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ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/1/2012 4:44:22 PM
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otter
Posts: 5
Joined: 8/5/2012
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This will have been my third visit in 8 years. The family had a great time, but the place has slipped a bit. I spoke to a couple from the US that have been returning for the last 15 and we eventually agreed that if the owner lets the place slip any more, it may no longer be on "the list". Not to say our stay was terrible, we had a fantastic time overall. However, if serious money isn't spent on some renovations, I can't see paying more than the off season deal we got. When ABR per person pricing creeps (for us, it does several times a year) up to close to places like the Barcelo or Occidental or Bahia Properties, that difference is going to take away from the appeal of going to the ABR.
Here's my review, copied from tripadvisor:
Third Visit in 8 Years but....
It's getting a little rough around the edges.
My last visit to this resort was when the local owner had a lease arrangement with a chain called Venta Clubs, a fairly large Italian outfit. My Understanding is that the chain either underwent financial difficulty or simply went bankrupt, packed up and left. The local owner now runs the show.
I hope that the local owner plans to spend some serious money on renovations to bring the resort back up to standard.
The good, the bad:
The staff is still pretty much all there, all familiar faces, all smiles. They worked very hard to make our stay pleasant. This is the low season and the food and beverage manager told me that there were only 130 or so booked guests at the resort. This being the case, the buffet is quite limited in choice and I do understand that food costs are high and waste becomes quite expensive. Breakfast was always very good with made to order omelets, and the other standard breakfast fare. Cold meat and cheese selections were limited to ham and sliced cheese. They seemed to rotate the bacon and sausage selection day by day, but never both at the same time.
Lunch and dinner either had one meat or fish dish at the hot stations and another choice available for fresh grilling. Pasta was held hot at lunch, made to order at dinner. Guacamole was available at lunch only. There was an excellent selection of home made hot sauces, from mild to burn the roof off your mouth. Lots of Veggie choices. Soup. All very tasty.
The beach grill had grilled hot dogs, really good hamburgers, nachos and fresh pizza available every day. Pica de gallo, hot peppers, a salad of some sort and burger fixings were available at the chilled station. The soft serve ice cream machine is long gone, but hard ice cream was available at the pool bar, the same building.
The a la cartes were very well done, we enjoyed a good steak on Italian night, excellent pork on the second Italian night and again, very good chicken on Mexican night.
All in all, we never went hungry and what food they offered was cooked well. I am told that once high season rolls around, the choices are expanded. (not part of the review: someone posted in another thread that they have roast beef on friday nights and a carving station every other night of the week. none to be found when we were there.)
The beach and the ocean are the absolute best part of the trip, The coral reef is right there. Turtles, sting rays, parrot fish huge and small, Pedro the barracuda (6' long) is a sight to behold and he'll do you no harm, he's well fed by all the fishing boats. We were lucky enough to see turtles hatching on two occasions at night. It's quite amazing watching the little guys dig their way out of the nests and scoot for the ocean. Daytime hatchlings are gathered by the local conservation center and released at 7pm.
The drinks. Unlike other all inclusives up and down the coast, they don't water their drinks down at all. My fiancee noticed this. She is usually able to spend the day drinking at a good pace. Not here. Full strength. Suprisingly, they use Brand Name rum and vodka for mixers. Captain Morgan rum. I can't remember the brand of vodka (I do now! Smirnoff), but it wasn't the locally bottled crap. XX Beer on tap and free flowing Kahlua. Pretty much all of the bar tenders do a really good job.
Now for the buldings and grounds. Grounds are well maintained, buildings are really starting to show their age, and this is where I feel the resort has slipped. They've been painted, but that's about it. You have to watch out for the odd rotted railing, they use local wood for these and it rots eventually. They shouldn't let it get to the point where you're calling front desk every day about the ants in your room. Where are they coming from? The rotted railing that they are living in. We stayed in the premium section, buidling 6 and the rooms are getting tired. Some nice to haves would be a dresser and AC that is able to keep the room cool 24hours a day. The strange part is that the ac (centralized roof top chillers) keep up fine with the daytime heat, but at night it seems that they pull back on how hard the chillers are running because every night we'd wake up to a warm, humid room. Called front desk, it made no difference. We lost hot water a couple of times, no big deal, the cold shower was welcome. Front desk was always eager to help out on the small niggling issues.
By no means is the resort a bad place. The only real downside is that it really is starting to show its age and is in need of major renovation. Staff did say that renos are planned for the non superior rooms; it's a good START.
The fun we had in the ocean, the staff, the food that was available do make up for the shortcomings of the resort itself. If you want luxury and pretentious guests, don't come here. If you want a basic, very quiet little hideout to chill for a week or two, don't hesitate but BE ready for small niggling issues.
For Canadians, this place is described anywhere from 2.5 to 3.5 stars, depending on the tour operator. 2.5 would be most accurate do to the general physical condition of the place.
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/2/2012 2:29:01 AM
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TeriA
Posts: 907
Joined: 9/17/2010
From: Salem, Utah
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Very honest and detailed trip report, thanks. We stayed in building 5 and had the same problem with ants in our son's room. It was pretty bad, even after asking to have the room sprayed, which it seemed they did twice I think, made no difference. We didn't have a huge issue in our room, they were there, but, not like in his room. He couldn't leave a can of soda open on a counter or table even for a few minutes. He had to keep everything food or drink related in zip loc bags, and even then the ants were all over the bag trying to get in. There were trails on his walls of ants day and night. It really made the trip less enjoyable for him. I know the resort is in the jungle to some extent, but, there must be something that they can do to control at least the ants. Perhaps those plug in devices that repel ants and spiders.
