another example of stupid f**king management!! There is no more comprehensive site on the internet about Desire than this one! (I'd really like to think they are NOT that stupid!

We are there now. Although there have been some changes since our last visit, overall things are as wonderful as in the past. As to the Guac, I don't use it but wife does and she seemed to enjoy when she had the other day.

Breakthrough wrote:Man... we just couldn't disagree more with the commentary on the food. I'm a trained chef, and we felt like our trip in November was absolutely the best food we've had to date at DRM. Admittedly, we didn't have any of the guac, but overall we felt the food was MUCH improved over previous trips.

Someone mentioned while we were there that the F&B guy from Pearl had taken over for a couple weeks... maybe it was just a fluke while we were there?

Interesting. I wonder what the baseline is - was the food on previous trips especially bad or was this one time much better (ie did you have bad luck before or good luck this time). For us, over 4 trips starting Sept of 2016 through October 2017 the food was pretty much the same (other than the guac, that was a major downgrade this past October). For context, I will say we rarely eat at the hibachi or other place (can't even remember the name), mainly its the buffet for breakfast, pool area for lunch, buffet for dinner, lobby bar for late night.

We noticed a definite down turn in the quality of service on our last trip Sept 2017. Not enough to drive us away as we have already booked 2 trips to RM in 2018.
The Guac and a few other of our past favorite food items seemed to have slipped in quality but for the most part the food was still good. The biggest thing we noticed was all the turnover in staff. All the long time staff members still provided the great service as in the past. There were several days with full occupancy where the bars were staffed with all new people that didn't seem to really care about providing the level of service that was the standard in the past and frankly the service that one would expect from a $500 a night resort.

We also had some issues with the room and the management honestly treated us like we were an inconvenience to them. My wife finally got frustrated with the issues not being corrected and went to the lobby and had a BF. We literally had no room for 4 hours one day and no access to our luggage. We have never had problems in the past and and all the employees in the past went out of their way to make sure everything was perfect. We are really hoping this was a one time slip up and that they are just working thru a transition and things get back to the Desire of the past soon.

Breakthrough wrote:We do eat at Suki and Sahlo almost exclusively, and only at the buffet for lunch...

That's probably a big difference there, I think we've eaten at Sahlo once and Suki twice so not much really to go on.

we're never awake in time for breakfast ... something about generally going to bed while the sun comes up does that.

Yeah, I think our normal breakfast time is between 11-12.

As for the overall staff quality, there's a lot of familiar faces who we love, but we have to echo that we NEVER struggled to get service at the jacuzzi bar in past visits and almost consistently did this trip, and noticed others with the same issue. There were new faces, so we chalked it up to inexperience - we'll see how things have changed in March!

There were times at the jacuzzi bar where it took a while to get a drink, but it was busy too, and the bartenders were going non stop. Just felt like a regular bar honestly. What kind of struggles did you have?

Hopefully the avocado shortage is over now!!! I like my quacamole fresh

http://time.com/money/4761367/avocado-p ... alifornia/

We do eat at Suki and Sahlo almost exclusively,

You'll note that I said that Suki and Sahlo were up to the same standards as in the past (other than no curry in the Curry Shrimp and Curry Chicken). In the past I typically have not wanted to take the time involved to eat at Suki and Sahlo more than once each (Desire Time is too precious), but we did so more frequently on this trip because the buffet was so disappointing.

Thanks for the article on the avocado shortage. Hopefully a new crop will enable the resort to go back to fresh made quac.

Lol! Yah, the guacamole was a big deal for us too! The wife here makes her own, and I believe it to be the best I'd ever had.......until DRM. Even she was infatuated with it, it was soooooo good. It was the first thing she noticed on one of our trips this past year hopefully they'll get it back for our next!

If you asked for them to make you some Guac fresh I wonder if they would be able to or just serve you what they have? That is one of those things that we think is just better "on location"

When we were at RM over Halloween we found the guacamole to be sub par with way too much onion for our tastes. When the guac is good at RM we will have it with every meal if possible.

I mentioned this to Edilberto one day at lunch when he saw our uneaten (again) guacamole on our plates. The next day at lunch a peeled sliced avocado was presented to Diane as we ate. As we were enjoying it the reaction from several staff was as if it was GOLD. ??? We had no idea that the overall guacamole/avocado situation was as it was until reading this thread.

Hopefully the avocado situation has improved so that we can enjoy in house guac at RM once again. I'll review it after our February trip.

Ritch