This trip was our third trip to HDM in the past three years. We love HDM and that is why we return each year. We are not timeshare owners, we rent a Junior Suite each year.

We got assigned the JS in Bldg. #5, which we like, and had a great view of the ocean and close to the pools. As expected the grounds and landscaping were in excellent condition and very beautiful, however, we and others noticed a decline in the service level and some maintenance issues with the rooms and facilities.

If I would rate the service, it would only be at the fair level, compared to excellent in years past. We had a pool waiter tell us he was "to busy to take our orders" - twice. One of the female concierges barely spoke english and was just plain rude. It appeared that the majority of the staff had a negative attitude. We commented to the General Manager and she, Claudia, told us that several guests had complained also about the service when I pressed her to see if other guests had a similar report.

Our room door lock was very hard to use and was random if it worked each time. No less than 5 swipes to get back into the room. The AC unit was very noisy and leaked water on to the floor. Maintenance came after our request, he shined his light into the grate and said everything was fine, it leaked the rest of the week, we just mopped up the water with a towel. The TV was very blurry.

The beach equipment was disgusting for the most part, rusty, broken, and in bad need of replacement. Pool furniture is showing extreme wear, and the pool was dirty and had a scum layer on it.

In short, HDM is showing it's age. Time for some much needed capital upgrades and replacements. Glad I am not an owner there, because the fees are going up to pay for the needed improvements I bet.

I will have to reevaluate where we stay in Cabo next year. It is real unfortunate, because we really love HDM

My husband and I stayed at HDM October 27 - November 3, 2007. We really enjoyed our stay. We had a ocean view room that was located in an older building. The room was really spacious and had a nice little kitchen. We didn't spend much time in our room, as the hotel grounds are absolutely gorgeous! It was so peaceful and quiet, we wondered where all of the people were!!! We were afraid that we would have to get up really early to get a chair with an umbrella at the pool, but that wasn't an issue. The only complaints we had were that the service as very bad and the food was really expensive! If you don't want to pay $14 for a grilled cheese sandwich or $30 for a breakfast buffet, stop by Costco or Sam's club, so you don't have to eat out for every meal. Also, be sure to book the zodiac snorkeling tour with cabosanlucastours.net. It was SO fun! Overall, both my husband and I agreed that this was the most beautiful place we had ever been, and we had an awesome vacation!

We went on our first time to Los Cabos Mexico in June 2007. My wife and I traveled with our 2 children, ages 2 and 9. As such our trip lacked any real exposure to the nightlife for which Cabo is famous.

We stayed a total of nine nights: Seven at the Hacienda Del Mar (Time share) which shares facilities with the Sheraton and 2 at the Sheraton.

Arrival & Getting to the Hotel:
We rented a car as we did not want to be tied down to the hotel. The cost ended up being about the same as if we had taken cabs but we didn’t have to wait around. Its called Premium Car Rental Protection Coverage.

Insurance: Our auto policy did not cover rental cars in Mexico once you went 50 miles past the U.S. border. Even though our AX card indicated that they covered any damages not covered by our auto insurance, we opted for signing up for additional coverage through AX at $29 per rental. Under this policy, AX would be the primary insurance company even if our auto policy was in effect. Its called Premium Car Rental Protection Coverage.

Upon arrival we were advised that our room was not yet ready. We were given an account number so we could charge food and drinks while we enjoyed the grounds while waiting for check-in.

Room
Our room was both spacious and clean. We stayed in a first floor efficiency that had a sitting area attached to the small kitchen. It also had a balcony that overlooked what appeared to be the public access road to the beach but also provided a partial view of the ocean. The beds are very firm…but as we prefer it that way we had no issues. Our only complaint was that we requested a crib for the room several times before actually getting it. One word of warning for older guests is that the bathtub/shower combo may be hard to get into if you have difficulty. There was a TV with cable both Spanish and English channels…we were pleasantly surprised to see that they had Nickelodeon.


Hotel Grounds
The hotel grounds are well maintained. There are several hotel pools but as we had small children we spent most of our time at the children’s section. We had to get there by 9 AM to get a couple of lounge chairs under an umbrella when the hotel filled up on the weekend. There are towels available by the pool.

