This has mentioned in several posts, but it is hard to call this hotel a 4 star or 5 star hotel. We had a great time at the hotel, and it is nice but if you are a hotel snob you should be aware before you book.

I, my wife and two children (4yo and 2yo) stayed at the Velas Vallarta July 29th - Aug 5th. We spend the August 6th - 13th at the sister proper in Nuevao Vallarta (Grand Velas). We did the all inclusive, it cost us an extra $900.00 for the entire family and it was well worth it. Food, snacks, drinks, room service and restaurants are all part of the all inclusive package. We were there for 15 days total and I believe we were spending between 2-3 hundred dollars a day on food and drinks for the family. Food at the Grand Velas is more expensive as they had nicer, more expensive, restaurants.

We had a really great time at both hotels, although the experience between the two was quite different. The Velas Vallarta was more active and a much bigger property with more people, scenery and things to do, the Grand Velas was nicer and quieter. I would not recommend spending more than 7 days at either hotel; we enjoyed the change of scenery and both places.

I will do a thread on Grand Velas later but for this review I will focus on the Velas Vallarta. July, August and September, is the rainy season and the “off season”. Most American’s travel in the October – December time frame. It is significantly cheaper to travel in the “off season”, but the weather will not be quite as nice and the atmosphere is a bit more mellow. Lot’s of Latino families travel in the off season and quite a few Europeans who vacation in August and no doubt are getting a great exchange rate. We speak English and Spanish in our family, so we really enjoyed this atmosphere and meeting people from different places and cultures. The rain did not bother us very much, if it rains it usually rains in the afternoon, and even if it is raining it is fairly warm outside. It rained about 8 days while we were there, hard 2-3 times. Our travel agent did not mention this to us so I thought I would make mention for would be travelers.

Starting at the airport: When you land you will be inundated by people trying to get you to sign up for their cab, as well as the usual Time Share folks. If you have a manageable amount of luggage ignore the vendors and walk outside and take the bridge, it is literally about a 50 - 100 yard walk to get over the bridge and catch a cab from there, there is no wait, you won’t have fill out forms or deal with the chaos of the airport. The cab fair to the Velas Vallarta is $30 (300 pesos) if you catch it at the airport; they charged us $10 across the bridge. The hotel is really close, about 10 minutes away from the airport. Note: everything is relatively close, we decided not to get a rental car, if you are staying only in the immediate areas cab fare is cheaper than a rental car and they are everywhere.

While we were there exchange rate in Mexico was not very good for American Dollars. While many vendors and merchants still honor the $1 = 10 pesos ratio, we did run into a few that wanted more dollars if we did not have pesos. We purchased ice cream at the Hagen Daas kiosk in the Liverpool mall, they wanted 200 pesos or $22 American Dollars. A few cabbies made the same request. Expect this almost everywhere where you might use large dollar bills and need change. If you have been to Mexico you know to ask the cabby what the fare is prior to getting into the cab, but you should also let them know you are paying in American Dollars. Another piece of advice, if you are coming from America bring a lot of small bills (20’s, 10’s, 5’s and 1’s). Exchanging large bills at the hotels and surrounding areas is brutal and you will not get a good exchange rate. At the mall in the Marina there is a Money Exchange at the time we were there it was (9.7 American, 9.1 Canadian). But this does not include the fees and charges.

On entering the hotel: The lobby is big, very nice, check in is on the left side. There is also a Wii area where kid’s can play the Nintendo Wii in a small monitored areas. Once you get your room key you will likely be accosted by a fairly aggressive time share person who will offer to buy you a “welcome” or “complimentary” drink. The person we ran into told us “we have to” speak to her before she would allow us to go to our room. For the record, you can and should ignore these people. We tried to be very polite but we finally got pushed to the point where we walked away. Lot’s of people on Trip Advisor complain about the time share salesmen. This is Mexico and it is part of traveling there. The best advice is to just ignore and walk past them. If you are approached by someone, tell them that you never travel to the same place twice and/or your vacation was a gift. This usually let’s them know they are wasting their time with you.

The first room we were in was the one bedroom; it had one bathroom with a shower/bathtub, a kitchen with refrigerator, microwave, stove, sink and some plates, utensils. We did the all inclusive so the fridge was re stocked every day with beer, water and soda. There is also a basket of dry goods, nuts, popcorn, chips, et that is restocked every day. There was a couch area in the living room that had two couches that could be made into beds. We left $5 on the sink every day to tip the maid, we had her do all of our dishes and make up all the beds every day. The service was very good. We were on the 3rd floor, they were doing construction on both sides of us and started on the floor below during the day. As our 2 year old naps during the day, we requested a room change. The first person we spoke to offered us a smaller room on a higher floor. While it had a better view it was a downgrade from the room we were already in. When we spoke to the concierge about getting switched to a room that was exactly like the one we were in, she was a bit embarrassed by not being offered a similar room and upgraded us to a two bedroom, two bath suite on a higher floor. She also checked up on us. If you are planning on using the wireless network in the hotel, it is expensive and not super reliable. It cost about $20/day to use it and I was never able to get a VPN connection to my work. Not sure if the issue was on my end or the hotel’s.

