The hotel exceeded my expectations. I was concerned with some of the statements from the previous commenters.
The only annoying concern I had with the property was the assertive time share tactics. However, once we firmly advised we were not interested and didn't want the discounts, we were no longer bothered. The condition of the property was good. We found the room to be clean. The rooms have a nice balcony to enjoy the weather. There is a small shopping center nearby and some of the locals set up carts with goods for sale. You'll also find beach vendors, however part of the beach area is roped off with a hotel staffer nearby if you don't want to be bothered.
The nightly entertainment centered around the buffet offerings each night. The Spa offered a number of fairly reasonable cost services. There is also a fitness center. The other restaurant --Bella California--near the beach was open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They make a good wood fired pizza here. I recommend purchasing the all inclusive plan if you plan to be staying at the resort for a good part of your day to cover meals and alcoholic beverages. Cabo is overall fairly expensive. We did go off site for dinner. If you are considering an extremely upscale, romantic and expensive experience, the restaurant at the Esperanza fits the bill. Great ambiance. We also enjoyed Edith's. There are plenty of restaurants around the marina area. We enjoyed the Pez Gato catamaran ride. We did notice the Tropicat appeared to be a much nicer experience, although costs a bit more.

The "Villa del Palmar -- Villa Group" is an excellent choice for first time visitors to CSL. It sets on a hill on Medano Beach, so the views can be very good. It is part of a "compound" environment that offers a deli, grocery store, ice cream store, video store plus souvenirs and beach attire. The rooms are nice, but would seem to need a little remodeling (mattresses and pillows especially). This can best be described as a "family resort". The pool area is busy. The beachfront restaurant is excellent and has great views. About our only objection to this hotel is that it limits the "all-inclusive". THIS IS A BAD MOVE. In other words, there are menu items that are not included. These are *starred* and include shrimp, lobster and steak. Our advice to management would be to either offer it all...or do not offer all-inclusive. Many tourists from the states were complaining about this.

As for the best part of Villa del Palmar -- always, always, the Mexican people (waiters, maids, front desk, management) all offer to please you in any way possible. We would go back to Villa del Palmar, but probably include it as a "family vacay".

My husband and I stayed at the Villa del Palmar from Nov. 11-16,2006. We were very pleasantly surprised, especially after reading some of the other comments on this resort. We made a timeshare exchange through Interval International and found this place to be exactly as they described. Check in was a breeze and the staff very helpful. We did get the quick Gold Card talk, in order to get the key to our room safe. We politely declined the Gold Card, as we were not looking to spend any of our vacation time in timeshare presentation. There was no problem with this, the nice young lady gave us some coupons, got us our safe key and a welcome drink, and we were on our way........we were never hounded again, end of story. Our room was on the ground floor and had pool view. It was clean, well stocked, very pleasant and we enjoyed it. The daily maid service was a plus. We don't usually experience that in the timeshare world. The resort had many activities and themed nights, which we did not partake in, but it looked as though those that had, did have a great time. I had read in a previous review, that the resort was noisy. I did find the main pool area to have a bit of noise when activities were going on, but it was a fun atmosphere. There were plenty of quieter places within the grounds to escape to, if the need arose. Also, the themed nights ended early enough that they did not not interfere with sleep (at least not for those of us going to bed around 10:00). As far as the pool chair issue goes, we didn't have any problems getting chaises, at any time of day. I guess we were traveling during the slow season and that is why. We found the food at the resort to be so-so, and as with the entire Cabo area, quite expensive.

We love the Cabo area and it is now our #1 Mexican destination. We would return here again in a heart beat.

We stayed from October 14 -21 in a two bedroom, 3 bath unit with an ocean view on the 7th floor. My boyfriend and I slept on the sleeper sofa while my sister and brother-in-law had one room and my mom and dad-in-law had the other room. This was my sister and brother-in-law's time-share. Big resorts like this are not really my thing, so I'm probably a bit biased against the Villa del Palmar from the git-go.

Anyway! We were the last to arrive on October 14th and thought we could simply ask at the check-in desk for the names of our party and get the room number. But no! We had to slap down a credit card for incidentals and sign for any charges we might make.

The unit seemed clean, although the furnishings were a bit tired. The shower curtain in our bath had a pencil eraser-sized dot of blood or rust or some other stain on it.

That night when we unfolded the sleeper sofa, we saw that the sheets had not been changed since the last person(s) had slept in them. Luckily, we had brought our sleep sack, so we just used that. We did notice that the next night, the maid had changed the old grungy sheets for clean ones and had folded out the sleep sack over it all like a big blanket. The mattress wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great, either. It sagged a bit in the middle, so it was like we were sleeping in a hammock.

We went to the Mexican Fiesta as a big group (17 of us) and it was ok. The food was marginal. Typical buffet fare you'd find anywhere with no stand-outs. The first "show" of the evening involved "shot girls/boys" luring people to the stage to do drinking contests and dirty dance/gyrate for the audience's approval. It was pretty boring and reminded me of an MTV Spring Break show from the early '90s. The folk dancing afterwards was pretty cool. The little kids in our group loved that part and rushed onto the stage afterwards to dance.

The 5 women in our extended group all took spa treatments together and the services and prices were about what you'd expect in the US.

We grabbed sandwiches from the little deli/internet cafe by the on-site market and found the quality and prices to be pretty good and the convenience factor was great.

While we were at VDP, the electricity went out for about 45 minutes one afternoon (no AC, no water, etc). Another afternoon, there was no water for almost 3 hours. We called and were told there was a problem and they were fixing it and the water would be back in 30 minutes. An hour later we called and were told it would be back on in an hour.

The resort was well-placed. The beach was lovely, although no-one seemed to swim on that part and it really was only a short-walk (20-30 minutes depending on your route and how fast a walker you are) into town along a few back-roads with many time-share sharks lurking. The walk into town along the beach seemed to take Forever!

Speaking of time-share sharks - If you try to walk out of the resort before 11am along the road to town, you'll be accosted at 3-4 locations along the drive-way by VDP people asking if you're going to breakfast. Whatever you do, tell them no. They'll assume that you're going to a time-share presentation off-resort and hound you unmercifully. We ended up going to 2 time-share spiels (yes, we lied when quizzed by the VDP time-share patrol) and made US$400 cash and got vouchers for lunch and dinners at the two properties we visited. The presentations were longer than promised - about 2 1/2 hours each.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about VDP. It was not my cup of tea at all and the place was a bit tired. The resort insulates you so that you don't even feel that you're in another country. I've stayed in places exactly like this in Hawaii and San Diego and Florida. However, if you're a nervous traveler or have a passel of kids with you, this would probably be a great place to spend a vacation.