For those considering Secrets the Vine for their next vacay, this is a detailed review of the many great plusses, a few minuses, and some considerations/suggestions for the hotel management. TLDR: 4 of 5 stars, loved the resort, we’ll come back, but there were a few misses along with the positives, and a few oddities that could be addressed by management. GETTING HERE FROM THE AIRPORT. We always, always use Kalido private transport in Cancun – seriously the best communication, friendly drivers, easily accessible by phone if you need them and less expensive than most other transportation companies (private or group). THE PLUSSES: *Hands down the views from this hotel are spectacular. It’s a high-rise on the “Hotel Zone” strip, so the majority of rooms have views of both the lagoon and the ocean. Our room was on the top, 2814, and faced North (toward the Sandos resort vs the South toward the Hard Rock). We think the north facing rooms are preferable because the lagoon portion of the view includes Cancun downtown, and the Sandos hotel is shorter than the Hard Rock, so you can see over literally everything to the curved tip of the hotel zone. There are also ocean front rooms that only face the ocean/beach, but we actually preferred the dual-view of the lagoon and ocean. *Preferred Club: We always go for the preferred club but in this hotel it’s especially worth it for a few reasons. In preferred, you’ll be on floors 21 and up, guaranteeing yourself that to-die-for view. In addition to that, there is a gorgeous preferred club pool on the 12th floor that overlooks the main pool and the ocean, reserved for preferred club only. There’s also one restaurant, Olio, which has a sit-down breakfast for preferred club only. *The beach: If you haven’t been to the hotel zone before, it’s miles and miles of gorgeous sandy beaches and that pretty blue Caribbean water. When we went, we never saw sargassum, but September is mostly out of season for it (I’m told). We didn’t hang out on the beach, but there were plenty of chairs available on the beach, with umbrellas and it looked like there were plenty of servers there. *The food: With the exception of one meal, the food was the second-best of the 7 AMR all-inclusive brands we’ve been to (Zoetry Isla Mujeres was the best), with many different options, plus various parties and a BBQ by the preferred pool on one day. Every Weds is the Mexican food party which I’m told had fabulous food. Though we truly loved our meals, we’re always pretty Zen about the food because we just order something different if we don’t like what we ordered… the benefits of an all-inclusive! *The wine tasting experience: We did the paid experience $30pp and it was really fun and well worth it. They had 5 different Mexican wines to taste, but added on was a great appetizer plate to pair the wine with. The sommelier was knowledgeable and did a great presentation, too. We are “wine people” in general so we love all wine, but we enjoyed tasting the wines we hadn’t had yet. *The staff/service: There were a few annoying service misses (noted below) but overall the service here is excellent. Of particular note, the pool concierges at the preferred pool were OUTSTANDING. Erik and Alex/Alejandro were always there for us to move our (heavy!) umbrella round (we like shade), to be sure we had fresh towels, to help move our things out of the rain. Also at the pool, the cocktail service from Fernando and Sandra was on-point, with our drinks constantly filled. In the Vine lounge, but then later up at the Preferred lounge, Roberto was an excellent bartender, remembering our names (perhaps because we had a humorous drunken wine corking/uncorking incident he assisted with, hahaha). Tranci was our housekeeper and she must have worked her butt off because the rooms here are large (and ours was a suite) and our room was completely spotless the entire time. I don’t know who our mini-bar stocker was, but he also kept us happy with all the Pringles we wanted but shouldn’t have eaten. Marcos helped us with our luggage both in and out and was wonderfully helpful and friendly. *The lobby entertainment: In the earlier evening, they had some excellent musicians in the lobby, the relaxed-vibe-while-you- enjoy-your-drink kind. Frank May was the pianist there, and we listened to him nearly every night and never heard a repeated song. He seemed to do his own twist on some famous mellow/love songs and we loved it. There was also a sax player one night who was equally good. *UVC Club + Carlos: Some reviewers will mention the UVC discount vacation club sales pitch (note, it’s not a timeshare, it’s like you pre-pay for getting discounts for future vacations in the UVC brands). We’re actually already members of the club and use it enough to have paid for our initial cost, but we are always prepared to tell the membership