The hotel only has cardio equipment; you can go to the Casa Vela which is about 1/2 a mile away on a golf course. It is walking distance but it is hard to find if you do not know where you are going. The first time you go use the hotel drop off.

There are three pool areas on the property and it is right on the beach. We stayed mostly at the pool area furthest from the beach as that is where most kids were. The bottom area is where most of the adults hang out; there is a swim up bar, pool volleyball. There is also a small stream that connects the back and front pools and a mini slide for the kids. There is a kiddy pool that is only about 2 feet deep.

The kids really enjoyed the daily iguana spotting; the iguanas on the property are really large and amazing to look at. However, beware of iguana poop, they hide up in trees and they poop down. Look up before take a spot underneath a tree and look around for poop on the ground. There are also peacock, geckos and a few cats. There are some water areas that hold fish and turtles, you can go to the store in the hotel and get fish food, and it is a lot of fun for the kids.

We spend most days around the pool but did venture to the beach every day. The beach is a lot like the beaches in some parts of California. There is gritty sand and small rocks near the shore. If you walk out about 10 feet you get to soft sand. The current is pretty strong but no real waves. There is an outdoor volleyball court and areas with beach chairs that have shade. There is also a small Mercado right next to the hotel that sold tshirts, glasses, jewelry, blankets and other small items. I would not recommend purchasing anything from the small Mercado if you are planning on going to the PV Mercado - it is much larger and everything is cheaper. We did buy a few things there for the kids and small silver rings. Everything we purchased was well over double what we ended up paying for them and we could have gotten everything even cheaper than that at the PV Mercado. For those of you who do not like to haggle, if you do not haggle the vendors make fun of you in Spanish when you leave.

If you plan on hanging around the pool, you should try and get a spot where there is a table. It seemed like you got better service when you had a table. Every day we would go down to the pool and ask for a bucket with beers, waters and soft drinks. We would have food during the day around the pool. The food around the pools was okay (hotdogs, hamburgers, taquitos, pizza and sandwiches) but you get kind of sick of it after eating the same thing over and over. Also, when you are eating around the pool you cannot leave you food out unguarded for even a short period of time because of the birds.

The service around the pool was great, with the exception of Sundays. On Sunday, they open the hotel up, so anyone can pay $50.00 and they get full reign of the facilities. We found this to be highly annoying, as there was limited space to sit around the pool and it was crowded. It is kind of a slap in the face to pay around $400/night and have someone use all the same facilities and pay $50. Anyways, if you are going to spend time around the pool, tip your guy. If you are getting good service around the pool it is just a much nicer overall experience. You can get food and drinks quickly and easily. A note on tipping, in an all inclusive part of your tips are supposed to be taken care of, so you don’t have to do the straight 20% that we do in America. Basically, if you tip $10 at the end of the day to your guy, this is about what would be expected if you were there all day and ordered food and drinks, $15 is good and $20 is great. We tipped $15 or $20 every day depending on if we ordered food and the number times we had requested service. With two kids we were getting food and drinks all day, which they would routinely refill with ice. One Latino family who we befriended gave us grief about this, but IMHO giving an extra $5-$10/day to the guys running around was absolutely worth it.

The food at both restaurants is decent. The one on the beach is more casual and you can walk in for service the one near the lobby you need to have a reservation. The service at the back restaurant was really good. The back restaurant had different themed nights, Italian, Mexican, French. If you want to have dinner at the back restaurant you should call in the morning. We had no problems getting reservations through the entire stay.

This pretty much explains our experience and recommendations. I will upload pictures as well.

A few closing tips of advice:
1. If you are a guy bring a good pair of board shorts with pockets that have Velcro or a zipper. You will want to keep all your money, room key on you and you will not want to lose it in the pool or beach during a swim.
2. You are in Mexico - Bring Pepto Bismo pills. The food and water at Velas Vallarta is fine. You may want to bring some Triscuits as well.
3. Bring tons of Suntan Lotion SPF 30+, it is really expensive around the hotel.
4. You may want to bring some bug spray or take B-1 vitamins before you go.