Description: I have stayed at the Melia Caribe Tropical twice, once in 2007 and once in 2008. Your experience at this hotel will truly be what you make of it.
STAFF - The staff really was fantastic, and really appreciative of even a $1 tip. When all four of us wanted to play golf at the nearby hotel they have a deal with, certain staff members would offer to pick us all up in golf carts so we didn't have to lug our bags at 6am 1 mile across the property. A tip of a couple dollars was all the payment we needed to have them stop by every morning, asking if we needed a ride. The bartenders didn't make drinks strong, but all you had to do is ask once, and the rset of the time you were there that day, you received them how you wanted them. My folks were dissapointed that no one knew how to make a rumrunner, so if you want one, bring the recipe with you. For everyone whining about weak drinks, just ask for your drink, then ask for a shot. Problem solved. We asked the bar staff to add a shot of B151 to all of our mixed drinks, which they had no problems doing for us. We tipped a dollar a round, each round being 4 drinks, unless we asked we a really complicated drink.
FOOD - You can prevent a bad situation from having any chance of occuring by booking a specialty restaurant for each night of your stay immediately upon arrival. If they don't let you do that, just set your alarm for 6am each morning, and make a reservation for that night. Then go back to sleep. The best restaurants were the Japanese and the French, in my opinion. Best waitstaff at the French. They joked with all of us, treated us like royalty, and for desert, used icing and syrup to draw pictured on our plates. We took most of our pictures in that restaurant, come to think of it.
Golf- As golf snobs (lol), we were weary of what the "free" course was going to look like. You rode the hotel shuttle bus about 5-10 minutes over to a different hotel to use their course. The course was beautiful. It looked like the people cleaning the tee boxes were using toothbrushes. Immaculate. The downsides were that you had to pay $50 a cart, and you pass lots of workers when you use the regular street roads to get to far away holes. That made us a tad nervouse, but no one gave us any real reason to worry. My advise is to leave your clubs at the golf course, since it's free (which we learned our last day there). That way there's no lugging clubs across the resort.
POOL - Nothing to say other than Absolutely Spectacular! The whole reason we go to this resort is the pool. You will never see one more amazing or tropical. Truly a dream. Just get there early if you want a decent spot to put your chair. Note - some people, like the Brazilians saying there, chose to go around topless at the pool and on the beach. Keep this in mind if nudety makes you or your family uncomfortable.My sister (18) and I (20) went to the beach with our dad, while our mother was at the pool, and found it hillarious that this rather large old topless woman seemed to be following our dad around the beach. To be honest, I feel the people that chose not to go topless should have replaced the people that did chose to let it all hang out.
Beach - Beautiful, but we stayed mostly at the pool to stay away from sales people and to be close to the bar. Don't even look at anything for sale at the little tent set ups, unless you are comfortable haggling with people who pretend not to understand some of your english. They try to confuse you to get your money. My mother was given a bag of the items she liked , and told to just hold it and think about it. It was $150 in jewelry. My mom doesn't have the patience try haggling, so my dad came up and talked the guy down from $150 to $60. So never believe them when they say they won't negotiate. Plus, all the vendors have basically the same stuff, so play them off against each other like we did. I walked around pretending to be interested, bought nothing, and ended up with 5 free sample neckaces. Also, whenever you agree on the price of a necklace or bracelet, tell them they must throw in matching earings, or the deal's off. Most of them will. Also, the Chuck Norris cigars were the best bang for the buck factoring price and quality. One step down from a Cuban. You can get a box for $50. We weren't sure if it was legal to take them home, so we dumped what we didn't smoke in our golf bags, and were able to get them back to the U.S.
ROOMS - This is where it's hit or miss. At least the regular rooms. The Royal Service rooms were Fabulous, no question. The regular rooms had issues. My first trip the the Melia, we changed rooms 4 times within the first 2 days. Because of this we never had our luggage the first day. One of those times, we moved because we were placed on the opposite side of the resort where our parents couldn't keep an eye on us, which made them nervous with being in a country like that. The second time, there was a huge ant problem. My advice is to stay anywhere but the ground level. We had ants, cochroaches, grasshoppers, and bugs we couldn't identify visit us during the day and in the middle of the night. I woke up choking on something one night, and coughed out a bug down the sink drain.
ROYAL SERVICE - The 1st time we stayed at this resort, we didn't do royal service. Even without it, we had the best vacation of our lives. The second time, my dad's snoring kept made all of us miserable our first night. We couldn't escape it. The next day, we went to the casino, and won the jackpot. I think we won $3000 or so. So we all looked at my dad, then said "You're getting your OWN room!" We immediately upgraded to the royal service so he could sleep in the one bedroom and we all slept in the livingroom. That one changed saved our vacation. Everynight, me and my mom threw our bathing suits on, and waited for room service to fill the jacuzzi with bubbles and rose petals, and deliver whole lobsters, cheese and cracker plates a bottle of champagne, and fruit trays. We sat in the bubbles at had all the trays lined up around us. We felt like billionaires. We laughed the entire time about how good we had it at that moment. Every night in the royal service we did this. And somehow, we still managed to go out to eat dinner after! The restaurant reserved only for Royal Service members was truly extrordinary. I think this was the only place to order lobster on the resort (other than room service). The entire open air restaurant at the pool glowed so romantically, I told my folks to eat their by themselves couple times to really enjoy it. Breathtaking decor. I didn't see any big deal about Royal Service Pool. I liked the other one much better. And there were kids at both, so I really didn't see any benefit.
OVERALL RESORT - Yes, there was a lot of walking to get around this resort. You could wait for the trams, but keeping an eye out for them was even more annoying than taking the walk. We would start off walking, then run and hop on the tram when we saw it passing by. The tram really did add to the experience, when you took the time to ride it around for fun. But I will tell you what... I ate and drink everything my heart desired, and I mean really pigged out, but because of all the walking, I came home after 8 days 10 lbs lighter! I guess I'm not used to daily walking. That was the icing on the cake of this great place.
Yes there are 2 sides to the resort. There's the melia side, and the caribe side. I forget which is which, but we liked the one with the casino more.
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