This resort is just a few months old and is beautiful and clean. The staff however, does have alot to learn about service. Everyone was polite but only a few went beyond what was required and 2 actually had a personality (Jose the bellman and Israel in the Sports Bar).

One DANGER!!! The rediculous bathtubs are dangerous. They are deep and have sloping sides down to a very narrow bottom with no mat or "rubble strips" to keep your footing. They do provide grab bars and you need them. My wife fell the first time she got in and thankfully ripped down the shower curtain to break the fall. I don't see any reason for the tubs... they need to be taken out and changed to a walkin shower.

Like someone else said, you have to bee in line each morning at 7-7:30 to get a decent reservation for one of the specialy restaurants. We ended up getting the last seating each night..9:00. The problem was that the food was NOT good. We ate at the Steak House one night and the steak was decent but typical Mexican. It is all 1/2" thick steak but was tender and cooked well. My wife had the seafood kabob and it has "mystery meat" fish that we think was tuna but was inedible and almost made her lose her cookies withone bite. We looked around and evryone that order the fish left it on their plate.

We ate at the Italian restaurant another night and both of us ordered the grilled prawn & risotto. It sounded safe...Wrong! We each got 1/2 of a small prawn on a bed of rissoto. We thought we ordered wrong. It looked and tasted like gummy mashed potatoes.

We finally decied that we couldn't take another gourmet restaurant and settled for the buffet food and eating a large breakfast which were both acceptable.

We have traveled Mexico for years and even lower cost all-inclusives have provided better service and much better food. While this is a nice resort with comfortable clean rooms, it just has a long way to go with service and food.

Stayed at the RIU Santa Fe week of Feb 16-23. I agree with everything positive that's been said and would give it an overall very good rating. Here are a few things that made it memorable to me, both pro and con.
PROs
The best feature for me was the self-serve expresso/cappuccino machine located in all restaurants. Even though they needed frequent maintenance, it was worth the wait. Double sinks in the room's bathrooms were a big plus especially when sharing four to a room. Surprisingly, there was no timeshare/vacation club pressure. Very close proximity to town, you can walk from the beach side or take a local bus very inexpensively, 7 pesos or 70 cents. Staff/locals were very helpful with details of where to catch bus. We stayed in Bldg 7 which was closest to beach and quieter pool, but further from main restaurant area. Great view from here of Land's End/Arch area when cruise ships weren't blocking the view.
CONs
There's no cocktail service in any of the restaurants, just beer and wine. So grab a cocktail before dinner if you have the patience to wait for a bartender. They had the most inefficient, dysfunctional reservation system for the specialty restaurants I've ever seen. And the restaurants were nothing special as the soup/salad/appetizer/desserts were all buffet just like the main buffet. You ordered and they served the main course only. Service was inconsistent, non exsistent or too fast. If you must choose only one restaurant to make a reservation at, I'd recommend the steakhouse.
Overall I'd go back or recommend the RIU Santa Fe to friends.

Hmmm, not sure where to start. I guess we can start with the check in. My husband and I waited in line for about 10-15 mins to check in and then were asked for our itinerary and were never given it back so if your flight information is on that paper, make a copy before you arrive to Cabo. Then they took us and about 10 other people to the stage area and seated us all down. The concierge called out all of our names and gave each of us an envelope. Seems our rooms were already assigned because our room key was already in the envelope. I really didn’t mind this except we wanted to upgrade to a better view and wanted a room in the same building as our friends that have been there for a few days already.

The next thing is the beach location. If you want a beach front, you would need to stay in building 7 and it is a far walk from the lobby and most restaurants and bars and it seemed way more crowded than the main pools. There are literally no bathrooms around the pools except for the spa and buffet areas. You can guess where everyone was peeing.

The food wasn’t too bad. If you want better food, you would have to be there when it’s fresh and not when they are about to clear it out. The variety was pretty good too and it seemed like there was something for everyone. My friends and I were always saying that the food didn’t fill us up very much. Almost like the food wasn’t fattening or something but don’t be fooled. I gained 5 lbs for only 5 days! I guess we were feeling that the food wasn’t very flavorful. We did try to flip our wrist bands to the white and go to the Riu Palace but they caught us and we had to bribe the front lobby guy with money to let us in again. It is true, the food at the RIU Palace is much better.

