My wife and I went with our friends to the Cabo Villa Beach Resort. Like every place there was good and bad. We were in a one bedroom overlooking the bay. It was beautiful to look out and see the rocks and the beach and to hear the waves crash on the beach, after all the bars closed down for the night. However if you looked down from the balcony you saw storage and dirt. That was not a site you would think you would see at a high class resort.

Right next to us, I mean with in arms reach, was a new resort being built. So if you wanted to catch up on some sleep good luck. They started work between 6:30 and 7:00 am. Also they need felt pads on there chairs becuase when the people above you pull out their chairs at the table you hear every screach. The other problem with the construction was, DUST and lots of it. It wouldn't have been so bad had house keeping went out and dusted and mopped at about 3:30 or 4:00 They mopped on Monday but no other day. So the hot tub on the balcony was unuseable. Plus you had construction workers watching you. But every where you look in Cabo something was under construction. So you aren't going to find a place that doesn't have some sort of construction going on.

Thanks to Trip Advisor we were able to dodge the time share presentation. It was funny to watch people go through it and walk around pretty upset and firmly saying no but being pressured anyway.

The beach out front was great and the staff was nice. We did not have any problems with any of the staff. The best part of the resort is the location, it is in walking distance of everything. The lower pool was nice. It was well staffed and they were quick to bring more chairs if they were all taken up. The upper pool was a little less. It was older and cold and seemed to be a bit run down.

We did run into the security when we came back from being out on the town or the beach. They were nice and polite and there were no problems with them at all. Also out of all the places we ate I believe the food at the resort was amoung the best.

All in all it wasn't to bad. It was a nice vacation and we had a good time. Had we paid what they wanted for a room, I don't think I would have been happy. Or if it was my time share I would be upset. In about 5 years when the construction is done there it will be alot better if it is kept up. Knowing what to aviod there is the key. LIke the sales pitch. Don't go. I can't tell you how many people came up to us and told us it wasn't worth the gifts they offer you.

My mother owns a timeshare here and gave us her week, so we stayed for free. This is a GOOD thing, because if I had paid for this I would be pretty unhappy.
*this hotel is NOT for children, unless you book a bottom floor. The balconies were only about as tall as the top of my thigh, and I was freaked out that my 4 and 7 yr old were going to fall to their deaths from the 6th floor. Optional: travel with valium.
* everywhere you go people are hawking thier timeshares, even waiters!
*I did agree to go on a presentation, but my husband wanted to watch our children by the pool. They DID NOT like this, and at least 5 separate people asked me where my husband was. I felt like they didn't think I could understand a sales presentation (just being a girl, feeble brain and all). Pretty offensive.
*the water pressure and temperature fluctuated wildly in the shower, one minute good, then scalding hot the next second! Not safe for little kids.
*I agree with everyone else about the floors. Every little scrape and moved chair is amplified from the floors above.
*The Techno music: We actually like some techno, so it didn't really kill us. With the doors and windows shut it was a soft background "Vibe"
*80's channel from the satellite radio, blaring at the pool. Get used to it, hope you like 80's music. I actually heard "Girlfriend in a coma" from the Smiths on my way by the pool one day....Pretty amusing.

Here's what we did:
*Leave the hotel first thing in the AM, (grab a free coffee by the office, set out to impresss the next batch of timeshare presentation fools)
*go into town and away from the marina. Everything is about 1/10 the price once you get a few blocks out of the core downtown area.
*Dodge timeshare hawkers on every corner with a firm "No gracias"

Email if you need more info.

The plus side: If you want to be in the middle of all the action in Cabo, Cabo Villas Beach Resort is a good choice. You are steps from Cabo's main beach, with party places like Billigan's and Mango Deck at your feet. The Marina and downtown are an easy five minute walk.