folks no, and more firmly no, and no thank you again when they try to get us to go to an “update meeting” which is actually an “upgrade sales meeting”. Carlos the lead UVC membership person was completely low-key. He saw us in the lobby on the second day and recognized us from the social media vacation groups we’re in and called us by name (which was kind of impressive). On the last day, he gently asked if we wanted to come in if the rain came, and he’d give us an upgrade offer price. When he said, “Just ten minutes” he had the good enough sense of humor to laugh with us since it’s NEVER 10 minutes. We declined, but we appreciated the low-key offer with out the hard pitch. That type of approach makes us think that when/if we do want to upgrade, we’ll look for Carlos. THE MISSES Overall, we really loved the resort and we’ll come back, but we did note a few misses – nothing that impacted our vacation as a whole, just odd things for the Secrets brand. *You’re going to read other reviews that talk about the smell in one part of the lobby and it’s definitely there. It’s like there’s a sewage leak waaaayyyy under the main floor but the slight by distinct smell is still there, despite how much they try to cover it up. It seems worse in the morning, less at night, and we actually kind of became used to it. But it’s ONLY in one area of the lobby, not in the Vine lounge. I hope they can fix it, but I’m guessing it’s not easy to dig under a 28-floor hotel to find the cause. *One night we arrived late to Nebbiolo, the Italian restaurant, with no reservation, so there was a wait, which we totally understood. At one point there were seats at the bar, so the hostess let us sit there, but the menu isn’t served there. We were starving so we asked the bartender if we could get some food from the self-service antipasto bar literally a few feet away, where you served yourself on the plates right there. He had to ask someone else, who said “no” – and there were zero other people at the antipasto bar. This is really ridiculous since it’s an all-inclusive resort and again, there were plates right at the antipasto bar. *We live in Las Vegas so we’re usually pretty picky about our steaks and for that reason rarely order steaks at the all-inclusive steakhouses. This time, we broke our rule at Blue Water Grill and ordered the filets – they were excellent. Then later we heard from several others the ribeye was NOT. So when we went the second time, we ordered the catch of the day and the picanha steak. Catch of the day was oddly inedible (as in, fatty and couldn’t cut through it) and the steak was OK, but fatty. Literally everything else on the menu was incredible. But again, perhaps stay away from the steaks. I had also ordered fish at 4 other meals in different restaurants and it was excellent, so the fish thing was weird. I was pretty stuffed by that time though and didn’t send it back, instead just eating the appetizers and veggies. *Other entertainment: We’re not really into the nightly entertainment you see at other resorts in big theatres, but it’s a nice thing to have available when you want it. We went to one show, and there were other “shows” with different themes on other nights. However, when we were in the lobby or walked by the lounge, it seemed like it was the same singer singing mostly the same songs but in a different theme – example, we heard Dancing Queen and other songs every single night. To be fair, these are the songs drunk partying people love (us too when we go). But, don’t expect the variety and actual theatre productions you’d see in other resorts. *Cabanas—they were first-come/first serve, and when we saw them, we knew why. On the preferred club pool, they were no more than covered lounge chairs – but NOT lounge chairs that actually you could adjust. So you’re either sleeping in the shade or… I’m not sure what. Also they are on the wrong side of the preferred club to actually BE shady – the sun hits them directly most of the day. There were I think four “cabanas” by the main pool that DID have two adjustable lounge chairs in them.. but that was it. At least they were on the correct side for the shade, however. *Preferred pool servers: As mentioned above, the main ones were great. However, some of the others seemed a bit lost – more wandering around rather than having a set process. We’re used to pool servers moving up and down the aisles, taking multiple orders, then delivering multiple orders and then doing it again. The ones who seemed a bit inexperienced would take one order from a couple or maybe two couples (so maybe 3-4 drinks total), go get that order from the bartender, then deliver. Then they would go to two other couples, then deliver, etc. It was highly inefficient and resulted in us having to wave down the pool servers several times on the first full day we were