TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

Excellent stay. Traveled during the rainy season but I enjoyed every minute. Be careful with the wildlife. The monkeys will come to the room via the balcony. The vendors on the beach are affiliated with th...e resort, so be aware. The outside vendors are friendly but sometimes unwelcome.

I am not an all inclusive kind of person. I was pleasantly surprised by the service and the delicious food. There are so many pools at the resort that it never felt over crowded. Most importantly…going ...back to service, I left my Athleta Jacket and AirPod Pros at check-in on Day 1. I knew it had been taken by another guest because I could see the AirPod location inside a building. In less than 12-hours, Security at the hotel is returning my jacket and AirPods to me. I’m am so impressed by their prompt attention that I would come back and recommend to anyone looking for a vacation in paradise.

This all inclusive resort is nice. Staff are friendly, very welcoming. The resort does not seem to be very handicap accessible. The resort is very dark at night , definitely needs more lighting outside as ...guest are out walking to their rooms.

Since the resort will be closing in about a month, I won’t make it too long, as I’m sure there will be significant changes by the time it reopens next year. My adult daughters and I stayed from May 13 to M...ay 22. Airport/transfers: We arrived on a Tuesday around noon. Customs and immigration were a breeze, and we were quickly through. This is a very efficiently run system by them. We booked airport transfers through Ulf Halbgebauer Briceño Real Tours, and the process was incredibly smooth. Our driver, Juan Ponce, was a Costa Rican bull riding champ and also our tour guide on our excursion. He was fantastic and highly recommended. It took about 90 minutes to get to the resort, and everything you read about the horrible roads is true. The country is beautiful, but the roads are terribly maintained. Resort: The resort itself is beautiful, and the staff is incredible and very hard working. There’s a lot of walking to and from the restaurants if you’re in one of the lower buildings. Power went out more than a dozen times or more Beach/Pools: Despite what many people said about the beach, we thought it was great. We also went in knowing it wasn’t a Caribbean beach, so we kept an open mind. We spent most of our time there. We could always get a chair, which is not the case with the pool. It wasn’t crowded at all, which we loved. It was calm enough to just float in, but be mindful that there’s no barrier rope, so you might fall asleep and wake up a ways out. The water was clear and refreshing for the hot days. There are vendors everywhere, so it’s a public beach. They’ll try to sell you stuff, but a polite “no thank you” is all it takes. The pools are okay. There’s plenty of room and space in them, but there’s only one swim-up bar, which surprised me. I could see this being a renovation point when Marriott takes over. The Infiniti Edge pool overlooking the ocean was nice as well. Restaurants and bars: We dined at every restaurant (some twice) and all were decent. Nothing extraordinary, honestly. The teppanyaki was probably our favorite, and the only one requiring reservations, which could be made right on the app. All other restaurants we walked to and were generally seated promptly. At the Italian restaurant, I had forgotten my pants, so we had to eat outdoors. I was fine with it, as it was my own fault, but it can get hot sitting outside. Most of the bars were pretty good. Our favorites were the preferred bar (shoutout to Nelson) and the Beach bar, which was usually manned by JC (Juan Carlos), who was probably the best resort bartender. He was friendly, made amazing drinks, and went out of his way to make our experience great! Rooms: This is where they fall short. They definitely need a refresh when Marriott takes over. We were preferred in building 1A (rooms 1204 and 1205) and had a junior suite with a tropical view and a master suite with a tropical view. The air conditioning in the rooms was terrible. I tried to get them to fix it multiple times, but the thermostats never hit below 72, even though I had set them at 65. The 72 was actually 76, according to my own temperature gauge. The hot water was also non-existent, and I asked about it a few times, but I got tired of asking. Housekeeping would also come in and turn the ceiling fans off when they cleaned and push the thermostats up, which I don’t understand why. The view was great—a partial ocean view. Monkeys on our balconies almost every morning (even as I type this), which was honestly the highlight of the trip. Excursions: We used Ulf Halbgebauer Briceño Real Tours for a mini combo they called it, but it was a 12-hour day to the waterfall, zip-lining, mud baths, hot springs, and a sloth sanctuary. As mentioned above, Juan was our driver, and he was fantastic. Highly recommended! We also did the $1 hour jungle/beach ATV tour through Angie Zapata Adventures, which was absolutely great. We visited roughly 5-6 beaches and saw some wildlife on the way to each. She was fantastic arranging this for us. My daughter also had a massage on the beach with her, and she loved it. Overall, this was our first trip to Costa Rica, and we had a great time. We’ll be curious to see what changes are made in the year it will be shut down for renovations. I also feel terrible for the 700+ that work so hard now that will be out of work while the renovations take place.

Outstanding resort and the convenience of an All-Inclusive (our first) is totally the best. Our room, junior king suite, looked out over the forest and beautiful landscaping and we had birds and monkeys (...white face & howlers) and even a racoon (outside) one night. The food is top notch with the exception of the Mex restaurant, but the Japanese, Italian, Seafood Grill, World Buffet were all outstanding. The Buffet (breakfast, lunch and dinner) is simply awesome, but you have to take a break now and then from such a large quantity and choices and eat at the other restaurants where you get a normal serving, and outstanding food. The bars are all great as well - well stocked, and such fun to lay around the pools with a drink in your hand whenever you want. Walking is essential, even though they have many many electric carts carrying people here and there, but it's a very large site and lots of walking. There are ample opportunities to sign up for several excursion offers as well, since this resort is remote (90 min from airport and 10 miles from nearest town - La Cruz). We didn't have to rent a call because there was so much to do at the resort, but we did take 2 excursions (one half day 4x4 tour to 5 beaches and one all day to the rain forest & a hike to a waterfall, and a coffee/cocoa/plantain/sugar cane farm which was very enjoyable and interesting. Excellent experiences and our 2 tour guides were very experienced and knowledgeable about what they were taking us to, that it made it fun and more interesting. We saw sloth, coatimundi, poisonous frog and snake, beautiful flowers, and a fun hike to the falls. This one also included lunch at a local restaurant near the park entrance that was very good food. The swim pools are outstanding! I'm a swimmer and many of them are so large that I didn't have any problem finding places to swim laps early in the morning before everyone hit the decks around 10am. Some of them run together, under a bridge, water falls into the next pool, and a swim-up bar that's fun. This resort is for families I'm sure, but we didn't see any teenagers, and only a small amount of babies/tiny children. It didn't seem like a place to take kids anyway because of all the adult activities.