The Riu Palace in Cabo has nice facilities and nice rooms, but their service and procedures prove that they opened before they were ready, at least before they were ready for a hotel at nearly 100% occupancy. For those who don't want to read all this, the bottom line is definitely don't go until you read a substantial number of reviews here saying that they have fixed up their service issues.

One general note, when you come out of the airport, ignore everybody along the corridor. They're trying to sell you time-shares. Go straight to the shuttle bus staff or your car rental office and don't even acknowledge anyone else. If you're going to do the shuttle bus, buy your ticket by the luggage carousels.

Problems at the Riu were obvious from check-in, which took about 40 minutes even though there was only one person ahead of us. The desk area was full of people complaining, and bad feelings like that are very contagious in that environment. Check-in for some reason required the guy who was helping us to have to disappear in the back twice for a long time, and he was clearly just doing what he had to do...he was actually a helpful person later in the trip. It's just that the desk is so badly organized and managed.

Although it didn't seem to affect us much, half the maid staff quit the week before due to overwork and low pay.

One major problem is that the default answer of any staff person was almost always "No" instead of "Yes" or "I'll Try". Things which should have been easy or at least possible were difficult or impossible. Even in the shop, my wife was interested in a book which was sealed. She asked if she could unseal it to see what the inside was like to decide if she wanted to buy it and was told "no".

So....The view from our first room, despite being called "Ocean View" was mostly parking lot and sand, with just a sliver of ocean. If you go, try to get a room either facing straight out at the pool and ocean, or facing west with a view of a pool and hopefully the arches.

The room quality is good with a nice bed, a big TV, an iron, a safe (get the key and lock when you check in) and decent bathrooms and there is a dispenser with 4 bottles of hard liquor and a fridge with soda and beer which is refilled every other day...unless it isn't.

They have an annoying card system for beach towels where you have to give the towel guys a card (or a towel) to get a new towel and then you have to return cards when you check out or face a fine.

The food at the buffets was decent, but if you wanted to eat at one of their speciality restaurants, i.e. Japanese, Gourmet, Mexican or Steak House, you had to make a reservation which had to be done in person and which opened at 7 AM. This meant waking up at 6:30 to get in line.

The one time I decided to do this, I was about the 100th person in line having gotten there at 6:50 and when I got to the reservationist I was told that the last seat at the restaurant I wanted (Japanese) was taken by the guy right in front of me. I refused to move until I got a seat and the girl recounted and gave me a table. The guy behind me was refused a table at the same restaurant.

When we went to the restaurant, we sat for 20 minutes before getting any drinks or any attention. Strangely the sushi appetizer only had one piece of salmon...and two of each other thing. It's small details like that which constantly fail at Riu. Interestingly half the tables were empty while we were eating and it was not because of no-shows. It was because they don't book it even close to capacity because they know they can't even handle 60% capacity right now. They are simply understaffed and the staff they have are often undertrained.

The other nights we ate outside the hotel even though we were at an all-inclusive hotel. That says a lot, I think.

At the breakfast buffet, there was a long line of people waiting for tables but not because there aren't enough tables. Instead it is because the hotel has not hired enough staff. There is one bus boy for a section that should have 4 or 5. So the tables are all dirty, and everyone has to wait. The trick is to just grab a table outside and head right to the food. The omelette chef needs a lot of help, like another omelette chef, in order to keep the egg line from being 15 minutes long as it was for us. It's so hard to get silverware and coffee cups that when I went to get some juice, someone took my silverware! (And I had had to go to the wait station myself to get the silverware from the drawers because I couldn't get any help except once from one overworked bus boy who complained about the impossibility of his task.

The Spa is decent, but the gym is way too small. The hotel must have had about 1000 guests and the gym only has two treadmills, two stairmasters, and maybe 5 different weight machines. If that's not bad enough, they make you sign up on a board starting at 7 AM just like the restaurant reservations! If you sign up the prior afternoon, they erase your name!

My wife had a pedicure from a therapist who spent much of the time apparently complaining in Spanish to her co-workers occasional throwing a forced mile in the direction of my wife.

The treatments themselves (pedicure and 50-minute massage) were very good but too expensive for Mexico at $45 and $80 respectively.

There are two big pools. Note that the "relaxing pool" to the west is not heated whereas the "activity pool" to the east is heated and beautiful.

Bar staff is also insufficient and it usually takes a long time to get a drink. One exception, and clearly the best-managed part of the hotel, is the lobby bar, called La Ventana. The service there is excellent and drink orders are filled fairly quickly.

