Let’s talk about the entire Vidanta experience.
START OF THE ADVENTURE
Keep in mind that we were up at 2AM on the day of travel, so Saturday was a bit of a waste. Finally arrive at the Puerto Vallarta (PVR) airport. Warning, exiting the airport is a nightmare with the body snatchers after customs. Just keep walking. At this point we’ve been travelling for half-a-day, and have finally reached our shuttle, no water. Shuttle ride was quick, 17 minutes. Dropped off at the Vidanta Check-in / Transfer building at 12:40 PM, no water. Had luggage and bags x-ray’d again, and then wait for shuttle, no water. Shuttle gets us to Grand Bliss (GB) check-in, no water at check in. Found out later that the concierge in the building beside Check-In, let’s say it’s the taxi center, has all the water you want when you leave or return from excursions.
Pre-checked in online before we left, doesn’t matter. Still need to go through passports and everything I did in pre-check-in because they don’t have us registered. Clearly they did as that’s how the shuttle knew to get us and was scheduled. Get our Mayan Palace (MP) bands with cable car access and are told to meet with a lady to discuss what we’re able to do. This meeting is 5 minutes. She (finally) arranged two bottles of water and a beer can (still sealed). No glass or ice, or courtesy. Just set it down, told us massages are 53% off if we go to our members meeting on Tuesday at 9am and then leaves. We don’t know where we’re going or even what direction MP is from GB. Figure it out and head to our room. The extra room that we paid for is locked and need someone to unlock it for us. Curl up on the couch, fall asleep. No luggage. Get up at 5:30pm, still no luggage. Call front desk and luggage arrives. Get changed and go for a walk to La Plaza to get some groceries and water. Have a quiet night in.
SUNDAY, THE START OF THE DECLINE
Next morning we head to the closest pool. No idea what pool it is as we were never given a map, directions or instructions. Turns out the biggest pool is not for us, as we learned the hard way by the over-zealous security agent, Adrian, who clearly takes their authority too seriously. Adrian could have easily pulled us aside and said, “hey, you’re pasty white like snow, you aren’t sunburned, you must have just arrived. Just to let you know, Mayan Palace guests have a pool dedicated to their use and it’s over there.” (Ok, maybe not those exact words…) That would have been FAR more diplomatic then, “YOU! OUT!”. Amazing how many people turn and stare when that happens. We were talking with another family and they apologized and were embarrassed by the way we were treated. We get out to try to figure out what we’ve done wrong. Adrian aggressively tells us to talk to our concierge about getting day passes, and that we must leave immediately. At this point we didn’t know what the day pass was for, why we needed it, or even what it is worth. Adrian, when asked what it costs, simply disregarded us with, “talk to concierge”. Clearly we didn’t pay enough to be here. Find out this is the Grand Mayan (GM) pool. We try to figure out where “our-class” of pool is, and off we go to the pool that we are restricted to — that we didn’t even know existed. First time here. Have since figured out that the Vidanta app is semi-helpful with some locations, but on my iPhone it couldn’t figure out walking directions.
Little upset at the way we were treated, as it was clearly an accident but a little diplomacy would have gone a long way, we say something to the supervisor at MP. She said she’d get back to us immediately. She didn’t. We wait in our room in case she’ll call us there. No call. We call the front desk, they said they’d get back to us. They didn’t. We again wait in our room for a response, none provided. We just wasted two hours in our room. When someone tells us that they’ll call us back, we we expect a return call. That’s just common courtesy. While in our room the power is off. Some of our lights work, some don’t. The TV doesn’t work and neither does the coffee maker, etc. Call front desk and say that we don’t have power. 30 minutes later someone shows up with towels — I do see the humour in that. Call back to front desk and explain in detail how the lights don’t work, etc. ahh, maintenance will be sent. I use the toilet in the additional room for liquid only, and it’s clogged. We’re clearly having a bad start here. We wait for maintenance that never arrives, or even calls, and finally give up and play a game of, “where’s the electrical panel”. (If you’re looking for it, it’s behind a picture beside the thermostat in the kitchen area). Find it, reset some breakers, and we’re up and running. First full day, not that great. Not sure what bothers us more, the way we were yelled at, or the fact that we were completely ignored on our requests for assistance and maintenance.
Trying to recover from this setback, we get dressed up and walk over to Tramanto for dinner. Arrive and there are Grand Luxxe members in cut off shorts, baseball hats and a screaming baby. It’s now starting to make sense that Mayan Palace is poverty and no one cares. Looks like the higher I upgrade, the more I can get away with. The food was excellent in both quality and price by the way. Stop and watch a water show by Gong.
