Cancun - Day One

"What screws us up most in

life is the picture in our head

of how it is suppose to be."

Eric and I spent five nights, six days, at an all-inclusive resort, the Grand Oasis Cancun, in beautiful Cancun, Mexico, January 21-26. It was pretty awesome...and maybe a little dissappointing...and definitely a learning experience I'm glad we had.

Eric and I are usually cruisers, and this was our first time trying an all-inclusive. We had heard so many rave reviews about them, and had been wanting try one for a really long time. They sounded dreamy and I fully expected to love everything about an all-inclusive. I was fully prepared to give up our cruising addiction to all-inclusives forever. I'm pretty sure that having expectations like that going in only set me up for disspointment. But as mixed as my feeling about this vacation are, I'm glad we went and experienced every good and bad thing we did, because, now we know.

Our adventure started early on a Saturday morning. We woke up at an unspeakable hour to drive to the airport (4:15am), then survived a 4-hour direct flight sitting two seats and an aisle apart from each other. The flight was long and a bit lonely, but I had my smutty magazines, and a Tori Spelling book, and I was just thrilled that we had a direct flight with no connections...flights like that don't come along very often!? We landed in Cancun at 1pm, where we were shuffled through a gauntlet of tour-sales-men, and shuttle drivers, and hotel staff, and more tour-sales-men. We finally made it to our hotel room at around 3pm-ish, completely exhausted.

When we arrived at our room it was not what I had expected, in that it was a complete dump. I had booked and spent an additional $200 to upgrade to a "newly renovated ocean-view room." This room was ocean-view, which was lovely, but it was defintiely in desperate need of renovation. I was pretty dissapointed, and so confused. And the fact that I was running on 4 hours of sleep and a long day of travel only compounded the problems in my head. I knew I shouldn't care...we were in paradise!? It was Cancun! This was what we had been waiting for! Who cares about where you sleep!? But our room sucked...and I had paid big bucks for a nice room and I was NOT happy about staying in this dive for five nights. It was probably your average $50/night (or less!) hotel room in the States, definitely not a $150/night room, which I figured is what we were paying once they took out $1000 for two flights and $50 per day for food.

Our hotel room...not exactly the luxurious accommodations I had imagined in my head.

After dropping our stuff off, we decided to go get some food at the beach-front snack bar. Nachos for me, a burger for Eric, and pina colado smoothies for both of us. The nachos on the menu seemed pretty plain jane...nacho cheese and beans. I asked if they could bring some salsa, gaucamole, or sour cream with them...the waiter looked at me like I was a freak and said he'd see if they had any of those items in the kitchen. Needless to say, the nachos came out plain jane, as advertised on the menu. No salsa, or guac, or sour cream to be found. The gauc and sour cream I could understand, but no salsa!? Good grief...what kind of place had I sent us to!? This day was not going my way.

After lunch we perused the grounds. They were gorgeous. Then we perused the pyramid building and peeked into one of the rooms being cleaned to see what those rooms looked like, because I had an option of upgrading to either the "pyramid ocean-view" or the "ocean-front building ocean-view," for the same exact price, and I had chosen the "ocean-front building," per tripadvisor.com recommendations (those liars!). I figured if the pyramid rooms were updated, then for the price I paid I should be in an updated room as well. Sure enough, from what we could see, all the pyramid rooms were remodeled and gorgeous...flat screen tvs, gorgeous dressers, new white linens.

It was definitely time to go to the front desk to plead my case and ask for an updated room. They denied my request to be moved, saying that the pyramid was only for "Sens" guest. There is a stupid heirarchy at the hotel we chose: Oasis is the lowest and budget level, Grand Oasis in the middle, and Sens Oasis is the top and most expensive. We were Grand Oasis guests. However, the fact that I had the option to book a room in the pyramid as a Grand Oasis guest when I booked our vacation was a dead giveaway that they were lying to my face about the pyramid only being for "Sens" guests. And I told them as much. They then gave in and said they couldn't move us because all the rooms were full...every last one. Another lie, because they then said they would be able to upgrade if we paid $200 to do so. Grrr...we already paid for an upgrade when we booked it!? 

They were in no way helpful and there was no such thing as the customer is always right. It was infuriating. Plus, their English was hard to understand, and I'm pretty sure they couldn't understand half the things I was trying to sa. When Eric stepped in and spoke Spanish, the only thing I could translate was that he wasn't being nearly pushy enough about this!? :) We went back twice that evening trying to use a different angle or talk to someone else, but they gave us no hope of ever moving rooms, no matter how unhappy we were. I was so frustrated.    

Desperate to experience some luxury that we actually paid for, we wandered around the grounds until we found the exclusive seafood restaurant that got so many rave reviews on tripadvisor.com. We didn't find the food to be anything to rave about. The menu was puny in comparison to anything you'd find on a cruise ship, and the food was too weird, or perhaps too "high-class," for lowly Americans like us. The soup was not good...mine nor Erics. We ate what we could so that we wouldn't look rude, but I was definitely forcing it down. Then they served my prawns with the heads still attached, which was...interesting. Knowing what my food once was isn't a problem for me, so I ripped the heads off, peeled the shell off, and tried to enjoy. But with no seasoning, garlic butter, or cocktails sauce for dipping, they were just giant, bland, flavorless shrimp. I asked for cocktail sauce, and they brought me some weird asian sauce...sweet and sour sauce perhaps?! It helped a little, but I was definitely missing my beloved cocktails sauce...something they know about and have in abundance on cruise ships. The icing on the cake was when they served Eric's perfectly good fried ice cream dessert swimming in watermelon soup. Fried ice cream with chocolate, caramel, and whipped cream? Yes..delicious! Fried ice cream swimming and watermelon soup? Just say no.

As we walked back to our room after our "gourmet" seafood dinner, we could see a giant cruise ship off in the distance, just leaving Cozumel, I imagine. All I could think as I stared across the ocean at the glittery lights in the distance was, "Why am I not on a boat right now!?"