Inside the lobby bar is an internet center which charges $4 or 40 pesos for 20 minutes.

That reminds me, check the actual rate before you go. These days it's around 11.3 pesos/USD. Many places use 10 for convenience, i.e. $4 or 40 pesos, so you should always pay places like that in pesos which you can get at the airport ATM. You should generally use ATMs rather than banks to get foreign currency. Both the bank and your credit card company will tend to charge 2% on the currency conversion.

Other places quote in dollars but then convert at a high number of pesos per dollar and you would generally want to pay them in dollars. For example, the scuba place will quote in dollars and convert to pesos at 11.5 so I paid them in dollars.

The scuba and activity center down on the beach at Riu is pretty good and our divemaster, Abraham, was friendly and excellent. The diving is $75 for a two-tank dive, plus $20 for gear rental and this time of year the water is a bit cold, i.e. low 70's, but still it was great to see the fish and a couple small white-tipped sharks. It was a bit slow getting through paperwork and payment at the scuba center, but the staff there clearly wanted you to enjoy your time. The Scuba center and the Spa are run by the same company....they are not part of the hotel and they require separate payment....no room charge.

Some of the hotel staff seemed interested in constructive criticism and some simply didn't care. I couldn't tell if it was because they had no interest in improving or because they had heard so much criticism already. Customers were really really unhappy and at every meal or sitting around the pool, half the conversations you would overhear would be about problems with the hotel. I doubt that more than 10% of customers who were there this past week would go back.

The Riu does not provide transportation to/from the airport or Cabo. It's $13 per person for a shuttle bus or $75 for a private car from the airport. More annoyingly they don't provide transportation into Cabo and there is a row of cabs waiting to steal $10 from you for the less than 3 mile ride into town. The Riu really should start their own shuttle service into both towns, especially into Cabo San Lucas where most people want to go. Forcing customers to fork out $20 for a round trip that's 5 minutes each way is unconscionable.

If you're going to be there for more than a few days and if you think you're interested in going into town a couple of times, I highly recommend renting a car. We used Advantage and they were very nice but I suppose they're all about the same. Make sure you ask about any airport drop-off charge if you rent in town or at the hotel. Advantage in Cabo waived our airport dropoff charge. It also allows you to avoid the delays in the shuttle bus service to/from the airport.

There is a National car rental in the hotel but they were out of cars when we wanted to rent. Actually, they had a station wagon and I asked if she could rent it to me at the small car rate and she said she could if I had reserved the small car yesterday but since I was asking for a car right at that time she could not give me the better rate. And should would not waive the airport drop-off fee, so I didn't use them.

We went into San Jose del Cabo for a day. it's a much more low key town than Cabo, more of a locals town, with somewhat less selection in terms of shopping but much lower prices. If you are shopping in Cabo, don't do it when there is a cruise ship in because prices are higher.

There's quite a nice art gallery in San Jose called Pez Gordo, at 19 Alvaro Obregon. It's run by an American woman who has a good eye for contemporary paintings. It's worth checking out if you're into that sort of thing.

The jewelery store at the Riu has nice quality stuff but their prices are quite high.

We ate at Lorenzillo's in Cabo which was truly great, though quite expensive. We also ate at a little place called The Sleepless Lobster which had fantastic tortilla soup and nice lobster combos for good prices. Also, Enriques which is walking distance from the Riu, just outside the gate and a few yards down the highway towards Cabo, has lobster/steak combos for $10. If you pick up one of the Cabo guide magazines that we were handed by the shuttle bus company at the airport (bus company owned by the Westin by the way, so be prepared for a big sales pitch on the bus ride) there should be an ad for a free drink with every meal at Enriques.

Horseback riding on the beach is very nice and the guy let us go without a guide because we're both fairly experienced riders (and you can't get lost along the beach). I highly recommend it and you should be able to get it done for $20 for an hour or so.

4-wheel ATVs on the sand dunes is also highly recommended but we didn't get a chance to do it. Other popular excursions and activities are wave runners, parasailing, cruises (with varying levels of partying from family-suitable to drunken-girls-gone-wild) and snorkelling. It's nice to see the sea lions on the rocks around the Arches.

Everything is negotiable around there except taxis are pretty tough, and of course restaurants. Haggle for everything else...that's part of the fun of being in Mexico.

Anyway, the Riu is physically excellent and except for the very small gym the facilities are very good. But they are simply not ready to handle a hotel that's more than half full so if you're looking at any busy time you'd better go elsewhere until they get their act together. It's surprising that a hotel chain that size would have dropped the ball so badly. I think they can recover, but wait until they do.