I stayed at the FAVC Grand Los Cabos in November '05. I'm not a novice traveler and this property is probably the most beautiful property I've stayed at. I've listed some good and bad points of staying there.

Good:

Beautiful property. Very relaxing. Great pools. Rooms are amazing (I stayed in a 2-bedroom condo, with whirlpool bath, separate shower, full kitchen). Food is excellent. Staff is very friendly and works very hard to make your stay pleasant.

Bad:

Not an all-inclusive property. You are charged for everything...including glasses of water at the restaurants. Beach is coarse sand and not soft to walk on. Beach is at a steep slope and hard to walk on. The Sea of Cortez is not a safe place to swim, due to the hard surf and many large rocks.

Advice:

Be ready to walk. The property is very spread out. There are golf carts, which the staff use as taxis to shuttle guests from the front of the property to their rooms. The staff is very nice and attentive.

You WILL need a rental car. All the shopping and action is in, nearby, Cabo San Lucas. Driving is pretty easy, a straight road into Cabo. For American's...The road you are driving on is a highway, you have to take exits to the right to make left hand turns...Once you figure out the side roads are where you can make turns, the driving is easy.

Find a local grocery store and buy your soda, liquor, and munchies, as well as some food for meals. You'll save TONS of money, by doing a little of your own fixing on this trip.

Activities:

I'm a SCUBA diver. This isn't a GREAT dive destination. There are a couple of good dives. You can see Sealions, LOTS of puffers, Eels. There are only a couple of dives to go on. Horseback riding was okay, the whole time was along a huge beach. Not alot of variety to see on the horseback ride.

We spent 2 weeks in Cabos for our honeymoon. One week at another resort and one at Fiesta. I travel every year on a nice vacation and was very disapointed in Fiesta. Not honeymoon calaber at all. We stayed in the club rooms. Never was there an explanation of what we get for the extra price. Well you get continental breakfast if there is any left and the room it is served in only has 4 tables. Found an opened soda can in the mini bar 2nd day there. Shows how they inspect the rooms. 3rd day there the phone kept ringing while we were sleeping. It was front desk telling us the neighbor was complaining of smoking on the terrace. It wasn't us. Pretty rude I think. Also I don't like that when you check in they automatically take you to the timeshare desk for them to talk to you. You don't realize it at first you just think it's part of check in. Don't take the time share tour. There hotel is not worth a time share. Even if you trade to others there are no luxury properties in their book. They offer shuttles to town but the last run back to the hotel is at 9pm. I guess you can't enjoy the nightlife in town. There are many hotels to chose from in Cabo and this is not the one.

Our family of four stayed a week at the Fiesta Americana along with 16 others from our extended family. We had a wonderful time with great weather --sunny, in the low 80's and dry.

Our rooms were well appointed and the bed was nicely made up (Westin-like) and pretty comfortable. The bathrooms were marble with good-sized showers (with great water pressure.) All employees were very friendly and helpful. At check in you can get a tough sell on the time shares. We didn't experience that but others in our group did.

The beach is pretty but rocky so it's not great for swimming, but good for snorkelling and sunning. There were no water sports there. We went elsewhere to jet ski and parasail. The pools are marvelous and the service in the pool area was very good. The chicken quesadillas were very good and not too expensive.

We rented a car and drove into San Jose del Cabo a couple of times. Did a day trip to Todos Santos which we liked. Cabo at night is a lot of fun. We had older teenagers and folks in their 20's in our group and they enjoyed Cabo Wabo and Squid Roe. Taxis were $5 per person with a $20 minimum to Cabo from the hotel.

Some of the members of our party golfed at the nearby course and raved about it, but did have a bad experience when one of the foursome decided not to golf and the other three had to pay for him, even though there were other threesomes on the course and no singles were waiting.

Dinner at Rosato's in the Fiesta Americana was excellent with very good service (expensive, though). Dinner at Esperanza was amazing -- spectacular setting with attentive service and good food (expensive, again). Dinner at Panchos in Cabo was very good and good value (fun decor). Dinner at Pitahayas was incredibly disappointing, but we were there on Christmas day so it may have just been a bad day. Romeo and Juliet was a fun family dinner.

A sunset cruise from 5 to 7 p.m. on a catamaran was awesome. Highly recommend. Some of our group went on a whale watch and saw many whales. They loved it. Fishing was mixed: one group did very well, the other didn't catch anything.

Would we go back? Everyone in our family loved the Los Cabos area, very friendly to Americans, beautiful scenery, good restaurants, fun things to do. No one got sick. We had great weather, but I don't know if it's like that all the time. Three of our family loved the Fiesta Americana and would return, one was less than thrilled about the workout facility -- too small, not managed well (some people would stay on the aerobic machines for over an hour) and they charged $10 a day ($50 for the week). The internet was $26 a day.

Overall, it was a great family vacation.

Check in was great but went down hill fast.The Villas (time shares) are located a long distance from the lobby, traveling over steep hills. Any peron with any slight physical setback could not walk it. But we were informed they have golf carts and someone is always available to drive you. Guess again. We were unable to secure one ride our entire stay. Our 90 minute no pressure timeshare presentation turned into a 2 1/2 hour, 3 salesmen ,thumb screw torture sell. I guess something was lost in the translation of " We are not interested in purchasing.Thank you anyway." We have stayed in several 5 star hotels and expect the prices to be higher. But I must confess paying $7.50 USD for a 12 oz bottle of purified water at dinner is an insult. The fishing was great. We caught 5 tuna and 1 marlin. We got back to our room at 6 00 PM ony to find our room was only now being cleaned. Check out was great. We were ready to go home. Only to find out that the ride the hotel had arrainged for us didn't exist. The only thing 5 star about this hotel are there prices.