Our vacation was May 3-10 and was our first family vacation with a 3 and 4 yr old. I really could not have asked for a better vacation! The hotel was beautiful and the staff mostly friendly (they love kids!). The pools were great - some loud, and some quieter. The beach was incredible. The food was good - especially the Asian. Here are some tips I would have liked to known before I went:
1. Mosquitos are BAD on the first floor. We were in 2164 and we should have been alerted to the problem when we saw all the guts splattered on the wall. The kids were eaten alive the first night. We killed all the mosquitos and they just keep coming. I think they come from the vents.
2. The rooms that face outwards from the hotel face a 30 ft black mesh wall and a walkway that the staff uses. Not pretty.
3. If you want an alcoholic drink you have to ask for the booze.
4. There are no adults allowed in the kids club and it's surrounded by an 8ft wall (... we weren't comfortable with leaving our kids here due to that)
5. There is no chair issue and no reason to worry.
6. There are lots of places for all to sit, eat, drink, be merry, and be entertained. In the courtyard, they play kids movies on the big screen every couple of nights which we really appreciated.
7. Open concept bathrooms - we had a door on our bathroom, and glass doors on the toilet, shower.... and then a 2ft tall by 8ft wide gap over the mirror - so although you couldn't see anything, you could hear it. I don't know what the point of that was.
8. Two restaurants are closed each night.
9. The restaurant pagers don't work in your room... you can't get your pager and go back to your room. If you get to the restaurant before 7pm you can usually get a table right away.
10. Blue wristbands... over the weekend of the 3rd, there were a bunch of "locals" in the hotel (not sure if this is every weekend, or for the slower period, employee discount or even Cinqo de Mayo) but the hotel was overbooked, kids were trying to take your stuff and people were cutting in lines. It was annoying. Magically it disappeared Sunday afternoon.
Ultimately we had a great vacation. We got just what we wanted - a week of fun with our kids, in a safe place. The bugs are the only reason we will not return to the area. We actually brought a mosquito net with us "just in case" and we all slept under it - the kids thought it was great to sleep in a tent. Had we known that other floors had less bugs, we would have moved.





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