I got married here in November--we had SERIOUS issues planning the wedding here (specifically with room ), but had really excellent service and food (apart from room reservations still) the day-of the wedding.
LOCATION/HOTEL: Awesome. There are two beaches that are surrounded by protected mangrove trees. A mix of shaded forested areas with beach and sunset side makes for a really fabulous setting. There are two pools, one adult-only-- there is a nice waterfall feature for the kid (and grown-ups too) and a hot tub.
ROOM RESERVATIONS: Horrible. Dealing with room reservations at this hotel, specifically for a wedding where you're dealing with blocks of rooms, was absolutely horrible. We reserved a block of rooms, erring on the cautious side per the Hilton's recommendations. They told us that you could always add more rooms later. Then, about six months before the wedding, one of our guests tried to make room reservations and were told that they couldn't make a reservation in that block (this made no sense). Which meant we had to call to fix the problem, and then were told there were only 9 rooms left in our block, which was really weird because we hadn't send out information to our guests yet. Then, we learn that there is a Nascar race happening the weekend of my wedding, which they didn't tell us anything about but apparently happens every year at around the same time and which means that all the rooms in the hotel get blocked up. We get in communication with them and realize that (a) there are more than 9 rooms available in our block, but (b) the hotel is running out of othe rooms. So we reserve the rest of the rooms available for Friday and Saturday (about 5-10), with the understanding that we'll change the names later. The process of changing the names took hours and hours and still had problems up to the day of the wedding, which did not make sense. (We reserved similar blocks of rooms at the nearby Holiday Inn and Marriot and they had no problems). The other minor complicating factor (but which other hotels were able to deal with discretely and efficiently) was that we wanted to offer a room subsidy to make the rooms more affordable for our guests, but for some reason the Hilton reservation system only allows this subsidy to happen when they check out, which means guests were told the rooms were a certain rate but we told them it would be a different rate when they checked out. This led to a lot of confusion on the part of our guests. The reservations got all screwed up--people who had rooms were told their reservation could not be found, etc., and despite having numerous conversations with the room reservations manager, were still screwed up to the day of the wedding. It was a nightmare to deal with. Plus, they knew that we were unhappy about the whole room reservations, which makes you think that they would try to make it up to us in some way--offer a free breakfast, or a drink, or upgrade to a waterfront room--SOMETHING. But no. Instead, when we arrive, we realize that they have placed my parents room (the ones primarily paying for the wedding, parents of the bride) as far away from the bridal suite as possible (literally on the other end) in a room facing the parking lot.
STAFF: That said, the day of the wedding, everything went extremely smoothly. Although we had communication issues with the wedding coordinator/salesperson while planning (another issue for planning your wedding here), all the staff at the resort while we were there were friendly and some were even exceptional. The director of catering was accommodating, professional, and friendly to deal with, the wedding buffet dinner better than we expected (and better than the regular dinner menu as we had had when we visited, although it may be that the catering services changed within a year and so the food may be overall better), and the wait staff at the wedding friendly, thoughtful, and responsive.
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