TR: The Alabama/Chicago/Canada crew July 29-August 5 2012

And another great trip to Cancun and the Temptation Resort has come to a close. This year was especially epic with our group now at 14 - 18 people - 10 from Alabama, my wife and I from Chicago, our friends we met last year from Montreal, other friends we met last year from Detroit, and of course all the new friends we met plus people we remembered from last year who were there again this year.

Brief review of the resort - and if any first-timers are reading this and want to ask questions, I'm happy to answer them via PM. That said:
- Overall the resort was in the best shape I've seen it - really sharp, actually. They have even more beach beds around the resort - ringing the sports pool, for example is new, and it just overall seems to be more of a higher-end feeling than ever.
- Our room was sharp, clean and functional - we were poolside, 4th floor - 3402. We tipped our housemaid $5.00 a day, for which we were rewarded with extra waters, towel animals and big smiles every day. No bugs or anything ever. Huge shower. Only thing we don't like is their soap - they have this "exfoliation bar" that's in the toiltries they provide and it has what seems to be wood splinters embedded in it. It says "oatmeal" but it was like steel wool. Bring your own soap as that is NOT conducive to a sunburn.
- They clearly have upgraded the A/C - for the first time ever our room was always nice and cool (we like the A/C COLD!) so much so that we were sleeping under the comforter. We've been to Mexico 9 times now, and that was a first ever, and that includes 5-star resorts.
- Food, as always, was good and plentiful. Love the omlettes that Rosa makes every morning. The lamb chops and veal osso buco at the Italian restaurant are not to be missed, and the grouper at the seafood restaurant (Bellavista) is fantastic. We ate twice at the Italian, twice at the Asian, twice at the Seafood and one night the resort did a pool-side dinner that was terrific. Another great new touch: they had a barbecue lunch poolside everyday - burgers, fries, chicken sandwiches, and one day, sushi. Great stuff.
- 24 hour pool - while we never took advantage of it, unfortunately, I do think that having the sports pool open for 24 hours is a good touch. It is pretty much a skinnydip fest every night, although the one night we did think about it, there were about 75 naked people in there and well ... that was too many.

So, a few negatives:
Single guys: I have to echo the theme that goes on a lot here - too many single douchebag guys. Way too many. I talked to more than a few folks that said that if the resort doesn't stop that practice, that they will stop coming. I have to agree with that. Now that said, only a few times was I overtly aware of them - there was one creep on the dancefloor a couple of nights in a row that would dance up behind our wives grinning with lasciviousness and we'd immediately steer away from him, and on too many occasions the drunken douchebags were just stumbling about, and were a pain.
Bottle Service at the pool: Sorry TTR, but bottle service in a pool with a bunch of drunk douchebags? Do you like suturing people that much? Stop.
Public Sex: Ok, I have to admit to enjoying sneaking a public quicky when one can do it, but I honestly got sick of seeing couples banging away in the corners of the sports pool, in the hot tubs of the sexy pool late at night. Eww. Made me really not want to get in the pool in the morning. If you have a sign that says you can't do this and you'll be tossed out, well ... enforce it.

PRIVATE Boobs Cruise: Final thing and I'll post a separate review of this, but our group worked with Steve to create our own private Boobs Cruise when it turned out he wasn't running one our week. I would heartily recommend doing this if you have the mass of a group to do so - you get to control your itinerary, and most important, your guest list, and it is as fun as you want to make it. Steve, thank you again for helping us book that!

As always, it's the peeps that make the event - the resort staff is great - Sarah and Amy are fantastic, and the folks we saw and met are fantastic. Great to meet (and meet again) folks from this board - including of course our great friends Chris and Tiffany (TRACO), Amber and AJ (1FunCpl001) and our Alabama crew - and meeting new folks such as WindyCityCouple, MattnLisa, Dreamers and more and more.

We will be back!

RobnStew

 

Great trip report however the single male thing is eventually, and perhaps sooner rather than later, going to come to a head. At least 70% of the trip reports from the last 3 months have had some level of complaint about it and frankly it has me wondering if a third trip is in our future or not. Management is risking alienating their primary consumer base if this issue is not addressed in some form...

 

Thanks for sharing Stew! Next year can't wait to hear you and Alisa blow away the competition with a duet for the TTR Idol comp!

Next year July 22-28!

 

Great trip report, thanks for sharing! You had mentioned the bottle service at the pool, were a lot of people cutting their feet on glass or something?

 

Not sure how they could restrict the single guy thing. It would be unfair to restrict to couples only. Could do couples and single females, but a lot of good single guys would be blocked from going. If they get tougher on policing the resort, it could clamp down on everyone's fun. They could take names of trouble makers and then prevent future bookings, but it would take some time for that to take effect.

 

What was the capacity of the resort like? Was it pretty busy?

 

Enjoyed reading your TR! It was great meeting you both! Hopefully the single guy issue is figured out quick. I never really had any issues with single guys but there were a lot around. Maybe they could try to restrict bachelor parties from being there? I don't know. But we both had an awesome week and can't wait to go back!

 

No but it was a giant accident waiting to happen for sure. This large group of drunk douchebags were waving around jumbo bottles of Belvidere like baseball bats on more than one afternoon.

 

Midweek, pretty light - I'd guess half full. Weekends were pretty packed.

 

Well, it's pretty simple. Make it a couples only resort. That would sort out the problem immediately.