First the normal positive stuff. Great food, great service, perfect weather, great beach, fabulous room and very few hassles from the condo selling crowd and the beach vendors. The place is new and the doors, patio doors, safe and bathroom were all first class. The bed was huge and comfortable. The room had all the amenities you would expect from a 5 star hotel and the air conditioner was silent as was the ceiling fan. The temperature was between 25c and 30c every day and night. The super air conditioner made sleeping, wonderful. Dinner was very nice in all the restaurants but the portions were a little on the small side. You also get an appetizer and dessert so if they were to provide Canadian portions you might go home 10 lbs heavier. I am not sure if this is a complaint or not but I would add that you won’t go hungry.

Now for the real purpose of this post. I am a Canadian as were about 80% of the guests for the 10 days we stayed there from Nov 25, 2012 – Dec 5, 2012. On the web site for Westjet Vacations, it listed all the things included in the price and it also said “All taxes and gratuities”. I would think that the people at the resort would be very well paid compared to other resorts for tips to be included. They are NOT! I am not about to tell the management of Now Amber how much to pay their staff. The employees definitely weren’t forced to work there, however, tips are definitely not included.

When Canadians go out to a nice restaurant for supper, they normally pay about 15% of the bill to the waitress as a tip. I am not advocating that a tip is required if the service is lousy but you won’t find lousy service at Now Amber. Canadian waitresses also make about $10 per hour in wages while their “just as competent” counterparts at Now Amber make as little at $5-$10 per day. Yes, per day. Even a $1 tip is significant to these wonderful people.

I recommend taking at least $25 American for each day of your stay. A dollar for a drink for you and your partner, $2 for breakfast, $3 for lunch and $5 for your supper. Leave at least $3 per day for the lady who cleans your room. Don’t provide these tips as a way of getting preferred service over other guests. Do it because it is the right thing to do as these people will give you an excellent vacation. It is Canadian and it will make you feel better about yourself AND you won’t have to hide the fact you are a Canadian. If you don’t want to tip, please pretend to be something other than a Canadian. Don’t embarrass the rest of us.

I spoke to one of the head waiters and he said only about 1 in 5 give a tip. If you can’t afford a few hundred extra dollars for a week or more in heaven, then please just stay home. I was appalled when I found out just how cheap all these fellow Canadians actually were. Stop it.

If you visit Now Amber yourself and you agree with me, please include your take on tips in your revue so that all Canadians that visit will read that taking tip money isn’t optional.

PS My wife and I aren’t rich, just very average, like most Canadians. We just believe that the people at this resort deserve our respect and a little financial thank you that won’t hurt us and will definitely help them. To all my new friends at Now Amber, thanks for a great holiday.

This was our first (and last!) stay at Now Amber resort. Very first impression about it was: “Great! I love it!” as the entrance and main lobby look very poshy. Beside that, there was nothing impressive.

Entertainment was next to nothing. Aquatic activities were totally unsupervised – they never even bothered to update the warning flag at the beach. Kids club offered nice activity for our 5 years old daughter, but our 10 years old son was bored to death.
Somewhere in reviews it was mentioned in management reply that entertainment is going from 9:00AM till late evening. Not really true! I saw “entertainment” guys no more than twice during the day – once at about 11:00AM for 15 minutes water aerobics class and second time in the evening taking credits for somebody else performance.

Sleep quality: beds and mattresses are good to excellent. But there is VERY noisy exhaust system at the neighboring hotel installed just a few meters away from Now Amber building. It is so loud – we had to yell outside our room to hear each other. And we were living on the 7th floor!

The most disgusting thing about Now Amber is that it is infested with greedy timeshare crooks. Now Amber management claims they have no connection to them and therefore has no responsibility for their actions. We went for presentation and purchased Unlimited Vacation Club membership. The next day we went to cancel our purchase and that’s when we realized that UVC membership is nothing but total junk.
Watch this video ( goo.gl/iueQc ) where UVC rep admits - it is worthless resale! It took us one month, huge stress and lots of phone calls and emails to get our money back. So, please, be aware - Unlimited Vacation Club membership is nothing but trouble, stay away from it!

We were somewhat concerned after reading the negative reviews but we were very pleasantly surprised by the quick and friendly check-in, the lobby and views were wonderful. We were celebrating birthdays and our room was decorated, including birthday cake. We found all of the staff to be very accommodating, efficient and pleasant. A very great and relaxing experience. Be sure to attend the Mexican Fiesta!

We enjoyed, for the most part, an excellent week at the Now Amber/Secrets Resort and Spa. When we initially booked our trip to the Now Amber we went for the preferred tower junior suite swimout, upon arriving at the resort we found ourselves being escorted to the Secrets side of the resort, much to our suprise. We were given the junior suite swim out on that side of the resort only to find out that because the pools on that side do not recieve any sunlight they are cold enough to freeze the b@**s of a brass monkey. When I mentioned to the concierge that these swimouts should be heated I was informed that they are. I then noticed that the circulation pumps are turned of at night and any of the heating they may have done during the day was lost. My wife who looking forward to having this swimout pool was severely disappointed.
Being a new resort you can expect a few bugs in the system but really there were nothing major. There are what I consider a few minor safety concerns with the pool and surrounding area. 1) There are ledges and steps in the pools and the bottom of the pools are all one colour, the edges of the steps and edges should, I think, should be of a different colour so you do not trip like myself and many others did. 2) The RAMP, oh let me tell you about the RAMP leading to the washrooms in the pool area on the Secrets side- SLIPPERY WHEN WET and very dangerous, I do not know how many people slipped on the RAMP but it could be a lawsuit in the making. Now don't get me wrong it is not just bare concrete they do have half a dozen non-skid strips spaced roughly 3-3 1/2 feet.
The food at the resort was top rate Oceana was excellent- great staff helping us to expand our limited Spanish, Bordeaux was superb, loved the roast duck, Tamarindo was really good too. Unfortunately we did not enjoy our visit to Capers. Everything started off well we recieved our wine, our orders were taken and then we were ignored, ignored until we helped ouselves to more wine. At that point our server seemed perturbed " we were doing HIS job" after finishing our second glass of wine, our water and our appetizers we were ignored again. Rather than helping ourselves we then decided to go elsewhere. While enjoying our meal at Oceana the manager of resturants came to apoligize. This was a greatly appreciated gesture in his part. We explained to him that we understand when your short-staffed and busy you may not get the greatest of servive but a quick explanation and keeping the wine and water glasses full and everything would have been fine.
Soooooooo for the most part everything was excellent nice new, clean resort, good food plenty of drinks and a good location ( you can walk to old Vallarta in 1/2 an hour if you want). The only thing I would not reccommend is the prefered junior suite swimout on the Secrets side of the resort, CCCCOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So yes we would go here again it was an excellent resort and I give it a 9.99 out of 10.