I believe that the overall experience of "okay, but some problems" is a pretty accurate description of this resort. Not terrible, not excellent, just okay with some problems. So here is our cautionary tale of our week-long trip to Melia Puerto Vallarta.

After traveling for most of the day, with five children in tow, we were all ready to get to our rooms, then get something to eat. For reasons still unknown, check-in took 30 minutes, and everyone was irritable (we had three rooms, everything was pre-booked, so it should have been simple). Our room smelled moldy, although our family in the other two rooms said theirs were fine. The decor was dated, 70's style, with orange and brown accents. We later found out that the hotel was in the process of being remodeled; the hotel was purchased two years ago by Melia, and the "new" owners were still updating things. As I learned, projects don't seem to move too fast in Mexico.

After our bags were dropped off, we headed to the open-air lunch grill to eat. As we quickly learned, "open-air" also means "birds on the buffet." Several black raven-type birds constantly landed on the salad bar, reached in and took food, then flew away. One of the birds landed in the cole slaw dish and stayed there for a while. At first it was comical, but we quickly became disgusted thinking of the diseases the birds could be passing on, both from the germs on their feet and beaks, and from any bird droppings that they may have left in the food. My wife, a nurse, lost her appetite for the first two days from that. [NOTE: after complaining about the birds to the general manager, he had nets put over the buffet bars to keep out the birds.]

The pool was nice, kid-friendly, although people should know that because of the heat, the pool gets very warm in the afternoon, more like a lukewarm bath than a refreshing cool swim. The pool is only about 4 1/2 feet deep at the deepest point, a good depth for the kids to swim.

We spent most of our time at the pool, several hours each day. The staff has some cheesy, but fun activities each morning for the pool crowd. The swim-up bar is good, even for the kids to go up to and order non-alcoholic drinks (pinada, pink panther,shirley temples, and yabba dabba doo are good tropical drinks for the kids with no alcohol).

The hotel grounds are pretty, lots of palm trees with coconuts, along with lots of other tropical plants, and several ponds. The central pond has a lot of wildlife, including some different ducks, hundreds of koi fish, and...iguanas. All of them like to be fed, and we have a lot of good pictures of the iguanas coming close for food.

People should know that although this is billed as "an all-inclusive beach resort," the beach is basically non-existent. Yes, the Pacific Ocean is at the back of the property, and there is a beachy area, although there is only about 300 feet of usable beach. The rest of the beach has been washed away, with the waves coming all the way up to the hotel's retaining wall. What beach is left is an angled, odd-shaped piece, and the ocean floor is covered with rounded rocks (they don't have many shells here, just rocks that wash up). As with other touristy areas in Mexico, there are always people on the beach trying to sell you something...boat rides, hair braids, henna tattoos...and they are somewhat persistent, although after a couple of "no's" they leave you alone and move on to the next guy. The hotel has a sign that says the beaches are federal property, and they are not affiliated with or responsible for any of the beach vendors (meaning they can't run them off, either).

Most people are used to long, wide beaches that you can stroll on, or come out for a morning jog. The beaches here are very different...they are sectioned off for each hotel, with wave breaks made of large rocks jutting out at every hotel's property lines. I suppose you could use a beach area of another resort, although you would have to do some rock-climbing up and down to get to the next resort's piece of beach. Also the hotels are all built close to the water, so the beach area is fairly narrow. We went down there a few times, but did not spend much time at the beach at all.

Food...generally was good, mostly buffet style, all you can eat of course. The quality of the food was good, although surprisingly the fruits did not taste as fresh as one would expect, being in the tropics. The milk is not homogenized, and although I liked it, we did not use it for our infant because we were not sure if it was safe for him. The Italian restaurant and the formal Mexican restaurant on the property were both good, although you have to make reservations for the Italian one. We arrived on a Friday and found that the Italian restaurant was already booked thru Sunday, and closed on Monday. We made reservations for Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday is couples only night, no kids.

The bartenders are very accomodating, and they have a large selection of familiar, top-shelf liquors. If you are an experienced drinker and know what to ask for, you will do fine. I am not, so I spent the first couple days drinking pina coladas and banana mamas that another couple turned me on to. There is no menu posted anywhere, but I was surprised one day to see a drink menu out. If you ask for it, the bartender may have one behind the bar. It was helpful because it listed a lot of drinks, including a section of non-alcoholic drinks for the kids. Tip: unless you ask specifically, the bartenders will use the well liquors in the drinks. If you ask for, say, Bacardi Rum in your pina colada, they will do it, but if you don't ask, they will give you what they have in the fountain tapper.