at the preferred pool (Sept 21) and the last day full day we were at the preferred pool (Sept 26). The other servers who I presume are more experienced at pool service, were far better. *The “butler” experience: The butlers for our floor were very nice and friendly, and greeted us when they happened to be on our floor. They also did text us each day asking if we wanted anything or if they could help with anything. We didn’t ask for anything special except a bottle of wine in our room one day, and I’ve heard they will do more, but in other resorts they are a little bit more proactive by offering things like – would you like us to have coffee in your room? Do you like a bottle of champagne in the evening? Can I get you a reservation at a restaurant? Are you going to visit the spa? Do you need an appointment? Or even, for example, giving us a full tour/explanation of where everything is at the hotel and a detailed explanation of the room – none of that type of thing occurred or was offered. Another example is we’re supposed to get a bottle of liquor in our room upon arrival – the pref club concierge (David) who checked us in asked us what we wanted, but it never came, and our butlers never asked if we got it. David explained a lot and was great as an intro person/greeting. He said our butler would tour the room with us and see if we needed anything to start – but the butlers never visited our room to do so – the next time we heard from them was via the WhatsApp comms (which they got from David). Another is that at other preferred resorts, the butler asked you the day before you leave when you want to meet to check out, when you want your luggage taken down, who your transportation service is, etc. We checked out at the preferred lounge the day before, told the lady there (not our butler) when we wanted our luggage taken down, she said she’d handled it, then we reminded the pref lounge people AGAIN the morning we were leaving that we wanted our luggage taken down at 11:30. At 11:40… no bell porters. So I called the bell desk myself and they sent someone up immediately – and I confirmed, no they weren’t busy. Meanwhile, our butler texted us at 11:33 saying she “knew we were checking out today”, could she help, and did we want her to arrange luggage pickup? This made zero since by the time she texted we already thought it was being handled. Also, when we did check out the day before, we were supposed to get an “exit” ticket, which we then had to go to the butler to get…. All of which should have been handled the day before. It’s not a huge deal since the reality is we want a preferred room because of the other amenities and don’t really care about having a butler anyway, but since the concierge was pretty proud of the fact Secrets the Vine is one of the few Secrets who still have butlers, we expected something a bit more special. CONSIDERATIONS/SUGGESTIONS FOR MANAGEMENT: There are a few suggestions we have to improve the experience here at STV from our customer perspective. *Monetize the cabanas and make them into real cabanas people will want to pay to reserve. I was told that the construction/cement pads happening on the south side of the main pool were going to be high-end cabanas with TVs, etc, which you’d pay to reserve, which we totally would do. But after finishing that project, I think you should make each of the cabanas on the preferred pool double the size by reducing the number of them by half, add actual adjustable seats/bali beds in them with tables, and move them to the south side so they won’t have direct sun all day. Then charge an amount per day or ½ day to reserve them in advance. less than the luxury cabanas but something like $75-$100 per day which would be the equivalent of a bali bed set up somewhere else. Add beach cabanas, too. Most all-inclusives already do this and yep I know you that you know that people WILL complain you have to pay for them at an all-inclusive, but for us, we willingly pay for the shade, the privacy, and the not worrying about getting out early to save a lounge chair. *Have different wine tastings each night. When I asked the sommelier if we were to come another night for the paid ($30 pp), would they have different wines? He said no, they were essentially the same Mexican wines. Had they had different wines on different days, we would have paid the $30pp for another night of tastings…and another…etc. *It seems like there should be a checkoff somewhere for each butlered room, or at least in the preferred rooms, like – who explained the room? Who explained the hotel layout? Who delivered the bottle of alcohol? When is this person checking out? Who is going to contact them the day before? Have we asked them yet if they want X? I felt like perhaps everyone thought someone else was doing it, and it seems fairly standardized in other resorts. …