The room was clean and cozy. I liked that there was Corona bottles in our fridge and plenty of water bottles. I didn’t like the shower head and bathtub. The showerhead was so strong that if you get a sunburn, it would not be a pleasant experience. The tub had a narrow curve to it so it felt like I was going to fall and slip when entering and leaving the tub. We couldn’t leave our glass sliding door open towards the afternoon cause of the sewage smell. I kept thinking my husband had gas but the smell was coming from outside. Make sure you lock your sliding door before you leave since there seems to be a lot of theft in the hotel. We were there on our first day and a guy at the sports bar said that his safe was broken into and his money stolen. This opted my husband to rush to our room and take out our money and keep it with him at all times. This might seem risky but he made sure keep it safe. One of our friends had a small religious Icon stolen from their room which is sad since they are tremendously sacred to us and we always travel with one.

One thing to look out for if you are in town late at night, don’t relieve your bladder by the mall. My husband did this and was stopped by a security guard. He didn’t let him leave and was radioing back up. We all kept trying to convince the guard to let him go and that there are no bathrooms in the area so what was he supposed to do. Once his back up showed up, he said that he would let him go for $20. We joked the rest of the trip that it was the most expensive leak he’s ever had.

We did a lot of tipping and didn’t see any better service. I think that they were either understaffed or just not interested in being good at customer service. The main DJ (very tall and very skinny) at the disco was very rude. He didn't want to take any requests and actually told us that he wasn't playing the music for us. I mentioned this to the security guard Jesus and we got our song played. We never went back to the disco because of him.

Overall, I wouldn’t go back since the beach is too far away from the main area and the theft.

I am going to agree with all the not so great reviews. I looked past them before we left for our trip hoping to be pleasantly surprised and knowing that we aren't picky people we thought everything would be ok. We did have a great trip but it had NOTHING to do with the Santa Fe. We paid a lot of money to be upgraded to the Jacuzzi Suite. The room was beautiful and we loved it, but considering the amount of money we paid and I'm not going to say b/c you'll be shocked silly, this was in no way a 5 star resort. Upon returning back home we did talk to our agent about this place and our problems. And we are not complainers but we expected more. Maybe we'll get some sort of compensation but I doubt it but she'll be sure not to recommend this place to anyone. It's a shame too b/c there is a lot of potential there and the service and food are the main issues.
A little breakdown:

When arrived...
No one took us to our room. This is a huge place. Had to ask other guests where to go.
When bags finally arrived in room, they were dropped off. No explanation of features of room. Light switches. Air conditioning. This is a big room. Took a while to figure everything out.

The air conditioning did not work. We phoned three times. Nothing was done. This wasn’t a huge deal because it wasn’t terribly hot but that shouldn’t matter.

Outdoor hot tub didn’t work. (this was the whole reason for our upgrade) Had to phone about 5 times as well. Finally the next day someone showed but didn’t get it to work. No explanation at all. If they did explain we couldn't understand them b/c they know very little English.

Terribly rude front desk. We are very polite people. We are not demanding nor do we get worked up to people that work there. It's just not worth it.

The maid took our tv remote when cleaning. Took us two days and four phonecalls to get it back.

Restaurants were a joke. Cafeteria lighting. No service at all. Finding your own utensils, plates, milk for your coffee does get tiring 3x per day, 7 days a week. Seriously.

My boyfriend got e-coli poisoning from their asian restaurant. This is a story of personal hell that I won’t get into but let me just say it wasn’t pleasant. We had to call a doctor. 300 dollars on the spot. Another 100 for meds.

Overall, this place wasn't worth the big bucks we paid. We loved the restaurants in town though. Couldn't have asked for better service or friendlier people there. Awesome.
Would love to go back to Cabo but we'd stay somewhere else and perhaps not even an all-inclusive. Why bother when there are so many great restaurants in town.

If you do go to this place, just beware. It's sad that there were so many negatives but it is worth noting on here just like everyone else did.

And yes....the place does stink like sewer. Especially during the night. Not the best thing to smell when you have been sick or about to be sick.
Heard from several people on our plane too that were unhappy. I think we had legitimate reasons. We've stayed at the El Dorado in the Mayan, and loved it....and Sandals Whitehouse in Jamaica...loved it too!!! And they weren't perfect either but it's all in the little things.
Another thing to consider is the flight. We will never fly Skyservice again. We were delayed almost 4 hours b/c the tv was broken on our plane. Oldest plane ever!
It'll be Air Canada vacations from now on.