My husband & I love to travel. We have gone on several cruises & have enjoyed them immensely. Wanting to try something new this time, we chose the Royal Suites Turquesa by Palladium which we were told was a 5 star resort. We always have a positive attitude & when we are on vacation, we have the attitude of “we are not at work, we are not at home cooking & cleaning, so how bad can it be, right????” We usually can find the good in anything, so I will start with the GOOD:
We thought the butler service was a great idea. We loved that our butler made reservations for us at the restaurants so we wouldn’t have to wait in line to be seated. That being said, the butler was only at her desk a couple times for short periods of time so it was difficult to get the chance to speak with her. We loved the fact that they have an adult only section of the resort & beach. It was very peaceful & quiet.
Now for the BAD:
The weather was awful. There were thunderstorms every day & night. In the whole 7 days we probably got a total of a few hours of sun. The rooms were leaking & the resort was flooding. It made getting around pretty difficult. The weather couldn’t have been helped, I admit, but I do think the resort could have made things a little easier for us or compensated us in some way. I am not sure if it was the weather, or if this was just par for the course, but their attitudes were very poor.
Which leads me to the UGLY:
We booked the upgraded swim-up room specifically to have immediate access to the pool. Well, our pool was broke the whole week. The Jacuzzis were broke the whole week. They made no attempt to apologize or to switch us to a different room. Everyone in our building was complaining. We tried to be reasonable but all we were told was “is broke, Senor”. The advertised free wifi didn't work. Again, when we asked about it we were told “is broke, Senor” The only way we could use the internet is if we made the trek thru the floods to go the lobby. Our A/C worked but not that great. We heard some people saying their rooms were cold as ice but ours barely worked. We tried to tell them but they didn’t seem to care. We were told there would be trains making stops at lobbys & restaurants every 10 to 15 minutes. Well, when they were running, the wait was always 30 to 45 minutes. We met an older couple who said they had to wait a whole hour for the train to come to their stop & they would have walked in the rain but they had arthritis. We were told that we could ask anyone to take us anywhere on the complex with a club car or golf cart. Once we were told “the train will come” & another time we asked the driver to take us to the main gate & he simply said “NO” so we walked in the rain! We asked the man at the front desk to show us where Hemingway’s bar was on the map. We even showed him the word “Hemingway” in writing. He said he didn’t know & he called 2 people & then he said “it’s on the map. The train will take you there” so we had to go find it ourselves. Something we found to be funny was on an electronic survey, one of the questions was to rate the staff of the Hemingway bar. Kind of funny since the staff didn’t even know it existed! We booked a tour that was leaving early in the morning. The night before, I tried to preorder breakfast thru room service. The room service breakfast starts at 7 & will get to your room in 40 minutes. That would have been too late so the night before when I called & requested to have breakfast sent to me at 7:30 the next morning, he said “No, you call tomorrow”. That was a huge inconvenience that could have been avoided. What would have been the harm in allowing me to call ahead for one morning? In the Royal Gourmet, my husband said that instead of having an appetizer, he preferred to try 2 different entrees. He was told “NO”. He thought he misunderstood so he rephrased it & the waiter said “NO, ONLY 1!” We were offended since in our opinion, we PAID for that food! At the same restaurant on a different night my husband dropped a fork. When it hit the floor, everyone around us could hear it, even the waiters. They turned their heads in our direction. My husband waited a moment & when it appeared no one would bring him a new fork, he got up to go across the restaurant to get it himself. We had to hold up our glasses to request water refills since it appeared that no one was even paying attention to our table. On several occasions we were served the wrong orders & had to wait even longer. On one occasion, they forgot to make our order & we had to wait a very long time to get our lunch. At the Japanese restaurant, when I walked in the door dripping wet from rain, the girl at the door didn’t offer me a towel; instead she glared at me, shook her head at me, & placed a wet floor sign beside the puddle of water I created. When we went outside of the resort, we saw that other resorts offered their guests umbrellas & rain ponchos. We would have bought them and used them if they were available to us but instead, at our resort we were treated as though our wetness was a nuisance to them. What was a nuisance was we brought very nice dress clothes that were ruined due to the mildew of constantly being wet. Our room was leaking, as all others were, so no clothing would dry even after being draped all over the room all week. The only thing the staff would do was keep bringing us towels to place all over the floors & tables. My husband went to discuss these matters with Miguel. (the apple rep) Miguel was very friendly but he didn’t seem to be very helpful. He, along with all others, would just smile & tell us to relax. There were no solutions to any of the problems, no apologies, just absent smiles. My husband explained to Miguel that we booked the upgraded room specifically for perks that we weren’t receiving such as the pool & the wifi. Miguel told my husband that all of the royal suites were equal in price. When my husband told Miguel that wasn’t the case, Miguel only smiled & said he didn’t know because he had only been there for 2 weeks. He said that he already knew that the pool was broken since other guests were telling him about it but that we were to “expect” these things since we were in a new section. But, more than a month before our vacation when we asked if this new section would be completed in time, we were told that everything was to be ready & open on May 1st. Had the pool in our building ever been working, or was it working at one point & then it broke? Either way, that was the whole reason of booking a swim-up room & Miguel could only tell us that it was “to be expected”. In the end, we saw the maintenance crew capping off all the jets in the pool so it looked as though there was no hope of it working anytime in the near future. The crew was digging holes all over the place & it appeared that there was some sort of plumbing/piping issues. I understand things break but it seemed as though this place was nowhere near being ready to be open to the public. I believe we were misled greatly. We were also told that there would be no problem with having a late check-out. Our flight wasn’t due to leave till after 8pm. We were told by the man at the desk that we had to be out of our room at noon. We said that seemed too early & asked if we could have late check-out. He became annoyed & said “only 1 more hour. You be here at 1:00.” So, we went to eat lunch & at 12:30 we attempted to go to our room to get our luggage & our keys had already been disabled. We had to go find a maid to let us into our room. Then even though it seemed as though they were in a hurry for us to leave, we had to call twice for a bellboy to pick up our luggage.
All of this being said, individually all of these complaints are not that big a deal but when you combine them into a whole week, it adds up to be very bad vacation. Like I said, we are not the type to complain about anything. We are passive people and we are very fun people. We usually make it a point to make the most of every minute of our vacations. We are usually annoyed when we see guests do nothing but complain thruout their vacations. But when we were blatantly being treated with rudeness & disregard, we were shocked & disgusted! On a cruise we are treated as though we are their friends. They get to know us, they get to know our traveling companions, they even learn how we drink our coffee. It’s the little things that matter to me. An example of how this resort was the exact opposite is what happened on our last day. We had been there for 7 days. We saw the same people over & over. We recognized them & assumed they would have at least known we had been there. Sitting in the lobby after the whole check-out fiasco, a member of the staff actually came up to us & told us that our room would be ready soon. There was never any attempt of them trying to get to know us or making us feel that we mattered. We are not wealthy people. This was a huge expense to us. We even added to that expense by purchasing the insurance plan but how can we be compensated for all of this? Not to mention the vacation days that we can not get back from our employers. We feel as though it’s all been wasted.
There are no other words to explain our disappointment & dissatisfaction.
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