Day 0 Due to an inability to come up with a better Friday afternoon plan, we arrived at the airport several hours ahead of schedule. We did a bit of walking around, had a delicious fish and chips dinner at Anthony's, and then got ourselves settled in the United Club. The free booze was ok. The free cookies were quite good. The free electricity was a godsend. With devices fully charged, we boarded the 11PM redeye to Houston. We should have slept, but we watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier instead.
Day 1 We arrived in Houston at 4:45 AM CDT, 15 minutes before the United Club opened. Once the club opened, we found a quiet corner and got settled to wait for our 7:30AM flight to Cancun. I went up to the third floor of the club (it's a very large, very nice club) to have a hot shower and change clothes. My lovely wife took a 2 hour nap in her chair. At the appointed time, we boarded our flight, flew, and arrived in Cancun at 9:30AM.
We are used to arriving in Cancun on Saturday afternoon, so the total lack of lines for immigration, luggage, and customs at 9:30 on Saturday morning were a bit of a surprise. We breezed through the airport (even the time share drones weren't that aggressive at such an early hour) and quickly located the rep for our transfer to the resort. Since we always use a friend's membership weeks, we get the transfer as part of our package. Apparently the resort is now using All Do Tours for the transfer instead of TransBeach. Whatever. We waited about 10 minutes for the large, comfy Chevy Suburban to arrive and had a nice ride to Pearl, arriving before 11.
Our travel companion was already in the lobby waiting for us, having flown separately and arrived even earlier on the redeye from San Francisco. We checked in, got our black string bracelets, and were handed off to Emmanuel. We assumed - wrongly - that he was part of the butler staff. Actually, he was there to give us a very soft pitch for the coupon book and time share program. They want their members to switch to the new program, but they don't want to lose them by being too pushy. We said we'd think about it. He left us with a packet of info and we spent some time talking to our travel companion. Just before noon, Carlos - an actual butler - told us our room was ready.
Carlos grabbed our bags and led us to room 20, which was the room we requested. It's a ground-floor master suite with a plunge pool and 2 queen beds. Carlos gave is the welcome packed we were expecting from Emmanuel with our coupons for two 25 minute relaxing massages and a lobster dinner (hooray for Premiere). He did a very good job of making us feel welcome and answering all of our questions. He even called housekeeping to ensure we had 3 of everything they normally give you 2 of because we have three in the room.
We unpacked, chose bathrooms (I get the huge master bath that has a shower built for 12, the girls get the front bathroom because it has the tub), and got changed for lunch. We grabbed a table on the beach and had lunch from the small buffet they had set up. The food was ok, not great. Jared, the beach concierge came over and got us set up with three chairs under a big umbrella which are now ours for the week.
2:00 rolled around and the foam party started. We watched from the sidelines, but didn't jump in. Before the foam party was half over, everyone had migrated out of the foam to do shots at the pool bar. We wandered over to the now-open hot tub and got to know Fabian, the bartender. We ran into some friends from our last trip to RM (they bought a membership because of us and had been hoping they'd see us again so they could say thanks) and made some new friends. There was a bit of PDA/PDS going on around the hot tub, but not more than we're used to seeing at RM.
As 5:00 approached, we went back to the room to clean up and think about dinner. Unfortunately, the lack of sleep and abundance of alcohol caught up with me and I crashed hard, as did our traveling companion. My poor wife had to dine alone at Aphrodite. Now it's 7:30AM on Sunday. I'm fresh and well-rested, my wife - having gone to bed at a decent hour - is sleeping like a normal person who's still on PDT, and our traveling companion is in her bed sleeping the sleep of "how much did I drink last night?" I'm sure it will be bacon-and-coffee time soon.
Also, I should add that while we were told that wi-fi reception in the rooms may not be so great due to the thick concrete walls, I'm not having any problems connecting.