The staff were friendly, all spoke English to a cerain degree, some more than others, but all spoke enough English well enough to bring you a drink. I did abandon one conversation though, when I was asking a front desk attendant if they stocked any mouthwash (mine disappeared in the room, presumably the glass bottle was dropped by the housekeeper and broken, but the front desk attendant had no idea what I was talking about, and I did not feel like playing charades to explain it to her!). One downside I noticed was that some things didn't get cleaned up quickly. There are a ton of service people up and down the halls everyday, but when I set out four used cups to be picked up, they sat outside our room for a day and half. And there was a pair of kid's superhero underwear in one of the ponds in our hallway...we noticed it the first day and laughed...then we noticed it every other day we were there. We ended up talking to the manager about our room, and we mentioned the underwear in the pond. That was four days into our stay, and three days later when we left the resort, the underwear was still there. We even have a picture of it.

Our room's air conditioner was horrible. We had it turned to the coldest level, and still it was barely cooler than the outside temp. After complaining to the manager about the air conditioner and the musty smell, they brought us a dehumidifier and a portable air conditioning unit (that looked like a jumbo sized dehumidifier). The dehumidifier rattled as loud as a lawn mower, so we had to stop using it. The portable a.c. was loud too, and it put out a lot of heat from the sides and back. Then it leaked a huge pool of water on the floor underneath. We called the front desk, and they sent a maid and a repairman. The maid mopped up the water, and the repairman went into the bathroom to check what he thought was a leaking shower (language barrier issue). When the maid told him the problem was with the a.c. unit, he looked at it and found that two of the casters were missing, causing water to spill out of the unit. The solution? They put a towel under the unit and left. A few hours later the towel was soaked through, and water was on the floor again. We stopped using the unit, and they removed it a couple days later. It was very hot and hard to get to sleep for all of us...the manager did offer to move us, and normally that's what we would have done, but since we had two other rooms close with our other family members, we decided to stick it out, and we did not have much good sleep.

The room had a dresser with eight medium sized drawers, but they smelled so musty that we could not put our clothes in them. We lived out of our suitcases for the week. Even if the drawers had been usable, that was not enough drawer space for 5 people. Also the bunk bed was a good selling point, but turned out to be useless...the top bunk had only a tiny rail, not enough protection to keep the kids from rolling out. And if someone slept on the bottom bunk, every time they moved, the bed squeaked LOUDLY. So four of us squeezed into the two double beds, with the baby in the porta-crib they brought for us.

One other, not so minor detail people should be aware of, which we were not...the public water is not purified, and you cannot drink it or you will get sick. I had always heard people joke, "Don't drink the water in Mexico," but it is absolutely true. A hotel rep informed us of this fact on the way to the room. You can use the shower and sink water to wash up, but DO NOT ingest any of it. The hotel provided an unlimited supply of bottled water, but if you can imagine brushing your teeth with a bottle of water, it does not work out so well. You never can really get your toothbrush clean. I was paranoid and always rinsed my hands with bottled water after washing my hands with soap and sink water. Some of our family got diarrhea there, presumably from the water.

Melia is billed as a family resort, where you can leave your kids at the babysitting while the adults go play. Many people used the babysitting, but we did not. We met one couple from Chile whose young child became sick, and they were certain it came from the babysitting area. They believed the ball pit and other toys were not properly disinfected, and their son got diarrhea and was throwing up for five days at the resort. To be fair, we did not hear any other stories like that, but we did not want to take the chance with our child. Also, they do not let you stay in the babysitting area if there is more than one child there...so you don't have the opportunity to really check out the place like you might want to. Also notable: people should know that the activities they provide -- archery, shooting, batting cages, etc -- are only offered during very limited times, I believe two days a week for an hour or two. And they are not what you would expect...they look like activities you would set up in your backyard. The rock climbing (free) and the zip line ($5) were very good activities, again offered only during certain times though.

