Our neighbors booked this trip through their RCI timeshare-it was last minute, so we took what was available. After reading the reviews, I was really nervous. I was expecting this place to be a dump!
Upon arriving, I was pleasantly surprised. The hotel staff was courteous, friendly, and helpful. Our room was great. It isn't the Ritz Carlton, but it is clean would have been big enough had we brought our entire family of 7! The only problem I could see with the rooms, are that in the "master bedroom", there is not much room to walk around, due to the size of the bed. Our friends said their bed was hard, but I didn't have a problem with ours.
The pool, beach, and restuarants were clean and the staff was always helpful and friendly.
The Conceirge at the hotel was awesome (Izzy). He gave us a lot of recommendations and was so fun!
I would highly recommend doing the Huana Coa Zip Line Tour. It is awesome!
Restaurants--Pancho's!! We ate there several times--It has great variety and a nice view.
Joe's Oyster Bar was almost a little scary--I love to dance and have drinks, but I can't say I found a good place to do that while we were there, unless we picked the wrong places and the wrong nights to go!
The Mayan Sea Garden is further away, and about a 7$ cab ride into the Golden Zone. Almost every cab ride we had was good, friendly and helpful. I speak very little Spanish, but enough to be able to communicate with the cabbies that didn't know English.

All and all, we had a great vacation, and I would choose the Sea Gardens again.

Booked via RCI for one week. Arrived at front desk and could not get the room that we had arranged. They also wanted us to attend a breakfast to sell us their timeshare package, which we refused. The rooms were fair, clean. Bed and pillows were hard.
Pools were cold and weather although sunny was pretty cold. Coctails were expensive but they had daily 2 for 1 specials and beer was pretty cheap. Dining at the hotel was expensive when compared to all the other places we went to and the food was ok. Lots of great places to eat downtown with shrimp served anyway you could imagine. The dining was definately better in all of the resturants we went to downtown. Staff at the hotel were always very nice and helpful and recommended many of the resturants we went to. Beach is brown and sea in that area is also dark. You get a whole bunch of local people who swarm you selling all sorts of stuff...pretty much the same as downtown. Always bargain for a fair price and you'll get it. I think that if I went to mazatlan again, I would stay downtown in the golden zone since that's where all the action is. It cost 6 us dollars (60 mexican) to go from our hotel to downtown in a golfcart. The bus is 8 pesos and ran every 15 minutes. They offered several tours. We went to stone island and the trip was okay, nothing spectacular. If you do go, make sure that Jugo is the tour guide. He was very entertaining. The Jungle tour I would stay away from.
Overall, I would say that emerald garden is not the best...but certainly not terrible.

February 15-23, 2008
We stayed in the new Mayan Palace building. It is furnished in modern cheap, however the kitchen is nice and clean and well appointed. It is not on the beach and does not have an ocean view except in 2 rooms on the top floor one of which is reserved for the "sales pitches." For the first two days, we overlooked the roof of the reservations area, then moved to the street side of the building, higher up and overlooked a construction site. Staff was marginally friendly, front desk staff uninformative, never told us we had to sign up 48 hours in advance for trip back to the airport and refused to make it right even though they admitted it was their fault. We are owners and have been treated very well at other Mayans so we were very disappointed. . I would never visit this one again. No spa, gym old and dirty, activities cancelled and even it they held them, no one told you where they were. Too Americanized. "Ola" always got a "Hello" in return. The "Mayan" update which they swore wasn't a sales pitch to upgrade was only a sales ptich for an upgrade. Food was marginal and expensive. Steak night we couldn't eat the steak, too tough. As is usual, the maids are the saving grace, very friendly and very attentive. Eat at Playa Bruha, great lobster.

We booked this resort because it was the only thing available on short notice. We picked the wrong month. Mazatlan was very cold in December and the rooms at the Sea Gardens are terribly obsolete. NO HEAT! We froze the whole time. Worst, as soon as you arrive they send you to a desk where you have to sign up for a MAYAN TIME SHARE experience.

DO NOT DO IT! THEY LIE! FRAUDLENT!

They will promise anything to get you to sign up! We were told we could trade in our existing timeshare for the Mayan. Then we found out this was a total lie and they want $40,000.

DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THESE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

THEY LIE!

If you decide to go to the timeshare anyway, ask for Carlos. He will take care of you!!!!!!!