Angel's Dreams Cancun Review

[Angel]

Ok ladies, here is my review. Hope this helps for all other Dreams brides.

 

Flight to Mexico/US Airways - A

The flight to Mexico was great. No complaints. We had a layover in Charlotte for about an hour. We did have to wait for about 30 minutes to take off because there were about 13 planes ahead of us. I thought it was weird for a Monday morning. The flight attendants on both flights let me keep my dresses in the first class closet, which was great. As soon as we stepped in the plane they offered to take my dress for me. They were all really nice. Even the flight back was great. No delays or anything. Coming back I just folded my garment bag with my dress in it and put it in the overhead bin.

 

Cancun Airport - A

Just one thing I wanted to add about the airport. We called most of our family and friends before they came down as well, when you're looking for a taxi or if you already have travel arrangements just walk directly outside. Right before you get outside you will see people standing at podiums on both sides of the wall stopping you and basically trying to sell tours and a bunch of other stuff to do around Cancun. They caught us and talked to us for about 10 minutes. They offer a lot of stuff but I was just ready to get out of there and get something to eat. Everything else about the airport was fine. Going through Customs and security went pretty fast. Very pleased at how that went.

 

Dreams Resort - A+++++++ (can you tell I love it)

It only took us about 20 minutes or so to get there. The American Express transportation guy (who we had transportation arrangements with) dropped other people off at different resorts so the ride wasn't long at all. We enjoyed looking at everything along the way. Upon arriving everyone greets you with "Welcome home", some cookies, champagne and a scented damp towel to cool you off. Everyone at the resort was so nice and accomodating. Everone basically caters to your every need. When checking in they upgrades us, so we were on the 5th floor (5104), had a dolphin view, we were able to see EVERYTHING. Great view and really nice room. Cecilia (now a WC as well) basically handled everything we needed as far as our room. They called us the next morning to make sure everything was ok and to see if we wanted to be upgrades. We first asked where it would be and they offered an ocean view. I loved the room we were in and really didn't feel like moving everything so I said nah. That was the first room we were in. We were suppose to move into a honeymoon suit on Sunday morning (day of our wedding) but it wasn't going to be ready in time for me to start getting ready for my wedding so they put us in a tower suit (6166)which was HUGE!!!!! *Side note: if you stay in the tower the floor numbers are in the middle of the room numbers. So our room was 6166 so we were on the 16th floor.*

It was like an apartment, it was so many doors and corners to turn I got lost a few times. It was really nice!!!! Loved it!!! The next day we moved in a honeymoon suit (5241)which was nice as well. It had an upstairs and downstairs, 2 balconies, 2 bathrooms, living room etc...... really nice as well. So all 3 rooms we stayed in were really nice. No problems with bugs or anything which was a big concern of mine. If we ever go back to Cancun we will stay there. We loved it.

 

Food - A+++++++++ for breakfast

B for lunch and dinner

All of the restaurants were really good. We ate at the World Cafe for breakfast and ordered room service once. The room service breakfast isn't as good as the World Cafe so I highly recommend the World Cafe for breakfast. Those are really your only 2 options. They have a wide variety of food so anyone going shouldn't have a problem choosing what to eat. If they served breakfast all day long I would have eaten omelet's at least twice out of the day. They are sooooooooo good!!(sorry, just reminiscing)

We ate at the Seaside Grill a couple of times and Himitsu once. I don't eat beef or pork so the only thing I was able to eat was salad, chicken and seafood, which everything I had was great. The Mixed Civiche and Salsa Dip at Oceana was sooooo good. Highly recommend trying it. My husband LOVED the Surf and Turf so he recommends that at the Oceana as well. We basically ate at the Oceana every night as well. We did order room service a couple of times which as just OK. The Snack Shack was good for lunch (especially the fries).

************************WARNING******************* ********

On the beach where the lighthouse and dock is, be aware that if you eat on that side of the beach the birds/seagulls have no problem with helping themselves with whatever you are eating. So be prepared to share. I was reclining on the beach chair with a plate of fries resting on my belly and all of a sudden birds dove down on me and was grubbin' on my fries. It freaked me out I kinda threw the plate up in the air so fries went everywhere and the birds went crazy. I laugh about it now but I was pissed.