One other notable detail: they have tiny mosquitoes there that bite and leave red circular marks. We first noticed the marks on our child's face, and we thought he had some sort of measles or chicken pox. After talking with staff, we learned about the mosquitoes, so tiny that you cannot see them. We were told that the housekeepers spray the rooms each day to kill the mosquitoes, but if you open your balcony door you will let in tons of them. Then we started thinking about all the stagnant ponds of water on the property, which are perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes, one of them right outside our front door. The bigger ponds have fountains, but the smaller ones have no water flow at all.

This review has a lot of negatives, I know....but our trip was not all negative. The kids had a lot of fun in the pool, everyone loved the iguanas, the shows were mostly good (though they started late for the kids...9:30 PM!), food was pretty good and available most of the time, the tropical gardens were pretty, and the staff tried to be helpful. The quality was less than we expected, we expected an all inclusive resort to be more similar to our experiences on cruise ships. We would not return to Melia or recommend it necessarily, although we realize that if we did not have small children, our experiences might have been much better as far as being able to enjoy meals more and being able to lounge at the pool instead of watching the kids all the time. Hopefully this review is helpful to fill in info that is not in the Melia brochures.

We are a family of 5, two 16 yr olds, and a 13 yr old, all boys, and we loved every part of our stay at the Melia! The staff was incredible, super friendly, courteous, and attentive. The resort is beautiful, well kept, and from what we could observe, improvements being made. A lot of activities go on throughout the day, pool games, exercise classes, beach volleyball, kayaking, etc. Definitely something for everyone if they are so inclined.
The mixed drinks at the pool bar could be weak, but that just meant I could drink more, which was OK by me! If one truly wished to "tie one on" you could order straight shots, or beer.
The food was fabulous!! The buffet's were very good as were each of the restaurants (hint, La Palapa opens on the beach side in front, the inside stays dark, if you come up from the hotel side, it looks closed).
We also loved the lobby bar, at the end of a long day the family would relax, listen to music, and have some cold drinks (virgin drinks for the kids of course) It was amazing to us what a wonderful family atmosphere the entire resort had, including the lobby bar...so relaxing and refreshing.
I heard one couple criticize the food, people should remember, this is Mexico, many of the patrons are from Mexico, and most of the staff is Mexican, so the food isn't going to taste like something made in Nebraska.
We also did some excursions, we highly recommend the catamaran tour through Vallarta Adventures, super fun! The Los Veranos Canopy Tour was fun, but probably better when the weather is a little cooler and less humid.
The only thing I would change about this vacation would be to make it longer, and spend more time at this fabulous resort. There were several activities I didn't participate in that looked like great fun.
Our family will definitely go back!

Myself, husband, sons (22 & 24 yrs.) and daughters (16&12) just spent a week at the Melia. It is the first time all 4 kids together went to an AI. Melia was a good choice as there was plenty for all to do. We had 2 rooms and loved the upgrades to partial ocean view. One room had a mildew odor. I would not have been happy with it, but hey, my husband and sons said it was ok so who am I to complain.? They did get a dehumidifier when they mentioned the odor and that helped.
As mentioned in previous posts the beach is definitely not the draw. On occasion someone comes to rent a waverunner to the hotel guests or parasailing. We spent most time at the awesome pool. It never seemed crowded and we usually got a pool side seat. Lots of umbrella/trees for the shade lovers.
We never ran out of hot water for showers! That is a first of all the resorts we've stayed at. Bathroom clean, newly remodeled it appeared. Air conditioning marginal, but we didn't complain. I'm sure they would have adjusted it if we had asked. We like to conserve energy when possible.

Food--best I've ever had at an AI. Plenty of options and the hours are staggered so there is almost always at least one (probably 2) restaurants open.

Bars---They could use one more bar open in the afternoon by the pool. The swim up bar is always busy. Waitresses come and wait on you by the pool, but they have a difficult job to keep up.
The drinks weren't my favorite, but they always made the adjustments that I asked for. (more alcohol, etc.) It seems that there is a generic blender mix they use for most drinks and add the shot of booze and flavoring to it. It would be helpful to have a listing of specialty drinks listed to experiment., as I am a novice drinker and don't even know what to ask for most of the time. I usually count on the drink descriptions on the menus.

