Marival Vacation Club

We stayed at the Marival 4/13/07-4/20/07.

RESORT- For the money this resort was fabulous! The rooms on the hotel side are nothing special- just your average hotel room, but we had a lovely pool/ocean view. We did have a look at the timeshare condo and they were much nicer-they showed us ocean front- I did notice that quite a few of the timeshare condos don't have ocean views.

The 4 pools are very nice. The kids pool has water slides and play grounds, the 2 larger pools have swim-up bars, the adults only pool was a disappointment- no shade and no bar, however the bar is just a short walk away.

STAFF- The staff was wonderful!- accommodating, responsive and very helpful. The room service staff went out of their way to go to one of the other on site restaurants to get us an entree' that wasn't on the room service menu and then delivered it faster than we would have expected to be served if we were sitting in the restaurant-we gave them a generous, well deserved tip which they really appreciated.

FOOD- The food was better than average for an all inclusive resort- we've stayed at some much more expensive, higher end resorts in the Caribbean and the food isn't up to those standards- but it was better than most Mexican all inclusive resorts. The a la carte restaurants had really good food so be sure to make reservations for those when you arrive.

BEACH- The beach was beautiful!!! Nuevo Vallata has the nicest sandy beach in PV and the Marival has really capitalized on that feature. They have plenty of palapas on the beach- so that you can enjoy the ocean and beach while getting out of the sun and sitting back to read a good book. Or you can enjoy the sea and and activities they offer. It's pretty quite in front of the pool where thay have roped of the swimming area. The beach is kept clean and the sand and beach go on for miles.

This is the Pacific so don't expect the warm clear waters you find on the east coast (Caribbean side) of Mexico- but you'll never see a sunset that compares on the east coast.

COMPLAINTS- No major complaints- The resort does not have a wait staff around the pool or on the beach to bring drinks. I may be spoiled but this definitely affects their rating as a beach resort. They do have bussers that come around to pick up empties which keeps the beach and pool area nice and clean. Timeshare staff- They promise not to be pushy if you attend the presentation- but as we expected- that changes when they get you in a meeting. The 90 min presentation stretched into 3 hours. They were pretty nice but avoid the American TS manager; he is pushy and rude to the people that work for him. The TS prices are really high for this class of resort and I quickly determined that to add in the additional expense to be all inclusive the TS would easily cost me more per year than I spent for this vacation.

OVERALL- A wonderful vacation at a very nice resort. For the price it was amazing.