Great report, you actually brought up some of the same negatives I have reported and as a few others also. We too are going to give it some time to adjust and manage their growing pains. The boot comparison is a good one.
The problem I think is that management doesn't consider these things to be a problem...they are looking for a different demographic ...'vegas pozer' instead of 'key west partier'....and so these things we consider bad won't be seen as that negative to the pozer crowd. If their subtly more 'pozer' marketing strategy starts changing this demographic it's not going to get better but worse. Jnine's description of "mr industrial design" had me nodding my head. I remember the first time I saw the video with the designer describing his 'concept' and as someone who works in marketing myself the red flags were already waving. I actually have hope though as from what I have read they don't really seem to have pulled it off well..so i think the crowd they want will choose a Breathless over TTR any day of the week so they are probably going to have to face the reality eventually that WE are they meal ticket.
Whoa! Somebody actually gave me a "Disagree" on my TR, huh. Interesting. Let's see, responding to y'all who commented.... Stacia & I, like Randy & Kay, Cortus, Ivan/Sharon, etc., live in Houston, and Houston is generally even hotter than Cancun in the summer months (we'll typically leave a Houston that's 100F and 99-100% humidity to get down to a Cancun that's 92F and 85%-ish). So, you Canadians... yep, we're wimpy and thin-blooded when it comes to cold. Our new buds from Flin Flon, Manitoba for instance.. they know and understand cold, as in COLD, way much better than we do. But, we know armpit, swamp-crotch, wet-mucky delta HOT. So, it all evens out. HumperandWoody, from Toronto, which has very temperate weather for Canada due tot he lake's presence, still giggle like schoolkids when we say "It's cold outside today." When they ask, it's ususally like 55F or something. *shrug* The above paragraph needs to be taken into account when we say "the pool water was cold." There you go. The deep/depth thing, I'm still confused about that. I totally agree with the above comments about my TR being more of a comparison with what was good and awesome, and what was not, witht he old-TTR as contrasted with the reno-TTR. By all means, don't let the report knock you out of going, you'll definitely not find any place on earth (western hemisphere so far explored that is) which has a better group of fun people to meet and party with than TTR. We vets of the old place just need to figure out the "new way" to do things. I'm thinking that as we go down the road, things like Bash being so bright at night, during party time, will probably change as the customer/guest opinions filter up to management (it seems to be a Very commen thought), the staff will almost certainly get indoctrinated in the "TTR way," or they'll be fired. Management at TTR has no compunction at all about firing people. Booze supplies will end up working out, things will get fixed to run more smoothly. Like that. In other words, the new boot will get broken in, and we'll probably end up thinking what was so special about the old boot, anyway. Oh, the no pictures thing. I "think" that was no pictures during one of the pool games. I don't think that was a no pictures at all. If it was, we're probably in trouble then, as we took lots of pics, just not during the on-stage stuff. Interestingly enough, last time at DRM they said it was now OK to take pictures of your own group, as long as you made sure that all you had Was your own person or group. I didn't try to do pics of Stacia in the hot tub, but another friend did of his lady, and nobody said anything and no security showed up. So, things on that front are... up in the air. Since I just re-read the entire thread, it occurs to me that I didn't rate the entirety of TTR, so I'll do that now. As it operated when Stacia & I were there over Halloween, barely 2 weeks after the Real Opening, I give reno-TTR 7 out of 10. If they change just a couple of easily-correctable things, it'd go up to a 7.5. If the weather was better (for us Houston wimps) that's another ahlf a point to get to an 8. Breaking up into the above 8.5 range will require major (appears major to me) upgrades in the level of service provided, fixing the seating literally everywhere (but the beach) and so forth, but those Could be done. Like said, we're already planning on being back next July. Plenty of time to get the little things worked out and I expect them to be. And... ti's freakin' July, sot he weather is going to be Fantastic, since it'll be cooler in Cancun than at home.
Hey John, thank you! I have been putting off writing a trip report and now I don't have to because you have said EVERYTHING exactly as I wanted to. You nailed it, even in your postscript regarding the fact that we will continue to return because the people and the vibe are like nowhere else. That is why my only real concern was well expressed by @funcpl27. The Premier sales manager openly admitted that they were targeting a more upscale, classier crowd and would weed out the less desirables. (aka fun people) I slept through a week at Breathless this summer and could not wait to get home! We don't need more of that, but I believe the impact has already begun. Among other things, there were a significantly higher percentage of women with tops on in the Sexy Pool than I have ever seen. I saw a post last week where someone said that only about a third of the women were topless. (BTW, at Breathless, I was the ONLY topless woman for the entire week and I never wore one at any time. You should have seen the dirty looks! Lol!) Hopefully, we can just pop in our Austin Powers teeth, say "shagadelic Baby" and have as much fun in the future as we had in the past!
She’s definitely going to need some willing participants to help keep her a float! I’m sure she won’t have any problems finding some help.
Sounds like less fun for more cost. As long as they dont mess up the people concept by being too "upscale" by increasing prices too much and pushing out the old school vibe, they should be successful. Time will tell.
