Sandos Caracol Eco Resort & Spa
The reservation was the best part of the trip. They were more than accommodating with booking our first ever Allen family vacation. There were fourteen of us from 2 years old to 76 years old. We settled on going August 13-17, 2011 to the Sandos Caracol Eco Resort and Spa. Why? I stayed at the Sandos Playacar Resort two years ago with a coworker and his wife. We chose the Select Club option which was absolutely awesome! We had an Ocean front room, beautiful sandy beach with no rocks, excellent cuisine in air conditioning a la carte restaurants every night and as much as you wanted to eat on the menu for our 4 night/5 day stay and fantastic customer service from everyone at the resort. Too say the least, we were treated like royalty! I bragged to the whole family how great Sandos hotels were from the customer service to the food.
You would have thought the same level of service, food, accommodations, etc… at their sister resort. Nope! Not even close and what a disappointment! This trip was a nightmare from the arrival to the departure from the resort. When all of us arrived at Sandos Caracol Eco Resort and Spa at 1:30 pm, the staff treated us like average Joes at check in. Not like a family that just spent $14,000! We were told our rooms were going to be ready at 3:00 pm. When 3:00 pm came all we heard was give us 5 minutes, however, our rooms were not ready till 4:30 pm! That’s three hours of waiting in non air conditioned lobby. My parents almost passed out sitting there in the heat.
So my brother and I went to the Select Club desk to make reservations for the a la carte restaurants. The head concierge was as rude as she could be. She informed us that we could eat one time not every night as promised by the travel website and their agent and the Sandos website. After about an hour of arguing with her is when Jana the manager for check in got involved. Jana informed us that the website was wrong and Sandos did not have to honor what was on the website. I thought vacations were supposed to be relaxing not stressful. By now my brother and I are more stressed out now and before when we were at work. By the way, this information has been changed on the both websites now about their new a la carte policy. After raising cain with Jana for another hour she conceited into giving us two nights in the a la carte restaurants and would work on the third night.
We asked to speak to Luis the Director in charge and he would not even come out of his office to see us. I thought Directors of hotels were supposed to be helpful and listen to hotel guest’s issues and concerns, but not at Sandos Caracol Eco Resort and Spa. Luis just hid in his office! To help make some amends for our trouble Jana said our first night would be a special dinner in the Italian buffet restaurant for the family at 6:30 pm.
Anyways, back to the nightmare. We were finally all checked in and headed out to our rooms which were about a mile from the beach. You could not even see or even sniff the ocean we were so far away. Then to top things off the a/c did not work very well 4 of the 5 rooms. So off to the front desk again we went. Maintenance finally came out to fix them at 8:00 pm night, but did not succeed. My family except for my brother suffered through one night of agony in a hot room. By the way, my brother waited till 10:30 pm for his extra bed to show up which looked like they had been making the bed since his request for the bed at 4:30 pm when our rooms were ready.
The next day I ran into Carlos from guest services. After almost two hours of explaining our family vacation nightmare, he was very helpful and he got us all new rooms. Some of family now had to give up Jacuzzis which we paid extra for in the new rooms, because they only have select rooms that have Jacuzzis in them. Did anyone at the resort offer to refund or give us discounts on tours to help make up for this short coming? NO!
The family headed to the Select Club beach to go swimming and have some drinks. Finally, a beach, nobody can screw this up right. This beach was so rocky you had to really watch where you stepped or you would break an ankle. In fact, the whole beach was rocky except for one little spot where everyone was swimming at the very end of the resort. Can it get any worse?
After the beach, we grabbed some lunch at the International buffet. The food was average at best. We all sat in the back corner of the restaurant. Big mistake again because there is no ac in that section and we all sweated our rear ends off!
The first night special dinner at the Italian buffet for the family went over like a ton of bricks. There was no a/c in the restaurant! The so called Special Dinner made for the whole family was a plain noodle dish with no meat! What a Special Dinner! The nightmare continues on.
The second night dinner was at the a la carte Japanese restaurant at 6:00 pm. The a/c was poor at best and the food was fair. I told the family if they did not like something or wanted to try something else they could and the waiter informed us you could order one thing and one thing only. The nightmare just keeps going.
The third night we ate at the Brazilian a la carte restaurant. Once again, the food was average and no a/c because it was an open air restaurant. My brother and I went back to see Jana and find out about the fourth night a la carte dinner. She was gone, but left a message that the reservation was at 5:30 pm for all of us at the Riveria. We asked if it could be changed and of course it could not because they were booked solid.
When we arrived at 5:30 pm to the non air conditioned restaurant, they did not even know about the reservation and there was nobody in the restaurant! We had the whole restaurant to ourselves for 45 minutes. Once again, you could only order one thing not an appetizer and soup. What a joke! Most of us ordered stuffed crab but it had no crab in it. The surf was over so over cooked that the shrimp tasted like glue and the turf tasted like shoe leather. The tuna was over cooked when it was ordered raw in the middle. When we left at 7:15 pm there were 17 out of 25 tables open. So much for being completely booked solid till 10:00 pm. By the way, none of the a la carte restaurants were ever full. In fact most of them were mostly empty every night, but according to the Select Club all of the a la carte restaurants were all full every night.
In the end, we got our a la carte restaurants after all even though the food wasn’t much better than any of the buffets and no air conditioning so we all sweated during dinner. The drinks were all watered down. You might ask how I know that we all drank enough every day to sink the island of Cozumel and no one ever got drunk or had any hangovers.
Don’t waste your money on the Select Club because you are treated just like everyone else at the resort. If you want anything done you have to bitch, scream and holler to get anything done or accomplished. When the front desk tells you 5 minutes to get something accomplished, that is really two hours. Thanks to Sandos Caracol Eco Resort and Spa, my brother and I get to hear about this trip from for the next 10 years!
I am sure I left out a ton of things that went wrong and that I won’t be the only one to write a letter of disgust about Sandos Caracol Eco Resort and Spa. Moral of this story is if you Bitch a lot and be very vocal at this resort you will eventually get what you want. I would not ever recommend the Sandos Caracol Eco Resort and Spa to anyone going to Mexico.
Tags: Average Joes, Beautiful Sandy Beach, Club Desk, Club Option, Coworker, Disappointment, Eco Resort, Family Vacation, Head Concierge, Jana, Ocean Front Room, Resort And Spa, Resort Spa, Royalty, Sandos Hotels, Sandos Playacar Resort, Select Club, Service Food, Sister Resort, Travel Website
Toronto – An ideal tourists Destination
Toronto is the largest city of Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. It is considered as Canada’s economic center and one of the largest financial...
Exotic Destinations: Mexico
First, you will be convinced about the sightseeing. For example, the views of the Yucatan peninsula are taken directly from the pirates movies. The tropical woods are combined with the sea and there...
Distinctive Beach Rentals – Ft Myers Beach
Distinctive Beach Rentals, Inc. Wow…where to start…these guys have no business being...Leave a Reply