 

OOT Bags

I got all my OOT items from Target. Everything was travel size and everybody was thankful for having the little extra items they may have forgotten. Cecilia, once again did an extremely awesome job. We gave her a list of names the morning of everyones arrival. She arranged for all of our guest to be on the same floor as ours. I was mainly concerned about my mom and sister because she was traveling with my little ones. But, she gave us all of their room numbers. Which made it easy to pass them out because I didn't have to walk all over the resort.

 

Wedding Coordinators - Gaby A,

Cecilia & Claudia B

I worked with all 3 wedding coordinators. Gaby was as sweet as she can be. She was only there for a week and then she left. Cecilia mainly helped us with the room because she worked at the front desk. We got into a little disagreement but I will touch on that when I get to checkout. We met with Claudia the day after we arrived and everything went well. She went over the package and she gave us credit for things we didn't use. Because there are no individual prices for each item, she basically just lets you get extra things you may want. We didn't use the photo package so she let us get red sashes on the ceremony/reception chairs and an upgraded cake with decorations. I did my own hair and makeup so she let me swap it for a manicure and pedicure. She stated to us that kids are half price but we didn't see where she gave us credit for it. The final total that she gave us was the total that I calculated before I left home. We had our rehearsal on Saturday at 2pm and Gaby handled everything. Everything went smoothly there.

 

Rehearsal Lunch - A

After the rehearsal we met everyone Oceana. We told them we had a large group and asked if if they would be able to accommodate everyone. He was able to put everyone next to each other but at different tables. Worked out well and everyone had a great time.

 

Flowers - A

I had red roses for everything. My bouquet, corsages, boutonnieers, centerpieces, and cake flowers were all roses. Everything was fresh and delivered to my room about an hour before the wedding. Whomever put everything together did an awesome job. Can't say anything more about that, everything was perfect.

 

Photographer - Citlalli (from Claudia Rodriguez Photography)

I can't really grade her on anything because I haven't received any pictures or anything as of yet. But one thing I wanted her to do that she didn't was take a good picture of me and Sanford's rings on our hands. It was really windy so I'm not too excited to see the pictures at all. I can only imagine what they are going to look like.

 

Videographer - A++++++

I'm not really sure if it was Mike Cantarell or someone from his team that video taped everything but did a great job. Our video was suppose to be 30 minutes long but because it was so windy he could only get 14 minutes of decent shots to edit. To compensate for the 16 minutes that we didn't get he offered to contact Citlalli and add photos or upload our video online. Since we had people that couldn't attent the wedding we chose to have him upload the video for it.

 

Ceremony - B

We had our legal ceremony before we left so we just had a symbolic ceremony and I'm glad that it didn't run too long. Thank God!!! Our ceremony was at 3pm. The wind that day almost knocked me down a couple of times. We asked Gaby to have the ceremony in writing so I could read over it. She was able to have it delivered to our room Saturday evening. We aren't religious people at all so we wanted him to revise the wording a little bit. Sanford talked to him before the ceremony and he was completely okay with it. I guess he just revised it as he went along. He did a good job though. I didn't get to have the red carpet because nothing could hold it down because the wind kept blowing it away. I made the CD of what I wanted to walk down the aisle to and gave it to Gaby. They played it right on time. It was 5 minutes long so it was more than enough time for everyone to make it down the aisle. We were struggling with the wind but we made it. That's why I gave it a B, even though I couldn't do anything about the wind.

 

Cocktail Hour and Dinner - A for Cocktail Hour

F for Dinner

After the ceremony everyone got champagne, except for me and the kids, we got Shirley Temples. After that we went off with Citlalli to take pictures. It was suppose to be outside but we moved everything inside because we didn't want everybody to be eating sand. We had 3 cold choices consisted of melon, shrimp, and 3 different cheese. The 3 hot choices we chose were shrimp, zucchini and beef rolls. We didn't get to sample anything but everything was good from what our guest told us. Now onto the dinner. I HATED my whole dinner!!!! I would have been satisfied with going right over to the Seaside Grill and having my dinner there. We had the Lobster Bisque, Organic Garden Salad, Duo Dreams (can't remember what that was), and the Bella Alaska. The Bella Alaska was really really sweet but the icecream on the inside was really good. My mom and I had the chicken and it was ok but the mashed potatoes just tasted funny. I didn't like anything about it. I was really disappointed and ready for the night to be over so I could eat.