Staff---Here the Melia really shines!!!! Super polite, friendly. We tipped probably about 150 dollars while we were there. We usually don't tip quite this much but we felt the staff was top shelf quality and I didn't feel that the service I was given depended upon a tip. (It seemed to me that most people didn't tip.)They are very willing to go the extra mile and are very effecient, personable. No complaints whatsoever!! I hope the Melia management knows how fortunate they are to have this calibur of staff.

We were never once bothered by timeshare or even asked to participate in "vacation club" presentation. It may be because we ignored the "invitation" to come and claim our welcome gift.

Activites---they are really good about getting the group games going....volleyball, pool tournament, etc. We really enjoyed the hour in the day where people competed individually at corny games by the pool (bouncing the tennis ball into the bucket, etc.) Simple t-shirts as prizes but it was fun and little kids to adults participated, usually with good humored teasing from the staff. Bingo was also fun.
Night shows---We made about 1/2 of them. Some we liked more than others but all were family friendly.
We brought school supplies to an organization called "children of the dump." They have a web site if anyone is interested. Especially needed are spiral notebooks for the school that is established. Art, one of the contacts was willing to pick supplies up and even offered us a tour. Next time we will definitely do this. We checked out the spiral notebooks at PV WALMART and they were about 3 dollars each! Here in the midwest we get them for 10c each in July and August. We used our carry on suitcase with wheels to transport these as you are only allowed to check one bag on the airlines. Then we tucked these smaller suitcases into larger ones for trip home. (Except those of us who purchased too many souveniers.)
BEWARE OF Treks dunebuggy excursion. They accused us of "burning out the clutch" in one of the dune buggies mid trip and said we would have to "Pay." Was a real bummer and ruined the remainder of the excursion. My son and I traded buggies for the second part and he noted no problem or odor with clutch, but hey, once they have your credit card number and accuse you, there is no recourse. The owner refused to even come out and look at the buggy on our return. Just took the 20+ year old guides word for it and told us we would be charged. We truly think that they probably scam someone on a daily basis and zero in on the person who maybe snubs out a couple times. (it had been a while since I'd driven with a clutch.) Or seems to be the least experienced. We are fair people and would pay for any obvious damage we do/did, but this boarderd on ridiculous. We booked it with Effy from American Express tours. I hope if the Melia management reviews this post, they will take action to remove the dishonest tours so their guests don't get scammed. I plan to e-mail manyagement re this.
Canopy Tours was fun and we will forever have fond memories of our time spent doing this. Staff very professional and comical.
All in all had a great memorable bonding family time---which is what we desired. Goal met and now would we return? You bet!!!!

We have just returned from a fantastic vacation at the Melia. It was our first "all inclusive" experience and were not too sure what to expect. Travelling with a 22 month old, I had checked many, many hotels through trip advisor, and found this one to be the best rated.
We were not disappointed!
We checked in easily on Saturday night, very quick an efficient, then were escorted to our "M" experience room by the concierge. This room is definitely worth the extra money. We had a corner room on the "M" floor and it had a little foyer before you entered the main room. The room overlooks the ocean and has a little hammock swing, and 2 chairs on the balcony. It was fantastic to listen to the ocean every day and to avoid any other noise from the main areas of the hotel.
This is a very child friendly resort, and everyone goes out of their way to make your vacation enjoyable. Our little girl would be escorted to our table by the waiters at every meal!
The food is fine, buffets change daily and there is always something to eat, even for a picky toddler. The alcohol is plentiful and they can make pretty much any cocktail you like.
The pool is very large and clean, and the activities staff is awesome at keeping the mood very lively throughout the day.
They seem to have a wonderful kids club, and the playground is awesome even for an unsteady toddler to explore.
The beach is quite tiny, depending if the tide is in or not, and swimming in the ocean is not really recommended as the current is very strong. But we saw this in most of the beaches in PV, so I do not think this is downside for the hotel. There is still lots of sand to play in, and kayaking, jetskiing, or parasailing right off the beach.
I would highly recommend the sunset photos offered by the hotel photographers, they are very efficient and they do a great job. We love the family shots of our great vacation.
The grounds of the hotel are spectacular. Everyday they are cleaning the walkways, pruning the hedges, or just cleaning up leaves. They have a lovely lake stocked with Koi, and an area to feed them.

I just cannot say enough about our experience with this hotel, and highly recommend it to anyone, but especially for a family oriented get away