Amela J.
Yelp
My boyfriend and I recently returned from a 5 night stay at the Pueblo Bonito Pacifica. It was our first time in Cabo and our fourth time in Mexico (one visit to Cancun and two to Puerto Vallarta). We chose this resort as we were looking for a quiet, lowkey, luxury experience. I would say that visually, you do get what you are paying for - it was definitely an aesthetically pleasing resort and gave off a luxurious vibe. Overall, we had a relaxing time, but there were a number of things that made me feel that this resort falls quite short of a five star experience.
ROOM: 1/5
The views are nice, but our housekeeper only serviced our room one night out of our five night stay. We constantly had to track people down to get more towels, and clean up after ourselves - it was super frustrating. The outlets on one side of the bed did not work, so I had to charge my phone across the room. Super inconvenient as I kept forgetting it doesn't work and had to wake up to an empty battery. The lock on the sliding door on the balcony was broken - HUGE safety concern. Additionally, the sink was very strange, it was a bowl on top of the counter and there was no way to wash your hands without getting water everywhere - super dangerous as there was nowhere else to dry my hair. The streaming service did NOT work, we called multiple times about this issue - a common experience I had throughout our time here is that they say they'll fix something and never follow up. We had to have them come up to the room to look at the tv, they said they'd fix it, never did. We could scroll through the channels, but could not use the tv guide nor could we connect any of our streaming services, although they advertise that you can.
Food: 2/5
The food itself was pretty good taste wise, I enjoyed the tacos for lunch and they had a few tasty salads, but I was highly disappointed in the fact that this resorts advertises itself as an "all-inclusive" resort however, they constantly upcharge you for certain items. For example, at pescados, which is their sushi bar, the two rolls I was looking forward to eating, the lobster roll and the spider roll, they charge an additional fee that not only expensive but completely unreasonable. I don't remember how much it was now, but for example at Siempre, they charge you $100 for a rack of lamb. Mind you, that's if you paid for the all inclusive package. On principle, we refused to pay for any of these additional items - all-inclusive should be all-inclusive and this really takes away from the "luxury" experience this resort is trying to create. Additionally, there are only three restaurants at this resort. Only Siempre is actually open for breakfast and lunch and on top of that, you regularly have to wait to be seated at these restaurants, and have to make a reservation for dinner. You do have access to dining at the restaurants at the sister properties, however, you have to take a shuttle, which can take a while. I will say drinks wise, we did not experience the issues that others expressed around getting cut off, they were pretty accommodating with drinks in our experience.
Transportation: 1/5
This resort is very private, which is nice, but you are basically stranded at the bottom of a hill, so you have to rely on their transportation which takes forever to get anywhere. If you are planning to hitch a ride on a shuttle to their Rose property (it's close to the Marina), you need to schedule it in advance, otherwise, you will have to pay to take a taxi. Also, you can't get an Uber to this property. They do not allow them in, so if you want to go anywhere other than one of the sister properties, which they do offer a shuttle for, you are forced to take one of their taxis. The shuttles they do offer, they always say it'll be five minutes, it ends up being a 20-30 minute wait every time which made us not even want to visit the sister properties.
Service: 2/5
A lot of the interactions with the staff felt robotic and especially at the restaurants, it felt like most of the staff is just trying to get you in, get you out and get their tip. We also were supposed to receive an upgraded room per our Expedia benefits, and they never mentioned this to us - we found this out two days into our stay, we weren't going to pack everything up to move, it's just very frustrating about their lack of transparency. I was a bit on the fence about how I felt about the resort but the one experience that really did it for me was that we went down to check out and reserve our taxi for the airport and they told us that we wouldn't be able to have lunch on the property since we were checking out. It made it very clear to me that this property just cares about getting your money and does not at all care about creating a hospitable experience for their guests.
I really wanted to like this resort but there were just too many negative experiences for me to consider coming back.