There are lounge chairs on the beach with palapa (grass umbrellas). If you arrived by noon you could usually find several empty lounge chairs. The sand beach is large, clean and relatively quiet. Part of the beach was cordoned off for hotel guests and the venders stayed on the outside unless summoned. There is a strong undertow so swimming is only advised for good swimmers. My oldest daughter loved standing on the beach and letting the waves crash at her feet.

Kids’ Club
The kids club is called Sheratoons. It is for children aged 5-11 years old and is available daily from 9:30am to 4pm. My oldest daughter had a great time when she went. She would usually go for a couple of hours a day to hang out with her new friends. There is a daily activity schedule for the kids club with activities.


Meals/Drinks
Breakfast: Although we ate breakfast almost daily in our room we did eat breakfast at the hotel twice. Buffet at the Sheraton: although the presentation was nice and the selection good, the food just was not that tasty. Breakfast at Girasoles: Although not a buffet you could order anything and as many things as you wanted off the menu. We had a great breakfast as well as a spectacular view.

Lunch: We ate lunch either in our room or at the poolside restaurants. The food during lunch was standard pub fare consisting of sandwiches, burgers, and salads. Good but not spectacular and a bit expensive but convenient.

Dinner: We always had dinner outside the hotel into Cabo. Having two small children precluded us from eating at many of the more upscale restaurants. We went to the mall several times and ate at the various restaurants there (including Hard Rock Café; Senor Greenburg’s Deli). Based on a recommendation we received at the hotel we did dine at the Sea Queen which was more upscale but kid friendly as it had an enclosed playground attached to the restaurant. The kids loved the playground while we loved that fact that we could dine on fresh sea food. This restaurant seemed to be more popular with the locals.

Bars: Happy hours moves from bar to bar from 11am. The 2 for 1 drinks are a real bargain.

Final Thoughts
I agree with one reviewer that in many ways it is a luxury hotel but that some of the attention to detail of a five-star experience is lacking. Staff was always smiling, friendly and helpful. We had a great stay and would go back again.

We did the Buccaneer Queen Pirate’s Cruise – which was OK. Next time we would spend some time sight-seeing.

I wrote to the resort about a week before our arrival and said that this would be our 10th anniversary trip, and if they could select a nice unit with a good view, we would be grateful. My email probably went to the main hotel desk, rather than the timeshare/vacation club desk, and I really can't say whether the email did any good, but I did get a reply saying that they would do their best. We were confirmed to a one bedroom unit through the timeshare exchange company SFX. I learned that there are two different floor plans, a luxury unit (smaller with partial kitchen) and a master unit (full kitchen, two baths and larger square footage).

Upon our arrival we were assigned to the smaller luxury one bedroom unit in building 5, unit # 521 on the second floor. This building is next door to the reception building and is also as close to the beach and ocean front pools as you can get unless you are in an oceanfront building, so it was a very convenient location. The balcony looked out across a small courtyard with a fountain to their nicest onsite restaurant which is a palapa style building. On either side of the palapa we had good views of the Sea of Cortez. It was very pretty. As many of the buildings have no view of the sea at all, I felt we had gotten a pretty good location for a non-owner. Understandably, their vacation club owners get the oceanfront units. I wish we had gotten the larger unit, with bigger living area and full kitchen, but I can't complain.

The small one bedroom has the same size partial kitchen as the studio unit, and the living/dining area isn't much bigger, either, but we had a large separate bedroom with two queen size beds and a two person whirlpool and sink/vanity area that opened from the bedroom. Passing through that area, you reach another sink/vanity area, large walk in shower, and a separate toilet compartment. The hallway outside the bedroom had a second closet with a safe and a small shelving unit we used to store our shoes etc.

As reported, the couch is very firm and not especially comfortable to sit on. As the kitchenette is directly across from the living area, and the dining area is off to the right, nearer the TV, you end up with mostly a view of the kitchenette when you sit in the living room. It would have made more sense to put the dining set on that side and the couch and chair on the other end of the room. By the way, we were told that this building is one of the original buildings and it did not have any flat screen TVs unlike the units we read about in other reviews. We spent less time than normal in the living/dining room since it was a small, uninspiring room. We spent most of our indoor time watching TV from the bedroom, or we sat out on the balcony.

