So we stayed here as a guest of a member for the first two weeks of July. Our villa was among the older ones, comfortable, nice AC unit, with a FANTASTIC pool even for our toddler. Our maid was the best, as was the pool guys, and the shuttle drivers. We were able to get a cart for an extra $100/week. However, our check-in took 3 HOURS because they could never finish one checkin before starting another. The entire facility is horribly inaccessible for wheelchairs. REMEMBER, as VIP guests you MUST call the day before at 9AM to make dinner reservations for the following day. A fact that they forget to tell you. The buffet was OK, Indochine on VIP night was acceptable. Bellini's is great whatever the day or time, Blue Lagoon has great food but the service is HORRIBLY slow. The VIP Gourmet is the best. Management is what makes this place fail each and every time. The common worker does as best a job as they can, but when you run into a problem, management is ALWAYS unresponsive. Our phones never worked from villa to villa to elsewhere on site to internation receiving or dialing. The show on Thursday night at the Casino is a joke and lame compared to REAL shows in Vegas or in CT. The Sunday welcome party is just too crowded, loud, and hot. Internet service is horrible with the exception of marginal acceptibility in the VIP World pool area along the back beds.

We've been to better all-inclusive resorts in Central America for the same amount of money. We won't be back.

My family and my sister's family booked 2 villas on the recommendation of another family member who is an owner. There was a lot of confusion on the owner's part (and subsequently ours) on what is and isn't included. Hopefully this will help someone make a decision--vacations are too precious and expensive to waste on a place like this.

Cons:
- We were told the following would be included for us, as we were guests of a VIP member: helicopter ride from the airport; golf cart to travel around the resort; free admission to Ocean World. None were included. Transport to and from the airport was in a dirty, rundown minivan. No golf cart, and Ocean World was going to be $55 per person. No thanks.

- Food in the buffet was very subpar, and featured 75% of the same items every day. We went from station to station and could often only find one or 2 items to eat, like potatoes or bread.

- The beaches are dirty and there is very little shade to be found. There are cigarettes in the sand. No one walks around to pick up the little plastic cups they serve their crappy drinks in, so they blow around and end up in the ocean. We often picked up trash ourselves.

- There was virtually no shade on the VIP beach. Plus, who wants to lay in a bed on the beach?? We wanted lounge chairs so we could read, but those aren't available on the VIP beach. The non-VIP beach has some shade. One of the shady areas happens to be next to a storage tank collecting waste from the bathrooms. Nothing like sitting on the beach and smelling feces. Hilariously, this was right next to 2 massage beds. Do you suppose they consider this aromatherapy?

- The water sports were a joke. They had 3 sea kayaks, one of which was broken, and one windsurfer. For the entire resort.

- Customer service was terrible. If we had any problems or questions (of which we had many), a visit to the VIP check-in resulted in 3 different people calling someone else. No one there has the knowledge or authority to make any decisions at all.

- Lack of privacy. Expect multiple people in and out of your villa all day long. Besides your maid, expect other helpers, plus at least 2-3 visits from the guys trying to sell you a timeshare. No one knocks...they just walk right in. The timeshare people have no rhyme or reason of when they talk to anyone, so expect to be approached multiple times by the same people. They will try to convince you to come hear their speech because it will make them a commission. Um, really? What sort of motivation is that?

- VIP vs. non-VIP. The whole business plan this resort is based on is awful. It's not extraordinary service vs. regular service. The VIP service is barely acceptable, and the non-VIP is awful. Apparently whomever set up this resort feels that VIP people just want to lay around and drink all day in a bed. That's not VIP to me.

- Everything on the resort is ridiculously expensive.

- If you want to snorkel at all, you'll need to travel pretty far to find a spot to do it. There are no fish in the bay that we could find, probably due to pollution.

The pros:
- The villa was adequate, and the landscaping and pool were lovely. As someone else mentioned, we had no screening, so were eaten alive by mosquitos. We had ants in our kitchen the entire time (covering every surface), so couldn't really use that space at all (despite asking for some ant spray).

- Our maid was very nice, and kept our villa clean. We would have preferred the option to buy our own groceries and make our own food.

- We took a catamaran excursion to go snorkeling through another company, and that was a good day.

- Weather was nice while we were there.

- Main pools were nice, although their DJs were awful, and played eurotrash club music beginning at 10 am as loud as they could.

Conclusion:
This resort could be a really nice resort. Unfortunately, the management is awful. They don't seem to understand what the majority of people want to do while on a vacation...relax, do some activities, enjoy some good food and drink.

We booked a 3BR villa through an owner, Michelle Forino. Michelle was extremely helpful, knowledgable and answered every question I had. As others have mentioned, check-in is quite interesting as you arrive and head upstairs to a bar which is also the check-in reception area. It was a bit crowded, but we were in and out of there in about 15 minutes. We stayed in one of the farthest villas (E39) at the end of the property. While a bit disappointed initially, it turned out to be a great location as it had a huge yard and the pool was secluded from view. If you stay here, you need to get the VIP package to obtain the most value the property has to offer: VIP Beach, VIP Gourmet Restaurant, VIP World and the Sunday evening VIP dinner party and the Bellisimo Show at Ocean World. One advantage of booking directly with an owner versus a timeshare exchange is the all-inclusive cost. They only charge for each person and for the nights you stay. When I inquired through RCI, I was informed that the all-inclusive cost was $600.00 per day per villa regardless of how many people stayed in the villa. Since two of my party of 6 arrived a day late and left a day early, they only had to pay the all-inclusive fee for 5 days. One suggestion that we took was to bring lots of one and five dollar bills to tip the staff (even though it is not required).

Restaurants: VIP Gourmet and Bellini's are highly recommended; the sushi bar on the VIP Beach was okay; the buffet was okay; the Indochine restaurant was okay. The VIP Cafe for snacks was a nice change of pace. The service at El Zorro was terrible.

Accomodations: Very spacious 3BR, 3 1/2 Bath. Bedrooms had A/C while the rest of the villa did not. Only one safe was functional, but there was a slight charge to use it. Small TV's but rarely watched it.

Service: Breakfast prepared each morning; eggs, bacon, muffins, various breads, fruits, juices and coffee. Maid service was excellent, always had plenty of clean towels and clean bathrooms and bedrooms. Shuttle is fine unless it is raining, then you can plan for at least a 20 minute wait.

Problems: We encountered a batch of bad bottled water. One of my daughters was ill for the first two days of our trip, but was fine after that. Beer disappeared from our refrigerator on two separate occasions. When I mentioned it to employee who stocked our refrigerator, he just stocked it with an additional 8 bottles of beer. Upstairs bedroom was without hot water, barely got warm, but then again, it was pretty warm outside so it wasn't that big of a deal.

While not a 5 star resort, it is very nice and we had an enjoyable and relaxing vacation. All of the staff were friendly and helpful. We would definitely stay here again.

This was our worst vaction ever! We were so looking forward to it, but ended up being bitterly disappointed. We went through RCI and still paid a fortune for 6 people for the terrible experience we had. We had a 3 bedroom villa, which looked beautiful, but had so many problems. Our airconditioning never worked our whole vaction, we had bedbugs in the upper bedroom bed, our bath towels were never changed, we were without water for several days, none of our room safes locked, our pool was cleaned the first day but never again, timeshare people followed us everywhere even walked into our villa at breakfast to annoy us further, food in all restaurants was awful and disgusting, long long walk to beach which was not very nice, service was lacking everywhere, especially the front desk. We will never return .