We arrived Sunday afternoon, travel through the airport was almost a breeze, paid for the RT shuttle through Desire via Transbeach. Misread the comments and almost got suckerd by the Timeshares people. There was a rep. from Transbeach outside, but, unlike what we were told, his sign didn't have our name on it, even his sign and TRANSBEACH logo on his shirt we missed the first two times we looked. Once we met up with him, it was smooth from there to the resort. After driving from the airport to the resort and back, I will never again complain drivers in the U.S. Coming from the airport to 307, around the cloverleaf, apparently STOP SIGNS and mirrors are optional in Mexico. He braked, barely, for the cloverleaf, but was accelerating and upshift through the STOP SIGN. Lovely Policia checkpoint right there, no one cared, but I'm sure the honking horns were obvious. Shuttle driver was very cool though, pointed things out to us, especially the "lake" in front of Desire and the lovely warning signs regarding the "pets". The shuttle driver on the way back to the airport, well, he's another story......I found religion.
Arcos greeting at the door was great, very pleasent and helpful. Check-in was quick and smooth, we were being shown our room within 20 minutes of getting off the shuttle. Probably the only hitch was an email I recieved late the night before claiming I wasn't paid in full and had only paid the deposit. We learned later it was a problem with their system, as I also got the same email on Monday after we had already checked in. They quickly cleared it up.
We spent Sunday night being wallflowers, wandered the resort, spent some time watching the goings on in the hot tub. Had a nice dinners, hung out at the 24 hr bar, but retired early.
Sadly, Monday kinda ruined things for us. We both got horrible Sunburn on the beach, combination of not enough sunscreen, not applied often enough, and not prepared for it. It was a gorgeous day, low 80's not a cloud in the sky. Tuesday was partly cloudy, but still an overall great day, but alas the Sunburn from the previous day put a damper on things. Weds. and Thurs. were ruined by the weather, intermittant rain on Weds. and Thursday, with the rain on Thursday being some of the hardest they had seen in some time.
I must say, the activities staff: Vanessa and Carla (i'm in love with both of you), Jesus, Alberto, and Black Magic are all great people and really tried hard to keep things going, especially despite the rain on Weds. and Thursday. All are great outgoing people, really friendly and nice, you can tell they enjoy what they do. Rainy day Jenga was interesting
.The nightly entertainment was fun, the bands were different and while entertaining, was also good for a bit of a laugh at times. The disco music and entertainment was great.
The food and food choices was great, breakfast was great everyday, no complaints at all, the choices were good, filling, and tasty. We did dinner in the buffet and the Italian resturant, both were very good, again good choices, good quality, good portions. Really enjoyed it, three days in a row we had Elvis as a waiter for dinner, super nice guy, very attentive.
I give kudos to housekeeping, while her arrival time changed every day, everything was spotless and taken care of. Even going so far as to press and fold some slacks I left laying out and had forgotten to put away. The towel animals were cute. I've read a couple of different places about problems with theft, never once did we feel like this was an issue. The safe worked and worked well. My wife and I both had prescription medications that we left sitting out, they were never messed with, if anything they were always put in the same place and stack up and tucked away by housekeeping. Accidently left a some cash laying out by the tv after coming back from the Logo shop, it was right where I left it, you could see she cleaned around it and never touched it. Even our electronics that were left sitting out were never touched. Never felt like anything was in danger of being stolen.
Definetly a very international crowd, Americans and Canadians were they main crowd. There were at least two couples from UK, 3 from Germany, 2 from Russia and 1 from So. Africa. The resort was maybe 60% full, which irritated me when I asked for a late checkout on Friday and was told they full and needed to really turn things over quickly. The building we were in, of the 8 rooms, only 3 were occupied the entire time we were there.
Now, some downsides:
If this is what they call remodels, they need help and help bad. The bedroom was clean, well kept, everything was in very good condition. The bathroom, that's another story. The toilet backed up Sunday night/Monday morning and again on Weds. morning. Wouldn't stop running several times, and the handle fell off three times, including once after they replaced the assembly. Tuesday night I tried to open the window in the bathroom, first crank of the handle and one hinge came out of the building and the whole thing dropped to one side. Called the front desk, Maintanance was there promptly, and spent a little over an hr fixing it. It still wasn't 100%, wouldn't latch closed, but it was now secured and wouldn't come loose. The glass shower door really concerned both of us, the screws holding it to the surround were half out of the tile and it wobbled. I showed it to maintanance, he tried to tighten the screws but it appeared they were stripped out. Bordering on a dangerous situation, if we were going to be there longer than we were I would have requested a different room, and will keep this in mind for the future. Also, the vanity was interesting, obviously the hole was cut for a larger sink, so they filled it in with a shim of wood and a lot of caulking. The door to our room was warped at the bottom, the last 8" of the door did not close tight to the other door, and there was also a slight gap at the bottom (found that out Thursday from the hard rain).
I agree the hot tub wasn't very hot, we spent an hr in it Monday afternoon and it was luke warm at best. Again on Weds. evening we spent an hr or so in it with a pretty packed crowd, in the rain, again luke warm at best.
My final and biggest gripe, the HARD SELL for the vacation package program. Just like when it comes to being respectful of others, NO MEANS NO!!! We weren't interested and couldn't afford it, but they kept pressing it. Yes, there are some people who were obviously part of it, gold bands, but it didn't make sense and wasn't worth it for us. Had to tell them 5 times that we weren't interested and they still kept at it.
Talking about it on the flight home we will probably go back next year, same time, but perhaps for longer than 5 nights.