MONDAY – OUR FIRST DECENT DAY
We spent the day by the main pool and at the beach. We stop and talk to the front desk and they say they will call my cellphone and update us on our issues. Again, no phone call. Otherwise it was a decent day. Not many activities, but it was ok. Zero places to sit. We set our stuff by the base of a tree as every chair is claimed. Hasn’t felt like a holiday yet, but maybe we can save it. Come back to the phone ringing to schedule our meeting with Omar for Tuesday morning, 9am.
TUESDAY – THE INFAMOUS OWNER’S MEETING
Tuesday morning, go see Omar. He immediately gets us on a shuttle and disappears. Guess we’re not meeting with Omar. Jennifer greets us and asks how our trip has been so far. Explain that it has been underwhelming, disjointed and disrespected. Did she care? Maybe. She did get the Liaison between sales and the hotel involved. Did Jeff care? Maybe. I understand that our concern at this point is trivial to their day. Oh, we also met with a fellow that may have been the floor sales manager. He oozed greasiness. Gold necklaces and bracelets. Was there anything done to try to recover our stay? Well, our toilet is now unclogged. And as a gesture our bands were upgraded from MP to GM. We’re still in MP — which is fine as I wasn’t looking for a room change. Maybe a, “Please let us know if there are other issues and we’d be happy to make your experience better” or something like that. Felt brushed off. Didn’t get back to our room until 1:30pm from our 9am breakfast. Went to get our new bands from the GM lobby and they cut our old bands off. When they went to get the new bands and put them on, we’re not in the system. We were then accused of lying, etc to get a free upgrade. Felt totally disrespected yet again. Finally a supervisor made a few phone calls and we have our new bands. Get to the GM pool, not a single unused chair in sight. Towels claiming chairs everywhere, semi empty pools and nowhere to sit. We were told that you cannot reserve chairs by setting a towel on it, but towels were everywhere. Sigh. No cabanas anywhere to rent. Figures. New bands create new issues: every time you go to get towels they ask for your room number. I give our Mayan Palace room number and immediately it’s rebuffed because we have Grand Mayan bands. At one towel hut they called a supervisor over as they said I stole the band. We make the best of the remainder of our day, and head back to the room. Order some pizza in, lick our wounds and try to relax. Tuesday, maybe a 3/10. And that’s because the pizza was good.
Nothing to do with Vidanta, but back in the room my 2022 MacBook Pro M1 suffers a catastrophic failure. It’s dead. I didn’t drop it, I was simply on Safari and was surfing the web went the screen froze, went black, and then it stuck in a boot loop. When I returned home Apple support has since diagnosed that the main logic board failed. As a small business owner, being without my laptop was stressful, but not the fault of Vidanta — just added to the experience.
WEDNESDAY – LET’S LEAVE THE PROPERTY – MAYBE IT’LL BE A BETTER EXPERIENCE
Wednesday we did the City Tour. Was told that if we attended our owners meeting, it’s less than half the price per person then what the posted rate is. During booking, the tour agent asked to see my Vida card that they gave out at the owners meeting. But… we didn’t get a card. Sigh. The booking agent was able to confirm on his system that we did attend our meeting, so he gave us the discount. Our tour and our host, Adan, were both great. The tour was informative and funny. The tequila was tasty and the tour was fun. Arrive back at the resort by 4 and head to the pool. Order a drink. Small drink. Size of a Dixie cup. Almost $15 USD. What the hell. We hadn’t paid attention to that previously. Drinks are extortion. Summary for Wednesday. Decent day, almost felt like the start of a holiday, but we only have 2 days left.
THURSDAY
We heard great things about the marina, so we walk up the beach to see it. We expected little shops and some restaurants. We were told there’s a market. Have since found out that “market” means 7/11. Walked through Sea Garden. At this point it seems more appealing than where we’re staying. Decide to try something fun and make a reservation for a Tapanaki dinner at Gong. Blown away at the prices. One cervaza, 365 MX pesos. That’s $28.40 CDN dollars. Three 750mL bottles of water at Gong. 660 pesos. That’s $52 CDN. Dinner for 4 was $505 USD with the 3 bottles of water included. The food was mediocre. The presentation was average. The table behind us had a far better presentation. The service was abysmal. We had to find our host Fabian to get service. Met a family at the dinner that was in Grand Luxxe. They said their room needed a refresh.
