Dreams Tulum Wedding Review- Amy706 w/pics

[amy706]

Amy & Mike Dreams Tulum Wedding Review

December 5th, 2008

 

First of all, I cannot thank BDW and so many of you for all of your help, guidance, knowledge, great ideas, and fabulous templates. Special thanks to Can’t Wait (wouldn’t have made it through the closure debacle without you), Sunbride for not only having the answers but continuing to be such a resource on the DT thread!! And so many others – I’d go on all day! Thank you thank you!

 

DREAMS TULUM- Grade: A

My family, Mike (hubby) and I spent a week at DT and it was perfect! Each day new guests arrived. Everyone had an AMAZING time. We had 70 guests total, 8 children. Dreams Tulum is gorgeous, foods great, activities awesome, wedding coordinators did a great job. And for a great value.

 

ACTIVITIES- Grade: A

There is SO much to do no matter what your age or interest! I peaked my head in on a couple of the shows for a teeny bit but my family took the kids a couple times and really enjoyed them!! Circus night, Mexican fiesta night. We didn’t do a ton of the activities around the resort but my aunts, grandma, step mom laughed their a*s off doing and watching the water aerobics. I did yoga on the beach. Not too difficult but very relaxing and nice. The gym is really quite bad. Really hot and the machines are not so great and not too many of them. As gorgeous as the rest of the place is, it surprises me that the gym is so bad. Oh well – I stopped attempting exercise after the first couple of days!! Watching Mon night football on the big screen on the beach was AWESOME. The kids and my parents watched Shrek one night and loved that too!

 

Also- It is definitely quite chilly at night though to the point of cold at this time of year. I brought pashminas and probably could have worn a sweater too to keep warm! But it was GORGEOUS during the day. Overcast 1 day out of 7. The rest was sun and sun mixed with clouds.

 

SERVICE- Grade: A

Mike & I visited DT last January and the service from all of the staff was beyond my expectations and memory from the site visit! Everyone went above and beyond. You order room service and they say “it is my pleasure to take your order.†Right before we walked down the aisle we broke a champagne glass in the sink. We called. “It would be my pleasure to come and clean up the glass for you.†It was incredible. The pool staff is great- Oscar, Jamie from entertaiment. So much fun. The servers around the pool and beach were fantastic- Francisco, Alberto. They started to know us by name and our drinks choices! I cannot say enough about the service- including the spa (Jennifer the spa concierge, and Carlos- more on them later were WAY ABOVE AND BEYOND amazing). I met Javier the concierge we all speak to- wonderful! Daniel Mellado came to meet me when we arrived since we had spoke so much around the closure. He was magnificent. He also came to say goodbye when we left, gave us his card, if we want to return or go to another AM resorts spot for an anniversary. It was amazing and every one of our guests commented on how great the service was.

 

ROOMS- Grade: A-

My entire immediate family was upgraded free of charge to Dreams Suites. Some of my friends were and some weren’t. Be forewarned though if you pay for an “ocean view†– many of the oceanviews are partial ocean views to the point that you sort of need to crink your neck to see the ocean. Mike and I paid for an oceanview. We spent one night in it – it was fine but you really couldn’t see the ocean. They had upgraded us to Dreams side which was nice but we wanted to go all out so we ended up changing to an ocean FRONT dreams suite. We actually got the room on the ground floor right by the seaside grill which was PERFECT because I was able to walk right out of my room and down the aisle! Room 8139. Oh- also a tip. We found that some of the rooms were hot and some were FREEZING and we all couldn’t figure out how to change it. At one point when Luis (concierge who is adorable and so great) came to help me with my safe which wasn’t working (rings locked in it on the day of the wedding!—batteries were running out so it wouldn’t let me open it!). Anyway he said you have to hold the up/down, on/off button down for SEVERAL seconds or else it doesn’t do anything. Wish we learned that earlier. We froze our butt off all week!! Ha! I did go to a few hacienda rooms of my guests and they are quite charming. Everyone seemed pleased!

 

FOOD- Grade: A-

Staff at restaurants- Grade: A for servers, C for hostesses/people that seat you

they were slow to seat you even when tables were available and they were not very accommodating for large parties

 

Again, every one of our guests commented on how good the food was. My dad and step mom travel a lot and they were quite impressed with the food. They vacationed at the Moon Palace a few years ago and said they got sick of the food in 2 days and that the food here was hands down MUCH better. And so many options that they never got sick of it. We loved all of the restaurants. They all had great dishes. Here are some of our favorites:

Portofino: portabello appetizer, filet, scallops, red snapper, gnocchi, risotto.

El Patio: lime soup (its kind of like a tortilla soup; chicken broth, chicken, tortillas- YUM), mahi mahi quite good here.

Himitsu: spring rolls were FANTASTIC. All the main dishes were great. The noodles were the only ones that were just okay. It was like a thai noodle or something. I cant remember. I never ate at Gohan but I had several guests say it was good. Not great but pretty good.

World Café: ate there every day for breakfast and twice for lunch. The breakfasts are perfect. Something for everyone. I loved the fresh fruit, the fresh fruit juice & smoothie bar. Smoked salmon and nutellaJ not eaten together of course. The eggs, fresh break and pastries, etc. All big hits. I hadn’t planned on eating lunch there but Mike and I were late to meet Landy so we ran in real quickly. It was DELICIOUS. Again something for everone. Freshly grilled meat, chicken and shrimp (you can see them grill it right there). So tasty. I actually loved the mini cheeseburger I scammed from the kids table! J Fried plantains. Oh and the ceviche is incredible!! Of course guacamole, pica de gallo, etc etc. My family ate there with the kids 2 nights for dinner. They said one night was okay and one night was awesome. Not sure what was different- I guess just the selection.

 

APPLE VACATIONS- Grade: C

While we got good rates through apple and the transfers (non-private, non-direct) included. Apple messed up a LOT of our transfers. Mike and I were originally supposed to fly in on 11/30. We ended up having to change to 11/29 b/c of some flight changes. Daniel gave us a free night at DT (guilt over the closings? But we were VERY grateful) and my TA made the changes through apple. Of course when we got there they didn’t have us on for 11/29 so we had to spend literally an hour at the cancun airport while literally about 12 apple reps ran around on the phone trying to figure it out. It took a good hour. So the next day my family was supposed to arrive. 13 people flying on the same flight from Detroit and 5 from Denver. Well one of the kids from Denver was recorded as staying in one of the rooms from one of the adults coming from Detroit. As a result they had the numbers all wrong. Plus they had me and mike on their list for 11/30 (even though we came in on 11/29) and someone did not have my dad. It was all screwed up. And they had to spend almost 2 hours trying to sort it out. And this is with 5 kids, 2 of which are under 3 years old and after spending the day flying. And then of course face the bus ride. Anyway same song and dance with my brother and his fam flying in from Denver. Just ridiculous. After all of that travel plus then the long bus ride- it was just too much. They also messed up on the people that were sharing a room but flying in on different flights. Thankfully everyone made it in the end but I’m pretty pissed about all of the problems everyone had. I emailed my TA from DT and she was surprised. She had given apple eeryone’s flight information. It seemed they went by room reservaton, not flight info. Weird. And really frustrating.

 

More coming...