Cancun: A Tale of Two Resorts

If you are in Cancun and have a little time to spare and would like to score tickets to the many attractions nearby the best way to do that is to attend a resort presentation. The only way to go inside these exclusive resorts is by being their guest during resort presentation.

The minute you land in Cancun, before making your way out of the airport you will encounter the many "agents" for different resorts. They stop you and talk you into attending one of these presentations. Let me tell you these, the agents can be very persistent and annoying, but if you are curious about these resorts and how to score "time shares" this is a good way to go. Besides they give you incentives to sit in the presention, you get to see the beautiful resorts and you get treated very well, plus you they feed you well too.

Last summer with all the free time we had we agreed to go to two presentations.

VILLA DEL PALMAR RESORT

Villa del Palmar is located just down the road from our resort. It's brand new and located in the Punta Sam area just across the water from Isla Mujeres.


The color combination is very attractive.


One of the restaurants.


The pool area.


The suite that they showed us was at the very top, it was a 2-bedroom suite with large rooftop area with a lot of amenities.


One of the bedrooms.


The dining area in the foreground with the living room in the background, the kitchen is to the left. Love the open floor plan.

As incredible as the amenities inside the suite, the views are difficult to beat. Just see....


Looking down on the pool area.


Beyond the pool is the long white sandy stretch of beach, I just fell in love with this location.


This part is still not developed, but construction for the phase II and III are underway to the side of phase I.

For our time and effort we were given as gift $200 in cash and was treated to a free breakfast buffet. Not a bad few hours considering we really didn't have anything planned for that block of time.

GRAND MAYAN RESORT
The Grand Mayan Resort is an hour's drive from Cancun and is located along the highway. It's closer to Playa del Carmen. The Grand Mayan is lavish, huge, and fantaastic but it did not speak to me like the sandy beach of the first resort.


The pool is said to be the longest - it winds around much of the acreage of the resort, you can never complain of overcrowded pool here.


There is the pool again.


I feel relaxed just looking at this shot.


We were treated to a magnificent brunch buffet at one of the restaurants called Havana Moon. This was a splendid restaurant.


Dancing class, we also passed by a yoga class on the beach.

The suite we were shown was on the ground floor so there was no sweeping views that come with the suite, but the interiors is equally impressive. Again it's a 2-bedroom suite that was shown as the model.











For our time and effort our gift was #150.00 plus the buffet that I thoroughly enjoyed.

In order to be invited to these presentations, most of the resorts only require that your annual income meet their set amount. However, there is one I know that only requires US and Canada born are invited.

In case you want to know the process goes like this: First your appointment to the presentation is set by someone you meet from the airport or sometimes on the streets, they are everywhere. I believe these "agents" get their cut when they deliver the "goods" - the people. When you arrive at the resort the first thing you do is fill out forms and then an agent is assigned to you. She/He will be your personal guide the entire time. When you are assigned an agent, he/she will take you to eat first, making sure that you take the circuitous way so that they can show you the grounds and the amenities of the resort. AFter the meal you get to sit inside a large room, one that looks like an auditorium where tables and chairs are set up, like a dinner set up. Here you get the full-on selling spiel. They sell and sell and tell you why you should buy and why buying in their "vacation plan" (because time share is a term of the past) is very beneficial to you. It could be very easy to believe all the hype because they have shown you all the bells and whistles and everything looks so good. But it could also be easy to just go in there, eat the free food, look at the resort up close and listen to the people selling you stuff. It can't hurt to know what it cost you to buy into one of these resorts.

As for us we are very curious people, we want to see what is behind those walls and perhaps get something for our time. Luckily both times our agents seem to sense that we weren't there to buy. I am sure they know who is easily convinced and who's there to just window shop.

When finally the agents and their manager decided no use talking and we're not buying, they would ask you what you/we were promised for our time. So for looking at beautiful resorts, we earned $350.00 while vacationing :)

OUR WORLD TUESDAY