 

DJ Mannia - A+

DJ Mannia did an excellent job. From the time we sat down for dinner until the last dance he played just about everything. He was playing some old school music that all of us were reminiscing on. He popped in our DVD that had our first dance song on (Kenny Lattimore-For You) and when that was done he kept it going and had the crowd on the floor the whole time after that. He let me choose the last song so I chose Walk it out by UNK. By that time I was tired and ready to enjoy the jacuzzi. It was funny because it was only 8pm. That was just enough time for me. At one point he played Fatman Scoop Put your hands up (unedited version), and I basically had to tell him to cut that one short because it does have cursing at the end and I didn't want the kids to be hearing that. He did cut it and went right to the next song. So if anyone is booking him just tell him beforehand if you have kids attending.

 

Checkout- D

The reason why I am giving checkout a D is because Cecilia got into a disagreement about the final bill. I forgot to point this out before but because our photographer was with us for more than a certain time we had to provide meals for them. So that was 2 extra people we had to pay for which was fine. I completely forgot and told Gaby right away. They got their food and they were fine. Well when Sanford was checking out I was wondering what was taking him so long. I went up to them to see how much it was and it was almost $200. I told them someone needed to break it down because 2 photographers dinner does not equal up to $200. They called Claudia three times because I remembered she told us that kids were half price and we paid full price for them. So I told the guy to tell Claudia that we paid full price for the kids and to take the difference and apply it to the photographers meals and we'll take care of the difference. After about 3 phone calls back and forth I told him to get her on the phone and have her come out here because someone isn't understanding me. Cecilia came out and I don't think she understood what I was trying to say. I explained to her once again that she charged us full price for the 3 kids and since we had 2 extra meals to pay for we should only be charged for the difference. She wasn't getting it. I tried to write it out, talk a little slower thinking she would get it but she just wasn't. And at that point I was getting frustrated and so was she and she just said well you told Gaby you needed 2 extra meals and that's what you have to pay for. So I just said well get Claudia out here so she can show me the breakdown of me only paying half price for the kids. Cecilia went in the back with the one guy. By that time I was a tad bit loud because she wasn't understanding so I'm sure they were trying to figure out a way to get me out of there so none of the other guest would be concerned about their service. We were also waiting for our ride back to the airport so Sanford was like I'll just pay for it so we won't miss our ride. I said NO, they are trying to charge us for something that isn't right and on top of that there was a $25 charge that nobody could tell what it was for. And I told them that it's not that I don't want to pay it's just not the right amount and someone needs to give me a breakdown. A couple minutes later the guy comes back out (never seen Cecilia again) and says we aren't going to charge you for anything just write everything down on this paper. So we didn't have to pay for anything but it still bothered me because I didn't want them to think I didn't want to pay. That wasn't the case at all. We just wanted a clear understanding of everything. Other than that everything else went smoothly.

 

Well that's the end of it. Other than the wind and checkout, everything went according to plan.

Sorry if anything is unclear or misspelled.

[girlkin]

Congrats Angel. Can't wait to see pictures!

 

BTW I send you a PM, im also in VA and considering Dreams.

 

Kim

[bbpacco]

long and nice review Angel! I am sorry about the check out part and wind... But hey, u had a great ceremony, and married to the man you love, that's all it matters!

 

Congra again~

[kiki317]

Great review and Congratulations again! I can't wait to see the pictures!

 

Question- was the wind that bad everyday? or just (coincidentally) on your wedding day?

 

thanks again!

[Bianca]

Congrats Angel! Sounds like everything went great!

[*Casey*]

Awesome review!!! Thanks for all the info!!!

[Angel]

I did actually put some non-pro pics up and our video.

The two weeks that we were there, that was the ONLY day it was windy early in the day. The minister even told us that was not normal. It gets windy at night but it was windy all day long.

 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by kiki317 Great review and Congratulations again! I can't wait to see the pictures!   Question- was the wind that bad everyday? or just (coincidentally) on your wedding day?   thanks again!

[nickicolb123]

Thanks for the review Angel. Very detailed, but now i'm a little worried about Cecilia. Thanks for the heads up

[KHarrod]

Great review.

[Angel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nickicolb123 Thanks for the review Angel. Very detailed, but now i'm a little worried about Cecilia. Thanks for the heads up

Cecilia was really nice and helpful in handling everything as far as our rooms. She went above and beyond. Claudia told me she is being trained right now because she took Gaby's place so she really didn't play a part in my wedding. I did see her for a quick second during my reception but did see her again until checkout. She may turn out to be ok in handling weddings.