The Resort has 3 different properties. The ones on the beach are older, hotel rooms, but they are convenient for accessing the beach and the main restaurant, (Blanca Blue or the Mexican Restaurant), which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Pool is there too, and there is another small restaurant by the Pool for snacks or lunch.
The other properties are on the other side of a public street. You can go there by walking (I do not recommend because this is a very busy street) or by the resort's trolley. The trolley goes around every 15-20 minutes, but depending on which building you are, you might have to wait for a 2nd trolley. This was a big inconvenience for us, because you waste a lot of time just for going to and from your room somewhere else (whether is the beach, the main pool, the main restaurant, or the Lobby). Some of these buildings have a panoramic view. The view is beautiful, but again, time consuming.
The 3rd type of property is The Sanctuary hotel, which is their newest building. It is out of this world. You can go there using the trolley, and it is a new and high-end luxury hotel. This hotel is beautiful and amazing! From this hotel, everything is within your reach: The Rooftop pool (adults only), the restaurant on the basement floor (Hiroshi Japanese restaurant at night), the hot tub in your room's balcony, etc. The view is also beautiful.
This resort has 2 options: all-inclusive and A la carte as far as food and drinks go.
The resort is well-kept. However, the employees at the Lobby (administration are not pleasant and instead of listening to their clients' issues, they are first to come up with excuses, justifications, etc.. Wish they would train their administrative staff to listen more, rather than be on the defensive side. Maria who works there in the administration/main Lobby, came out as rude and insensitive to our needs, especially health hazard issues caused by others.
Another thing that bothered us was that we were told by Maria at the Main Lobby that since we had booked our vacation through Costco, we were not their priority anymore. The people who booked their vacations directly with the Resort had their main attention and priority!!!
On the other hand, the rest of the staff (restaurant hosts (Fatima for example), the waiters, the room service people, etc. were all extremely nice and hard-working.) We had a great experience with them.
The Restaurants: Something that bothered us was that you must have reservations for each night for Dinner. No restaurant will accept you without reservations! And the curious thing is that even though we tried to reserve the restaurants since the 1st day we arrived there, they were all booked during any reasonable hours. The only openings for us were the late reservations, like 9pm for example. If you saw the restaurants, however, they all looked empty between 6-7 pm, but we were told they were fully booked.
It was disappointing to find out that there was no restaurant that would accept you without reservation, like a buffet-style restaurant for dinner. Plus, another disappointment and time-consuming is that their restaurants are so scattered around the resort, that we had to call the Lobby to find our where these specific restaurants were located. During dinner time, the Trolleys were always full of people trying to get to their reservations, and we had to make the decision whether to wait for a 2nd trolley in 20 minutes or walk there. The streets are very steep if you decide to walk to places there.
Another disappointment was that we were there with friends and the restaurants could not accommodate us together with our friends. They would put us in different corners of the room. Why go with a group if we could not eat together?
Overall, I would not go back. Between the time-wasting trips to and from the room/beach/pools/restaurants, restaurant reservations and rude administrators, it is just not worth it. It is considered a luxury resort, so the pricing is a bit steep. However, not all the resort rooms are up to date and not all the rooms have beach view. Most of the rooms are up on a hill. Eating late dinners and fighting for food reservations for our choice restaurants made our stay feel at times more like a chore and a torture.
Relaxing should not include worrying about your dinners, transportation and time management.
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