Grand Sirenis Riviera Maya Brides??

[Kbodchill]

This is not very reassuring, it seems like everyone is getting different info!

 

lol @Melania: Well, at least she's married -- that's some experience

 

We're heading out to GS tomorrow so this will be my last email for a week. I'll give you girls the DL on what goes down at the meeting on Sunday. Maybe they'll explain Blanca's sudden departure...?

 

Wish me luck!

[corbeil]

Good luck! I'm excited that we will have someone to give us information right from the source.

[donnaalec11]

Hi

 

My name is donna and i have just joined to try and find out about weddings at the Grand Sirenis.  I am getting married there on the 1st June 2011 and have recently been emailing Tania or Blanca and Another lady i forgot her name. I was told that Blanca was leaving and Tania taking over but others in heree seem to think Tania has left.???   I have been getting rather confused anyway with 2 of them as i get different replies from each of them.   I have been told that we have to have our birth certificates translated into spanish by our TA but Tania says that this is not the case,  have you heard of this.  I am also awaiting reply to an email i sent a few days ago.  I am really looking forward to it but i;m also worried as the recent trip advisor reviews are not very good.  Good luck with your wedding.  Donna C

 

Hope to hear from you soon. 

[corbeil]

Hi Donna. I think the only time that you have to translate your documents is if you have been married before. As long as you name is the same on your birth certificate and you passport you should be fine. As far as I know Tania left and Blanca took over and left and now there is another new person, Araceli. One of the other girls on here was going there this week so she should have some better answers for us.

 

I have stayed at this hotel before and it was wonderful. Don't worry about the reviews too much; people are alway going to report more bad experiences then good ones. We know people that were there recently and they had a wonderful time. I am sure it will be great.

[donnaalec11]

Thank you for your reply,  i thought that was the case with the translating of documents as tania said i didn;t have to then blanca said i did only to email again saying sorry thought i'd been married before so no i didn't so just wanted to be sure. 

 

I know i shouldn;t read trip advisor but its hard not to look.  Just this week there seems to be a lot of bad ones.  But i've been looking at pictures and i'm over that now and looking forward to it again.  think its just nerves and worrying as with 26 of us going and getting married there i just want everything to be perfect and i'm sure it will. 

 

What date are you getting married?  Good luck with everything. 

 

donna

[corbeil]

We are getting married March 2, 2011 so it is coming up really soon. We have 24 people coming; some staying for 1 week and some for 2 weeks. I think everything will be a lot smoother when you are there dealing with the coordinator one on one instead of by email.

[Kbodchill]

Hi girls! I'm back from our visit to Grand Sirenis

 

I reserve the right to cut this into shorter posts This may be a long one!

 

I'll start with the not-so-great stuff:

 

We had 3 hiccups on our latest trip to Grand Sirenis (Our first trip was in 2008). I'll start from the beginning:

 

Our plane arrived in Cancun at about 9 p.m., along with about 3 other planes. The airport was a disaster, there was no line to exit, just a crowd of people all trying to get through the baggage line. Anyway, after the bus ride (an hour and a bit) we arrived at Sirenis. It was about 12:00-12:30 at that point.

 

To our surprise, the front desk did not seem to realize that we were repeat guests, despite the message indicating such in our booking confirmation. Lame. It was 12:30, and I was tired, sweaty and grumpy. We grudgingly accepted a garden junior suite, which was actually a downgrade from our original room. (Oceanview, 3rd floor) Super Lame. We would later speak with 2 conceirges about this, but nothing. They said that we needed the VIP card to show that we were repeat guests, (even though they found us in the system from our 2008 trip)  and that we would have had to sign up for this on our original trip. SO, essentially, before you are a repeat customer (on your initial trip) you enroll to be a repeat customer. You cannot do this by mail or INternet, you have to sign up while you are physically there and the perks don't begin until you receive a card in hand. Lame. We signed up on Friday morning and did not receive our VIP card until the following Wednesday. We had to call a manager when we checked out because the front desk dude did not want to give us 10 percent off our extra services (a trip to the French restaurant, which would have been free for VIP customers...) The manager listened, and eventually caved. Vip card or not, repeat customers should be treated better, I think.

 

That was the first hiccup... Regardless, we kept a sunny outlook and continued on with the trip...

 

Second hiccup was... the night that we arrived, there was no water in the rooms! We had low pressure out of the faucet, and we could flush the toilet, but no shower or tub water! This was after being on a plane for 4 hours, in the airport (fully dressed) in a crowd for 1-2 hours, and then on a bus, for another hour... all in the Mexico heat! I did not want to get into bed like that, but we had no choice. The water was on in the morning and that was the end of that.

 

Okay, I have to get rocking but I will post later. One more hiccup (not the hotel's fault) and then the good stuff, all wedding related!

 

Don't let this post worry you! All wedding related stuff is good! Sorry to keep you in suspense!

[Melaina]

Thanks for your post so far, Kbodchill!

[Kbodchill]

Okay, I'm back!

 

The only other problem we had was not the hotel's fault, but their reaction was not-so-great. On Tuesday night we heard some people banging around in the middle of the night, having a good time, whatevs. It was supposed to rain that night. Anyway, I woke up and thought I heard water. I got up, looked outside, nothing. I went to the bathroom and slipped on the floor (slick marble) because there was a HUGE puddle of water. I turned on the lights and their was water dripping through a light fixture!!! I woke up my fiancé, who called the lobby (there was no concierge in our building, it was 4 a.m.) and he got the runaround from the switchboard, and then finally reached someone,who finally got around to sending someone. So at 4:30 a.m. we get two maintenance dudes, mopping up the floor, who hear the water, and determine that the people in the room above us LEFT THE TUB ON! They went and banged on their door and turned off the water. So basically, these people flooded their room and it was dripping through our bathroom ceiling! Not cool!

 

So we go back to bed at about 5 and in the morning we go and visit the concierge to express our annoyance... The response? "we can't do anthing because it wasn't our fault" !!! Seriously??? I'm pretty sure the a-holes upstairs at least got a new room...! (Which we would have demanded if we didn't only have 1 night left). So in conclusion, that conciege was an idiot. What a horrible experience. There is a silver lining through: we spoke with a different concierge that evening who actually LISTENED to our problem, as well as our VIP problem, and she spoke with management and got us free passes to the spa (the water circuit treatment, 50$ value), so that was nice. When we spoke to management during our checkout, she seemed to be horrified that we were treated badly by the first concierge and promised to check into that for us.

 

 

So... that was the not-so-great parts of our trip. The water shortage and the room flooding were isolated incidents, sometimes, stuff just happens, right? You gotta roll with it. And they were only short-term inconveniences. The thing that annoyed us most was the crappy treatment for us as repeat customers, just because in 2008 we didn't enroll as VIPs. This was especially annoying since everyone we talked to found us in the Sirenis computer system, and confirmed that we were in an oceanview on our original trip. Then -- downgraded.

 

The moral of the story is: If you are a repeat Sirenis guest, email management before you go and indicate this. If you are a first time guest, sign up for the VIP card immediately upon arrival because they need a few days to process. They do NOT mail them to your home!!! Make sure you have it IN HAND before you leave.

 

Okay.... when I return: the good stuff!

 

PS.  We have decided on GS for our wedding, so we were very pleased with what they had to offer. Stay tuned!

[Kbodchill]

Thanks for being patient!