First of all, this is our 30th wedding anniversary. So what would you do special on your 30th? We chose to do a timeshare presentation. We were told that this was just a way for the young lady who is our Club Solaris Representative to get credit form her bosses – she lied to us – it was the hard sell. What they didn’t know was that Hell would freeze over prior to us buying a timeshare I Mexico.

Remember Dave’s “8 Nevers of buying timeshare”…

1.Never buy timeshare on-site (Always buy resale.)
2. Never buy timeshare outside of the USA.
3. Never buy timeshare without consulting an attorney.
4. Never buy timeshare without consulting a timeshare owner’s organization.
5. Never buy timeshare for more than 33% of the original asking price.
6. Never buy timeshare without finding out the financial status of the ownership company.
7. Never buy timeshare before you review the laws of the state in which you are buying. The laws in your state make no difference – it is the laws in the state where the timeshare is located that matters.
8. Never buy timeshare unless you can pay CASH. Timeshare is an ultimate luxury, and ultimate luxuries are those things you can afford to pay cash for, and paying cash will not adversely affect your current or future financial situation.

We made it VERY clear that we were doing this for her, and she “respected” us by putting us through the timeshare mill at the GR Solaris. I will never respect anyone at this resort ever again when it comes to honesty. We were out and out lied to prior to this presentation, and I will post that warning on boards for the remainder of my life.

We were told to met Monigue at the bar. We were there on time, but she was 15-minutes late. Maybe that should have told us to just run for our lives.

After the 90-minute sales presentation they continued to hammer us for 30 additional minutes. They were offering us 60 weeks over 30 years for the bargain price of $78,000 USD. If we wanted to trade those weeks we could do so for a maintenance fee of $450 and $398 in trade fees ($199 for Solaris and $199 for RCI). Now I’m sure that if I had chosen to allow this drivel to continue for another hour the price would have come down a considerable amount, but we had better things to do than sit in a room listening to people ramble on about how great a timeshare is when we had no intention of buying from them.

There were two things that bother me enough to recommend that nobody ever visits this resort if there is even the slightest possibility of them going through the timeshare presentation.

1) At least half of what they told us about timeshare and RCI is not true, or is at least major exaggeration of the truth. They said that Cancun and Cabos are the #1 and #2 destinations in world travel, and also #1 and #2 in the RCI system. They said it is a hard and fast rule that you can’t visit a Solaris hotel twice in four years through RCI timeshare trade. The truth is that the resorts we belong to allowed us to visit the Royal Solaris 4 times in 6-years, and this visit is not only not on a trade, but is on a bonus week from RCI. The facts are that if you have the money to pay the all-inclusive fee, and the Solaris Group has a room open, you can come here.

2) The lady who was trying to “force/intimidate” us to buy said all kinds of things about RCI that we know, through experience, are not true. Things like; Cancun resorts can get you two weeks anywhere else in the RCI system, and that she could call the Manhattan Club today and she could get us a reservation any time we wanted one. The truth is that there are resorts that are in extreme high demand and are very hard to get in trade. We have learned that the resorts we own at have great trade power, and that any other resorts we would own at would have similar power at best.

In the end, we pretty much had to say that we were going to just get up and walk out of the room. They did the “pass the customer” game twice, and they finally gave up. Prior to my going through this torture we had made them agree on giving us $50 credit toward anything we wanted at the resort. To add insult to injury she even tried to make me accept $40 instead of what had been promised.

After we finished with them we went down to the pool, and low and behold the sun had come out. We spent several very enjoyable hours in the pool. Dave played pool volleyball and then we talked with some friends we have made since our arrival here.

You know, when you have been at a resort for a few days certain questions start to come into your mind. Something that hit me in a rather strange way today was the location of the “Romance Suites”. The idea behind these adults-only honeymoon style suites is for you to have a private place for romance under the stars complete with a hot tub on the balcony. Now if I were to put these wonderful suites in the hotel I would make certain that they were on the top floor of the hotel. Instead they are on the second floor of the hotel in total and complete view of the remainder of the rooms in the hotel – nice concept – poor execution in my opinion. My personal favorites are the two romance suites directly below our room where the occupants of the hot tubs can carry on a conversation.

Dinner tonight was Mediterranean night at Marco Polo followed by a show called “Dance With Me” presented by one of the local professional dance companies. Joni and Heather both had a Crawfish dish, and I had lamb chops and also a partial serving of the crawfish dish just to get a taste.

Dinner was exceptional and to our surprise they came out with a Happy Anniversary Cake for us. Then Feliciano (our waiter) made flaming hot coffees for us. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was not a coffee drinker and drank it like a good sport!

Heather mentioned that she had been looking forward to the apple pie alamode and they brought that as well! Marco Polo is the only reservation restaurant at the GR Solaris, but the food and service have been exceptional.

Then we went to the show – weird – just plain weird. I really think the dancers were talented, but the choreography was just horrible. The opening number was woman dressed as mermaids dancing to Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. I think they missed something in the translation of the words. The sad thing is that the opening number was the best number in the show. I kept wishing I was one of the judges on “America’s Got Talent” and that I could use a buzzer and each number would stop. We didn’t want to be rude and get up and walk out. I thought it was just me that thought they were horrible until I realized that others around us were openly laughing at the performers. We never got to that extreme, but we were close. Mercifully the show ended after about 45-minutes.

We have now been here for 4 days. I really like this resort and I hope that they keep this level of service up after the majority of the timeshares are sold. There are definitely many people on the staff who have attitudes that are just not conducive to the all-inclusive concept, and the hard sell was a but much, but over all after 4 days I would rate this hotel between 8 and 9 on a scale of 1-10.