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All Inclusive

By Frederick Corrigan

The limo pulls up to our driveway at 6:45 Am. My wife and I give our luggage to the driver; we get into the limo and head to the next town to pick up our friends. Once we have them, we’re all off to the airport to head out on our first ALL INCLUSIVE VACATION. We’re all excited about the wonderful thought of getting out of snow country and heading for warm Mexico.

We go through the luggage check in, security screening and get to our loading gate. Now, we wait for 2 hours and finally, get on the plane. Four hours later, on a non-stop flight, we land in Cancun, Mexico.

Did I mention that it’s early afternoon and we haven’t had lunch.

Now, the fun begins!! Oh Oh not so fast! We have to go through Mexican immigration.

We enter a large immigration area, which is loaded with people all in lines, criss-crossing back and forth across the area. There are at least 16 rows of guide ropes that we must pass through, before we reach the three immigration officers on duty. It took one and a half hours to get through this jungle. There were three officers working our side of the room and three empty work stations in the same area. Saturday afternoon and the airport is using 50% of their capabilities. NOT a good tourist attraction!!

Next we go to find our luggage, which has been taken off of the carrousel, because it took us so long to get through immigration. Hundreds of bags are scattered along the wall beyond the carrousel. We finally find all of our bags and think OKAY, here we go. Not yet, we now have to carry our bags through another maze of rope lines. This time, we have to put our luggage onto a conveyor belt, which takes our bags through another screening machine. Our bags were screened before we got on the plane, we had a non-stop flight, we carry them from one room to another and they need to be screened. What are they looking for?

It’s now 3:30 PM and eight and a half hours since we left home. This was a four hour flight, a one hour limo ride and three and a half hours waiting or standing in line.

We now are headed for the exit of the terminal toward the busses. We keep getting interrupted by people offering to help us. Finally, we stop to ask a direction and are led to a counter where an English speaking gentleman has a deal for us, if we’ll give him five minutes of our time. Well, one hour later, with coupons for two rounds of golf for the men and coupons for two massages for the ladies, we’re headed once again for the resort busses. As you may have guessed, all of these helpful people are Time-Share hustlers trying to get the tourist to view new time-share properties.

Finally, were outside the terminal, we locate a van that’s heading to our resort and we get on our way again. We arrive at the Sunset Royal Resort and Spa 30 minutes later and are greeted by a resort ‘concierge’. She immediately took us into one of the resort restaurants, so that we could get some lunch. Not bad, it’s only been ten hours since breakfast! Is this what they mean by all inclusive?

You’ll never guess!! While we’re having our buffet lunch, our ‘concierge’ is trying to get us to commit to a viewing of a new property. We are already time share owners and know the routine. They take you to breakfast, show you the new property and then try to sell you additional time share units. Been there, done that! With much regret, the ‘concierge’had to back off and show us to our suites. We had booked two separate suites, using our accumulated time share points.

Our view from the seventh floor balcony was overlooking the resort pool, the beautiful white beach and the gorgeous blue Caribbean. NOW, this is all inclusive!!

We unpack, freshen up and go back down to the lobby on our way to take a walk on the beach. We’re approached by our ‘concierge’ and it doesn’t take long before she is trying to get us to commit to the breakfast meeting to view the new resort. Finally, with a definite “NO WAY”, we get free and head for our walk on the beach. Needless to say, all of the resort ‘concierges’ are really time share hustlers in disguise. Our ‘concierge’ had no further interest in our activities for the rest of our stay.

We interrupt this trip to bring you a little Cancun history.

Cancun, Mexico has had some extremely tough times in recent years. October 21, 2005, hurricane “Wilma” struck Cancun as a category 4 storm with sustained winds of 150 miles per hour. The storm stalled right over Cancun for the better part of four days.

Many of the hotels were damaged beyond repair and the tourist industry was decimated for over six months.

The downtown infrastructure sustained extreme damage, power lines were down, and shops, bars and restaurants were flooded. Cancun was closed for business.

The beaches were washed away, hotel windows were blown out, streets were covered with debris and some tourists were stranded for over ten days, because the airport was closed.

However, Cancun came back, better than ever!

A Hugh 18.5 million dollar beach recovery program took place to restore the beaches to a condition better than they were before “Wilma” hit.

Old and damaged hotels were torn down and replaced with multi-story condominiums, hotels and time-share resorts.

Mexico’s President Fox said that 500 million dollars would be available in rebuilding loans from private banks and international financial organizations.

Today Cancun is back in the tourist business in full swing.

View the images to see some of the damage and some of the improvements.

All Inclusive II will bring further details of our trip.

Contributor's Note

Rebuilding is still going on in 2010, but the recovery from Wilma was amazing.

PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE

dartsandsupplies.com
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My heart goes out to you. I would have been screaming and telling people to just "back off" especially if I hadn't eaten in 10 hours. It sounds like you got a little R&R into the trip. I hope the trip back to the US wasn't so bad.