The negative side: Where to begin? The resort feels cramped, with an odd shape that kind of triangulates away from the beach. It is way overdeveloped, with several towers cramed in the limited space. The pool area is average, but the encroaching towers mean its in the shade by early afternoon. The rooms for the most part are average. There are several amazing units at the front of the building that have balconies with jacuzzis overlooking the beach, the Sea of Cortez, and Land's End. However, these are priced accordingly, and the resort's big spending time-share clientele have pretty much snatched up all availability, so unless you are an owner or have big bucks to spend, you will be likely stuck with the remaining run-of-the-mill stock. The one bedroom suites are misleading, more like a hotel room with a partition seprating the 'living area' from the 'bedroom'. The kitchenette is so small its almost unusable. They stuck us in a ground floor unit, which bascially looks at the side of the pool, with no sunlight or blue sky visible from the room.

The plus side of a 'central location' is also a detriment. The beach out front is nice, as is the resort's beach club, but the nice view and gorgeous scenery is ruined by the constant pestering from a swarm of vendors. Because of the influx of water activities on the beach, the smell of gasoline fumes from all of the Sea Do's permeates the air. Add to that, given the continued development of the resort and surrounding area, is the constant sound of dump trucks, jack hammers, and other constuction equipment at the various sites in close proximity.

As a non-owner, the staff had an air of indifference to all of our requests and inquries. Needless to say, we sat through the time share presentation to collect our free stuff, despite the intense pressure and insulting nature of the staff when we declined to purchase anything. We own a timeshare elsewhere, and have sat through numerous other presentations, so we know the drill. This one was by far the rudest and most insulting sales pitch I have ever been a part of. They stopped just short of telling us how stupid we were for not buying at their resort.

Again, if you want location, Cabo Villas is a decent choice. However they try to play themselves off as luxury resort, (and charge luxury resort prices) which it definitely is not.

We spent a total of 10 days in Cabo and only 3 were at the Cabo Villas. For that, I'm glad. We decided to use a certificate we earned by attending a timeshare pitch at the property a few years ago. If I knew then what I know now, we would not have done it.

The check in is designed to suck you back in to the timeshare maze. We were told during check in that in order to use the 'free' nights, we had to attend another session. We had to wait for 20 minutes to have someone come to tell us this. We figured we could stand it, but knew we weren't going to buy. We agreed to the 8:30 a.m presentation to get it out of the way and have the rest of our day. The room we were in felt like purgatory - a waiting room to see where you'd end up.

The room we were given was one of the infamous basement rooms - bottom floor, staring at the grey concrete wall of the infinity pool. The room was advertised to sleep 4 and was very sleek and modern, but the pull out sofa was unsleepable. We called housekeeping (they were the best part of the stay) and they brought a foam mattress to put on top of the springs and it helped a little, but there is no way two adults could sleep in that. We had to call for a roll away the 2nd night to give our kids enough room to sleep. The tile floors carried all the sound from above. We decided the people above us were tied to their chairs and had to drag them everywhere they went. It helped to make light of it - but at 2 a.m., it got a little old.

We attended the presentation the next morning and the promised 90 minutes turned out to be 3 hours. We tried to get them to speed things along, but they held us hostage. It was extremely frustrating and the 'closer' guy, Santiago, was especially demeaning. He basically said we were losers for not signing up and we said we were OK with that. Seriously. Just get us out of here!! It was like a preview of Hell.

The restaurant on the beach is nice. The food is so-so, but the service and the mango margaritas/smoothies were good. I liked being able to sit on the beach in the shade and watch the water activities.

The bottom line is it is a timeshare machine. If you are an owner, maybe your experience will be OK. If you are, like us, not interested in a way to 'lock in your vacations at today's rates' then you will probably want to skip this place. If I had paid the listed rate for the room (~$300 per night) I would have been righteously indignant. SInce it was free, I decided to put up with the pain and agony, but I won't ever go back. Too many things were promised and not delivered (or only delivered after the 3rd request), too many restrictions and add on charges to ding you with (like any check out past 10 a.m. is an automatic $100 charge) and a sense of pressure from the ever-present salespeople and you get the idea.

If you want a delightful Cabo experience, please try the Bungalows. It is our idea of heaven and we will definitely go back there. My review on our 7 day stay there will be posted shortly....