We just spent a week at DRM, departing on Christmas Day. The short story is, we had an amazing time and we will return. The longer story is provided below, with some tips that might help out those who are following shortly in our footsteps - especially first timers.
I wont bore you with details about our travel to Cancun, customs, etc.
Check-in: We arrived around noon on the 18th. We were excited but tired and road-weary. Checkin was smooth and the staff was delightful. The next step, however, was to shift us over to another desk for info about the layout of the resort, etc, but quickly began to turn into a sales presentation with no indication of an end in sight. I tried very nicely to stop him and told him we were very tired and wanted to go to our room. He was a really sweet guy - I wont use his name here because we really like him - and I know its his job. OK - after 5 more minutes and no end in site we were both frustrated I just said "No Mas" and had to be more firm than I wished I had to be. He tried twice more during the week to get us to agree to a presentation, but by then other guests had told us they had been kept for and HOUR AND FORTY FIVE MINUTES. No way. Bottom line: Unless you think you might really be interested in a membership, reject the "extra information" desk and insist that your butler escort you to your room right away.
Room: We got the room we requested (2002) but quickly regretted it due to construction noise. The room was beautiful and perfectly located to the beach and everything else, but the construction next door continued and began to start earlier and end later each day. We were woken up twice at 7:30 AM by digging and landscaping, etc. Then, on day 3, they decided to pretty much rebuild CC's bar, which immediately outside our front door. Skill saws, hammering, loud conversations between the workers - ALL DAY. This problem was magnified by rain, which caused us to want to be in our room relaxing and having sex with the doors open - but which was spoiled by no stoppage of the work. And when it did rain too hard to work, the workers REMAINED in CCs bar, talking and joking around. Not the best atmosphere for a doors-open, sea-breezy good time. That was the final straw for us, and we asked to be moved - which the resort was able to do for us the next day. They were very nice about it and gave us no trouble. In fact, the room they moved us to (2214) was larger and nicer. We remained there for the rst of our stay and loved it. Not one hint of the construction noise was perceptible. Bottom line: If you are arriving at DRM anytime before about mid-January, I think your safest bet is to make sure your ocean view room is NOT in the 2000 block. I never heard anyone staying in a Garden View room say they had an issue with construction noise.
Staff: All wonderful - even the sales presentation guy - we genuinely loved them all.
Food: Just as we expected from all the reviews we read before arriving, the food at Desire is plentiful and good. It is not fine cuisine, so if you are expecting 4-star chefs and artistic plating, go ahead and check your expectations. We found ourselves most enjoying breakfasts, then a late lunch/snack, and then a late-nite taco or pizza at the lobby bar. We never found ourselves hungry enough to eat 3 full meals.
Beach: It is beautiful on the southern end, where the pool and volleyball courts are. On the northern end, where CC's bar and the beach pavilion is, it is noticeably eroding. The pilings under both CC's bar and the beach pavilion are eroding away. I'm not even sure why they are trying to rebuild the bar. There are places where you can see exposed sandbags and cement blocks where they have tried to shore things up. I don't mean to make this sound like a disaster area - it is not. Just want to give an honest report of what we saw. Regarding seaweed, we saw plenty of it, but there was a team out there raking and bagging it up each morning. NOT a job I'd want. Those guys work HARD. Seaweed was not a problem in our eyes. Overall, the beach became less of a focus for us as the days passed because the pool is gorgeous and where all the fun is. One last thing: We tried to take a nighttime walk on the beach, naked, because that sounded like a fun experience in our heads, but a Desire security guard chased us down and asked (begged) us to not do it because of "robbers." We very much appreciated him for rushing to make sure we remained safe, but its kind of a sad thing. NOTE: We were walking north, away from Desire's beach - NOT on Desire's beach. That would have been fine.
New Suites: As of Christmas Day, when we left, only one of the new suites was "done." Meaning they rushed a bunch of furniture into it and used it as a model for tours. The rest of the suites remained empty shells with lots of hurried work taking place. They clearly looked like they were in a bit of a panic mode to me. Work began to start earlier and go on later each day, it seemed. I tell you this so that, in case you are scheduled to be in one of the new suites anytime soon, you should REALLY quiz them hard about it and be prepared for a potential issue. I will say the infiniti pool and jaccuzzis look amazing.
Later, I'll come back and post about the daily routine we settled into that we found SO fun and enjoyable.
Cheers,
S and M