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/2/2012 9:12:00 AM
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sandinmypants
Posts: 4401
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From: Iowa
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Great report, thanks. Just curious, are the people experiencing ants in rooms located on the ground floor? I was wanting to request a third-floor room in Bldg. 5 this time, but definitely do NOT want to deal with ants - we didn't have a problem with them in bldg. 6 last time around.
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/3/2012 1:02:19 AM
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TeriA
Posts: 907
Joined: 9/17/2010
From: Salem, Utah
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quote:
ORIGINAL: sandinmypants
Great report, thanks. Just curious, are the people experiencing ants in rooms located on the ground floor? I was wanting to request a third-floor room in Bldg. 5 this time, but definitely do NOT want to deal with ants - we didn't have a problem with them in bldg. 6 last time around.
Our room was on the third floor. And it was only really bad in our sons room which was right next door to us. They are tennie ants, I wasn't sure they were ants, thought they might be gnats, but, upon closer inspection, they were ants. All he did was leave a can of mountain dew open and on his desk while we went to lunch, and by the time we got back it was crawling with them. Our room just had them here and there on the walls.
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/3/2012 7:24:06 AM
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BeachBilly
Posts: 6227
Joined: 2/2/2007
From: The Bluegrass
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Thanks for the report. We have been once and enjoyed our stay. We had looked into returning
but it was more expensive than the Palladium at the time we were going. It's a short collectivo ride
to Akumal from the Palladium.
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of animals" ~Immanuel Kent
Animals are people too!~Crunch
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/3/2012 9:14:56 AM
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sandinmypants
Posts: 4401
Joined: 2/17/2007
From: Iowa
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quote:
ORIGINAL: TeriA
They are tennie ants, I wasn't sure they were ants, thought they might be gnats, but, upon closer inspection, they were ants. All he did was leave a can of mountain dew open and on his desk while we went to lunch, and by the time we got back it was crawling with them. Our room just had them here and there on the walls.
We've had those before - usually in the bathroom, last time I remember having them really bad was at the GBP, but I think our room at the ABR had a few. We never have any food/drink in our room to attract them, maybe the people before you had food and that's why they were there? At the Bahia they would bring us little plates of "treats" every night and put it in our room (chocolates, pastries, chocolate covered strawberries), we hated it because we didn't want to attract any bugs! We would immediately set the plate outside - we were usually too full from dinner anyway. Even the fruit basket they brought us at the beginning of our stay there went immediately outside.
It's the larger ants that bother me - I've never had bites from those itty bitty teeny things, but the ones that are just a tad bit bigger (the brownish ones) love to bite me!
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/4/2012 10:26:23 AM
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ulle trautvag
Posts: 381
Joined: 3/28/2008
From: Manhattan/nyc
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Sand, when I was in room 530, I noticed what looked like a crack running from the first floor over my second floor's screen door and across the wall to the balcony on the third floor. I was curious since it hadn't been there the previous day. Examined it closer and saw it was a line of ants moving up, with every foot or so guarded by soldiers. I was fascinated since this thin line, approximately 1" wide, never deviated from its course. Where they wound up I don't know but there never were any in my room and they had disappeared the next day. The "crack" was gone.
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/4/2012 7:39:09 PM
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otter
Posts: 5
Joined: 8/5/2012
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we stayed on the second floor and our daughters were in the room beside us. Our balcony railing was infested, but they were more interested in the girls' room.
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/4/2012 7:42:04 PM
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otter
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what is the upgrade schedule?
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/6/2012 11:43:01 AM
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Vancouver Sundog
Posts: 5924
Joined: 10/1/2006
From: North Vancouver
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quote:
what is the upgrade schedule?
New LCD tvs now in blgs 5-7 and then mentioned new bedding / drapes with other food offerings - Management said they finally broke even last year and could now plan further upgrades so wait and see. I hope they upgrade bldg 1 & 2
Last trip in May , they were offering daily / weekly snorkel equipment rentals
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/6/2012 2:44:08 PM
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TeriA
Posts: 907
Joined: 9/17/2010
From: Salem, Utah
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Tortuga Tom
These resorts were carved out of the jungle. Critters will always be around, it's the luck of the draw. Been to the fancy shmancy Palladium 3x and had ants 2x. Been to ABR 7x and never had ants. Go figure.....
Amen it's the jungle, I expect to see some critters, and frankly, if all I see are some geckos and ant trails in my room I'll be good with that. But, that said, next time Im bringing some defensive measures of my own. We don't really keep food in our room, but, as Matt likes his mountain dew, he got some at Chomack and brought it into his room, leaving just the one open, and after he came back and took a swig of a very crawly dew, well, let's say he will be living without his dew on future trips to the jungle.
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/7/2012 12:07:24 PM
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otter
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I get that we were in the jungle. Have been traveling to the Mayan Riveria for the better part of a decade. I don't mind bumping into the odd gecko or critter in my room. I do mind ant infestations that are the result of letting wood railings rot. I do mint that there aren't rubber sweepers on the bottoms of the entrance doors.
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 10/15/2012 7:24:48 AM
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williamhall3
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Joined: 10/15/2012
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Nice post. Means you njoyed a lot. great place dear. Nw I will also planning for holidays, for same place.
thanks for sharing your wonderfull experience.
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RE: ABR Trip Report Sep 22-29 2012 - 
I dunno.... 