Thank you for your comments, Ken. We did get some much needed R&R.
Best wishes.
Frederick

I guess in this case, "all inclusive" meant "hassling included." I hope the rest of the trip was more enjoyable. I had an All Inclusive vacation once at a Club Med in Guadeloupe in the West Indies. It was wonderful.

Thank you for visiting and for your kind comments, June.
All Inclusive opens the door to many things, more to come.
Best wishes.
Frederick

I think this sort of thing is to be expected when traveling in certain areas. I went through a customs check in Sinaloa once and did not know whether the people who stopped us were custom agents or Mexican Mafia. We were kept very long standing in the hot sun and not allowed to use the restrooms. Finally we saw our driver give the uniformed men with guns some money and they let us go.

Many Americans aren't aware of the freedoms we enjoy, if they haven't traveled outside of the country.
Thank you for stopping by and for your comments, Janet.
Best to you.
Frederick

Hi Frederick,
That's terrible - not being able to eat for all that time, I mean. It would have been impossible for me to cope with, and I think I would have thrown a screaming fit long before the bus to the resort. Can't cope with no food or drink.
Hope the holiday was great though.
Jean

You can bet that more then our stomachs were growling, Jean.
Thank you for your support.
Best wishes.
Frederick

We do have a blog started, Paul, but like many aspects of the internet, we're buried in the learning curve.Hopefully, we'll get some good advise and move forward.
Best to you.
Frederick

We love to travel, so our trips will be many, if our health and budgets hold up.
Thanks for the support, Franklyn.
Best wishes.
Frederick

Thank heavens for Europe. No matter how bad it gets here, the resorts are helpful and you are only approached once for a timeshare presentation while on the resort (this is probably because few of them do all inclusive).

Thank you nfor visiting and for your comments, Arthur. The all inclusive part of the time-share program is getting to be the comming thing.
Best wishes.
Frederick

Sir did you imagine all this or are you trying to tell me that you managed to find the time to take a vacation?

Hi Nick,
Good to have you back. We try to take two or three vacations a year, using our time-share points. We do have to take the laptop with us to keep up with darts orders and the article writing.
Best to you.
Frederick

I was in Cancun several years ago, but I've never done the all inclusive thing. I've heard it's great. The hustlers are everywhere though.

You would find that Cancun has changed, Christina. The new hotels are beautiful and the beaches are larger than before hurricane wilma.
Thank you for your support.
Best to you.
Frederick

"All Inclusive" huh... At least the hotel seemed nice -- and a great view besides. Cancun used to be the "Spring Break" place for college kids. I wonder if that's still true.

We wre told that Spring Break is still a large event in Cancun, Jim. The views and many other things added to the pleasure of our trip.
Thanks for your visit and your comments.
Best wishes.
Frederick

As I was reading this intel I was hoping none of you were diabetic or had blood sugar problems. This is one of those warnings that should be out there and very few travel brochures will ever state true waiting/line up times.
I am glad you got that incredible view. Thankyou for sharing & those amazing photos. I'm looking forward to Part II

Thank you for your visit and for your comments, Suzy. Both my wife and one of our friends are diabetic, so we did have some snacks to keep the blood sugar levels in check.
Best wishes.
Frederick

I like how you are splitting your trip adventure up into segments for your intels here, looking forward to the next one. It seems to me you can never get to anywhere warm and tropical in under what seems like hundreds of hours of travel and pure exhaustion. I would have just screamed with all those time share sells in my face constantly but I am used to it by now too. I will be heading down to Puerto Rico next week and am not looking forward to the long flights with a 4 year old, however, I am looking forward to the all inclusive beach view :)

Thank you for your support, Eliza, Hopefully, your vacation will have less hassle and more pleasure.
Best wishes.
Frederick

We had some surprises, but all and all, a much needed vacation.
Thank you for visiting and for your comments, Peter.
Best wishes.
Frederick

No consolation at all at the time of course but if it was all plain sailing there would be no story to tell. :)

Thank you for your very true comments, Julie.
Glad that you enjoyed part 1, and part 11 will be along shortly.
Best to you.
Frederick

I'm still cracking up about the Hairdressers and the Pope, Franklyn. I've said many times that the comments add great value to the intels. I don't know why the comments aren't included when you email the intel through the site.
Thank you for your support.
Best wishes.
Frederick

Sounds like you had a great time in spite of the time share pushers. Glad to hear they are back better than ever.

Thank you for visiting and for your comments, Cindy.
They are building more time share units, everyday.
Best to you.
Frederick

Got the same thing in Puerto Plato. Usually, a couple firm no's will get them to back off on the time share pitch.

Thank you for visiting and for your comments, Adac.
You're right, usually a few stern no's does the trick, but these dragons were hungry!!
Best wishes.
Frederick

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