We discovered on the last day that they had complimentary coffee set up in the Vacation Club reception building next door. I’m not sure if coffee is there every morning, or only on the days of the week that people are checking in/out, which are Saturday, Sunday and Monday. We typically either made coffee in our unit, or went out for a walk down to the main hotel building, which has coffee set up outside under the portico every morning. Many days we got coffee there and sat by one of the infinity pools overlooking the sea while we enjoyed our coffee.

We did take the resort “presentation” even though the “gifts” for taking the tour aren’t nearly as generous as are offered at other resorts downtown. The breakfast buffet is very, very good, and considering the cheapest breakfast from onsite restaurants is $15.99 (Girasoles), this was a pretty good deal in itself. We got discounts on a long list of tours, and a $100 certificate to the onsite restaurants, which we used at Pitahayas. (sp?) The food was good but not spectacular and the service was okay, but not very attentive. We also ate at Tomatoes for lunch one day, and at Girasoles for breakfast. Both were good and offer great views of the sea. Another note regarding the timeshare tour. It was not high pressure until we were turned over to the “closer” who was very aggressive and ended up trying to sell us a week with a “guaranteed” rental program that would insure us a huge rental income on a yearly basis. Ummm, right. No thanks. From there we were handed off to a woman who we thought was in charge of setting us up with our discounted tours etc. As it turned out, she offered us a further discount on our already discounted tours, and belatedly we learned that she was manipulating us into taking a timeshare tour at a different resort (Villa del Largo). To our amazement, the resorts sometimes have a deal with another resort or two and they “recycle” prospects among themselves. Why they would want someone who just said “no” to buying, I’m not sure, but be aware of this practice.

The usual Tuesday welcome party was moved to Wednesday to coincide with Halloween. The resort put up decorations for the event and the staff dressed in costumes. The party was great with a mariachi band, chips and guacamole, chicken wings, ribs, and plenty of free drinks.

The three pools and the resort grounds are very picturesque and we were glad to spend most days at the resort soaking up the atmosphere. The beach is okay for swimming some days of the year. The yellow flag was out all week until the last day, but the current is plenty strong so caution is advised. We did not attempt it, but saw many people in the water. The last day, the red flag was up and the waves were huge, curling, and magnificent.

We engaged in some of the resort activities such as Mexican Bingo, during which we won two free drinks, a cooking demonstration, bartender class (you get to try all the samples), etc. They have Spanish lessons, dance lessons, water aerobics and other activities that we didn’t try.

There is no doubt this is an expensive resort. Activities were free but they charge for anything and everything possible aside from that. We had heard that you get a starter bag of coffee. This is no longer free. There was a jug of bottled water in the room but if you use it you’re billed $5.00, and the coffee was also a billable item. Fortunately we brought small sample size packs of various flavors of coffee, and we drank the coffee set out at the hotel in the morning the rest of the time. Do not be afraid to drink plain old tap water. They have a desalinization plant and there is nothing wrong with the water, including the taste. The rep who checked us in said we should drink bottled water because although it was purified, it was “not like we were used to at home.” As far as I can see, this is simply a ploy to sell you a bunch of $5.00 jugs of water during your stay. I brought little packs of Crystal Light and made up pitchers of lemonade and other flavored drinks all week. We drank gallons of their “water not like at home” with no ill effects. The restaurants are expensive, but for what you get, the prices aren’t that bad. No worse than any upscale restaurant anywhere else. The problem is there is simply no cheap option if you just want something simple and light. The snack bar menu is now $13.00 for any item, whereas resort literature noted the price at $11.00, so I guess prices just went up again. Drinks are available at 2 for 1 prices at one bar or another throughout the day, so check the schedule and plan accordingly. There is also a “drink of the day” that is 2 for 1 all day at any of the bars. We are not big drinkers and never had more than one drink each per day. Prices for food and miscellaneous items at the resort store are brutal. Try to bring basics with you, or go shopping elsewhere.

Bottom line, we really enjoyed our stay here. The resort is included in the annual magazine Great Hotels and Resorts and this is truly a beautiful resort, from the wonderful Mexican architecture to the carefully groomed grounds, to the superb pools and resort amenities. I think the people who complain about prices are people who don’t typically stay at 4 Star resorts, and they aren’t used to the prices these sorts of places usually charge. This resort, like many others on The Corridor between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, was designed to be a quiet, exclusive retreat for vacationers who want luxurious surroundings and an upscale experience. You pay for that. If you know what to expect beforehand, you should have a wonderful stay at this resort.