FRIDAY – THE LAST FULL DAY
We decided to venture in to Nuevo Vallarta on our own. Had some fun, but whatever I ate didn’t agree with my stomach. When we arrived back at our room, the water was turned off. With an upset stomach and not feeling well, this is an inconvenience. During my washroom visit, my wife and youngest son went to the GM pool around 4:40 pm. They sat down at an empty patio chair and a lady came out of the pool, and screamed that was her chair. There was nothing on it or under it. She then proceeded to shoulder check my son to the ground accusing him of stealing her “reserved” chair. 7 months ago my son had an almost complete spinal fusion due to severe scoliosis. At no point is it ok to assault another guest, but especially considering what he has just come through. By the time I got there, 7 security members and the chief concierge, Claudia, could only try to whisk us away so that we wouldn’t cause a scene in front of other guests (who all saw what went down, but nobody wanted to get involved). When I asked Claudia if anyone asked him if he was ok, Claudia told us that she didn’t know our son was hurt because we didn’t tell her. Our entire family is first-aid trained, and the first question on ANY scene where there’s an assault is, “does anyone need medical assistance?” But she reversed it to blame us that we didn’t tell anyone that my son was hurt. We asked for the police to be involved and were told that police do not come on to the property. Does that make you feel safe knowing that security isn’t there for you because this is private property? We were then escorted to the “medical team” who we find out cannot assist in any way. They don’t even have Tylenol for pain. But they were happy to send us to La Plaza to spend more money on simple medicine. I’d say that for a resort this size the medical dept is useless. I guess if you had heat stroke, they can let you sit in their air conditioned office, otherwise there’s no help here.
What did the resort do about the assault, nothing. We reached out to our medical provider at home for their recommendations and had an immediate appointment for the day after we returned. Rejected and worried sick, we return to our room and there’s a smoke alarm going off in a room somewhere on our floor. We let a staff member know. He laughs, “we’re probably all safe” and walks away.
Manager / Supervisor Hector, lovely individual, definitely the nicest person all week, visited us in our room. There’s an investigation happening about the assault but there’s no information that can be shared with us due to guest privacy. I’m sure the offending party’s side of the story will paint a completely different picture. The way the rest of this trip has gone, I know they’ll be right and we’re wrong.
On checkout I filled out an honest review on the iPad that they hand you. A Vidanta rep, Elizabeth Barrera, has since said, “the hotel is not responsible for the actions of other guests.” From what we saw, other than you’d be an a-hole to do it, my guess is that you’re welcome to push, shove, steal, assault as much as you’d like and the only ramification is that if the victim makes a scene, the victim will asked to leave. I absolutely have no trust in the security or medical team. We demanded the police be involved and were told that the police do not have authority on Vidanta property. We demanded that the other party be charged with assault. Nope. On-site security will only stand with their hands politely folded in front of them and won’t say a word or get involved.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
We’ve travelled all over the Caribbean. I don’t understand why people come here. I agree that the property is lovely, but it’s not worth the money. Food and drinks are far more expensive than need be. The people that we’ve dealt with have been sub-standard at best. There’s no true service here — the only thing that has been made clear is that there’s a “class” system and we’re the bottom of it. If you purchased the biggest and best, why? Why not go anywhere else? Honestly, I can’t say we’ll ever go back to another Vidanta property. I can see that if you keep upgrading you’re locked in the system and cannot escape. You have to pay the extortion fees. We’re owners and paid our fee to be at MP plus an additional fee to add another room. Met a family in the Grand Mayan pool who buys a week off the internet every year. This year cost them half of what we paid. They’re guests that simply found a room for sale on the internet. Honestly, the only way to make this better is to refund our Vidanta ownership and the cost of this previous vacation. This was the only “vacation” that I could hardly wait to leave and return home.
In summary, this resort has been nothing but a disappointment. They promise you comfort and security, but at the end of the day they just want your money and won’t stand behind anything they say. Trust in Vidanta? ZERO.
Update July 28, 2023: I have reached out to Daniel Chavez, listed as a founder of Groupo Vidanta (https://www.danielchavezmoran.com/en/index.html) with no response. I have reached out to Vidanta customer service, (customerservice@vidanta.com), also no response — Update: we have a response and you can follow along via the links on the left. I have tried to post this comment in both Vidanta FaceBook groups (https://www.facebook.com/groups/355068005035566 and https://www.facebook.com/groups/2302231506756661) and neither group will allow this post. I’ve posted a snippet of the above review to Google and although Vidanta is replying to other Google Reviews, they have not replied to this one. Be aware that as soon as there’s an issue, Vidanta will turn their back on your. They only want your money and will not support you.
