3 years ago
Pros:
Pros:
- extremely friendly staff
- beautiful views from (most) rooms, the terrace, and the beach
- excellent food with dinners from a rotating list of countries and enough variety to ensure that there's something for everyone
- lovely design with modern amenities held within (what I feel to be) contemporary Central American architecture. (We didn't fly all the way down just to stay at a carbon copy of the Hilton that's 15 minutes from my house.)
- all the things you'd expect to find at a resort - 2 pools (1 with a swim-up bar), a variety of eating options, etc.
Cons:
- it may seem like a minor thing when reading this at home, but it drove us crazy when we were actually there: pretty much everything shuts down at 5pm SHARP, most annoyingly is the towel desk. As with some other resorts, pool and beach towels need to be checked out under your room number so they can bill you if they aren't returned (that's fair enough). However, this means you MUST go to the towel desk to get a towel. There's just no other way (unless you packed your own). So, if you're coming back from an excursion at 5:01 and would like to cool off in a pool or the ocean, you're going to have to air dry. Same with returning towels - if you're coming back from the beach at 5:01, you have to keep your wet towels in your room until the morning. Not the end of the world, but something that should be easy for the resort to improve in future. Same goes for the snack bar - best not to need anything to munch on between 5:00 when they stop serving food and 6:30 when dinner starts.
- There's a long list of activities available on the resort's website, but what the site doesn't mention is that many (if not most) of these are run only on their schedule, likely for insurance purposes so tourists don't do something stupid and lose a limb somehow. This includes archery, snorkeling, kayaking, a number of the other sports available (though I think the tennis and volleyball courts could be used at-will), etc. Again, not a major point, but a bit on the annoying side as there was only one day that we were available at the allotted "snorkeling" time and not once could make our schedules sync up with a kayaking tour.
- Some may disagree with me, but I'm the one writing the review so... deal with it, I guess. There are daily games and dances (exercise?) that happen mid-to-late afternoon at the main pool. In order to run these games, they crank up the (fairly impressive) sound system at the pool. This means at 3 - 5pm (depending on the day as the schedule changes), there's a glorious amount of noise coming from the dead centre of the compound with either bingo numbers or the exact same half-hour music loop (which I think I now have memorized). Thankfully it's pretty quiet at the beach, but it's annoying background noise everywhere else. Less volume or an alternate location for these events would, in my opinion, be a great improvement. (The dance/exercise portion isn't exactly well-attended, though people do appear to enjoy the bingo.)
Items of Note (just FYIs - not a reflection on the Hotel as they've no control):
- there are no private beaches on the entire Pacific side of Costa Rica, including the beach attached to the hotel. Hotel staff do monitor the beach quite closely and it's extremely safe, but you will be sharing the beach with a SMALL handful of locals, as well as a select few merchants trying to sell their wares. The beach is NOT easy for the public to reach, so it's never crowded, but it is indeed open to the public should they elect to make the trek.
- this is Costa Rica, and as such the staff you'll be dealing with are predominantly Costa Rican. As with much of Latin America, they do things in their own way on their own time. They're all thrilled to help, but if you're expecting an American resort experience where people show up as soon as your fingers are snapped, that's simply not how the country works. It's best to just relax, enjoy being where you are, and be fine with room service taking 15 minutes instead of 15 seconds.
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