Really surprised with your comment on this... I thought you two were old hats on this place.. Surprised me... I think you guys will have a great time and will be happy with your decision. Look forward to meeting you guys.
There was a review on trip advisor yesterday that I actually reported. They were badmouthing the resort and they said that they hadn't even gone...they were just reviewing what they had heard from someone who had heard it from someone. I see as of today that review is gone. I don't know, maybe I'm able to have a good time wherever I go...I think some people can't no matter where they go. D
"this was such a rip off, most expensive resort very boring, fake drinks, dont go here u will regret it" Even scarier than a review like this is the 3 people that find a review like this helpful, I mean what planet are they living on.
We were a lot like snapperheads - we really debated it a bit before booking for our first trip to TTR this coming July. I use Trip Advisory A LOT and I even post reviews of places I've been - but one thing I know about Trip Advisor is that usually reviews that lack any actual content and speak in vague generalities mostly come 2nd or 3rd hand OR are submited by direct competition of the hotel/resort in question. One VERY good way to evaluate the reviews: Evaluate the ratio of review categories. Example: TTR has the following review counts: 1. 989 5* reviews 2. 745 4* reviews 3. 242 3* reviews 4. 190 2* reviews 5. 169 1* reviews This tells me that the VAST majority of reviews are 4* or better. Next, you'll notice that people usually only review when they're VERY happy or VERY unhappy with a place - so I tend to look at the 1-2* v/s the 4-5* reviews as they're generally speaking the most "accurate". And again, numbers don't lie. 359 bad reviews to 1734 good reviews? That's almost 3/1 ratio... Anyway, the other thing I look at is are the bad (or good) reviews in bunches? Hotels hire PR firms that scour things like Trip Adviser and batch post reviews. And I've noticed that they're often seasonal. People tend to make their vacation plans at the same time every year - so the best way to influence people making plans is to make sure that your positive or negative review is "fresh" when they're looking for information. So - the numbers, and the "batch" nature of the bad reviews tend to make me think that "most" of the bad reviews are garbage.... Just my opinion. (sorry for the long a$$ post)
Read my entirely too long post above - the PR firms make 5 accounts, post 5 bad reviews, and then "like" all their own reviews with the other 4 accounts. It's really kind of ridiculous, but not hard if someone's paying to do it. All you need is 5 different email addresses... gmail is your friend. Like this - check out this link: the profile is for a "50-60 year old woman" but the avatar is a 20 year old chick? And she's only done 2 reviews... funny, one was about how bad Temptations was and the other was about how great one of their rivals is.... hmmmm. http://www.tripadvisor.com/members-reviews/Carol-inNJ Not saying it's fake - but a little suspect.
She sure does look good for her age. I looked at the makeup of the reviews too, which people should probably consider more than the actual reviews when making a decision to stay somewhere as it probably offers a clearer picture as to whether people enjoyed the resort or not.
I was mostly being a smartass. I keep forgetting I haven't met and alienated any of you yet. Mrs. Snap never alienates anyone and does a lot of apologizing for my behavior. We actually were considering Vegas before TTR because we love us some Vegas, but when we priced out hotel, food, booze and boobie pool entry fees, TTR was a better deal this time, plus it's been 2 years since we went further south in Mexico that Puerto Peñasco. Plus we'll be in Vegas for work for 2 weeks in April anyway. The way we look at Tripadvisor reviews...if it's obviously some prude church lady or someone from the self-appointed moral whinority writing a 100% ripjob or if it uses the phrase "We only gave it one star because zero stars wasn't an option," we don't buy it. On the other hand, if it's a 100% glowing reacharound handjob of a review, then we don't buy into that either. Every hotel has pluses and minuses. Some of the unbelievably nice hotels I've stayed at for work were very nice...for work. Would I want to stay at them for vacation? Nope, because they might look down on things like hallway streaking, strip elevator roulette, passing out poolside while only being clothed in one flip flop and sunglasses, etc. Been 1x to Cabo TTR...been to Cancun 2x but stayed at Aventura Spa Palace. That all said, we're looking forward to our first TTR Cancun trip and to writing a fair and balanced reacharound handjob of a review.
