Secrets Papagayo Costa Rica — Hotel in Sardinal

The customer service was excellent, and the staff were very friendly for the most part. The plunge pool for our Preferred Club suite was also nice. The Hyatt mobile app is also helpful to have, as it has daily activity schedules and also a map with your live location.

However, this seems to be an older property. There are broken light posts randomly knocked down all over the grounds. Buildings and paths could use some serious power washing. Air conditioning units rattle loudly. Signs are missing arrows so you can’t rely on them to point you where to go. The signpost for our room (366) is placed on the wrong hill so we couldn’t even find it for 15 minutes; we happened to run into our neighbors at 365 that told us where to go.

Pools close at 7pm. Dining closes at 10pm. There’s just not much activity. If you visit the entertainment desk, you can sign up for some excursions, but there isn’t much. There are other excursions offered by a company not affiliated with Secrets; they’re just on the shore soliciting you if you walk by them. A little annoying that Secrets allows them to do that.

It just seems like a retirement home more than an all-inclusive resort. Granted, this is our first all-inclusive resort, and we don’t know if they’re all like this, but we felt… trapped? Understimulated? We would have to call someone to get our car if we wanted to leave the campus. And for the money we are paying, why not eat on campus instead of exploring the town? The food was very mediocre, like small college campus dining hall food. Granted, we didn’t get to eat at Himitsu (which required reservations) nor Seaside Grill (which had a 1+ hour wait), so we ate at Portofino our first night.

If we wanted to reserve a cabana or a private dining experience or seats at Himitsu (teppanyaki/sushi restaurant), we had to do so 24 hours in advance—which means, given that we had a 3 night stay, we could only snag a reservation for anything on the 3rd night. If you have a 2 night stay, good luck getting a reservation at all, since by the time you check in on day/night 1, reservations for day/night 2 are already mostly taken.

The person who checked us in, Mario, said that he would send champagne to our room since it was our honeymoon. The champagne never came. Our luggage also arrived an hour after we actually got to our room. The “preferred club” price is absolutely NOT worth it. The perks are just a better room, somewhat better liquor, and access to a “private bar” which honestly just feels like a cramped airport bar. You get some vouchers for things but it’s not worth the money. e.g. a $10 voucher for a bottle of wine, yet the cheapest bottle was $45, i think. A $40 voucher for spa services, yet a 50 minute relaxation massage was $169.

If you want to see the menu for the dining and room service and spa, here’s the link: https://www.sunbox.app/home.php

Costa Rica is a beautiful country, with so much to offer. Being marooned on an all-inclusive resort campus is not the move. Basically, within just a couple hours of checking in, we were already trying to figure out how to leave early without losing our money (at the time of writing, the room we got was about $1,400/night; we used our Chase Sapphire Reserve points for 50,000 points/night). To their credit, Secrets staff did let us have our 100,000 points back for the second and third nights so we could leave early. We ended up finding a fantastic airbnb for a fraction of the cost, and we felt so free once we got out. If I actually paid full price, I would have been sorely disappointed with the offerings. This is a great place for you if you are near retirement age, dislike fun/activity, and/or don’t have much of a palate. There was one staff member over the walkie talkie who said “seriously?? What are they complaining about?” when the person we initially spoke to was trying to escalate our grievances to a supervisor (both of them spoke in Spanish and probably didn’t realize I also spoke Spanish).

The rooms are worth maybe $400/night. Ask yourself: is the food and alcohol worth...

Yahoo! Finally my turn to write a review--after booking a weekend trip here a few months ago, I spent almost all my time reading the reviews for this resort to set some expectations. So, let me start by saying OMG it was amazing!!! Prepare for a long review bc I want to go in depth to make sure I cover everything for you guys!

The service- We were "preferred" guests, which meant we had a separate check-in area. We were unable to check-in early, but we were still able to go enjoy the amenities while they held our bags, so all was well. The room service staff were all very friendly and efficient. The restaurant staff were all very lovely and helpful in explaining anything we needed a better understanding of. In addition to being a preferred member, we were able to enjoy the lounge that is keycard access only and the bartenders in there are amazing!!! Top shelf selections too. Super nice, highly recommend going the preferred route, although that is the extend of the preferred member amenities. Oh we received a coupon book which in total was $200, but almost everything in there was discounts for wine bottles, which we didn't use.

The resort-- absolutely stunning. So, this resort is basically built alongside a cliff overlooking the beach and is also like in the jungle, so it was amazing to have the best of both worlds. But, with that being said, there was a lot of incline, so bring your walking shoes! From the rooms to the amenities (pool, restaurants, shop, lobby) you will have to call for a shuttle that'll come get you, otherwise you walk and get your exercise in. The wait for the shuttle varied and went from being outside our room right away, to waiting like 10-15 mins, which honestly didn't bother me because why stress the little things?

The food--the food was actually pretty decent! Best of all--nobody got sick!!!! That is always my biggest worry when it comes to an all-inclusive, but thankfully the food had great taste and quality. Favorite- Aqua (lunch), Portofino (dinner, dress code), Himitsu (dinner, dress code), Market Buffet (breakfast, but they serve lunch & dinner as well, no dress code). Least favorite- Seaside Grill (lunch, but they serve dinner as well, casual).

The rooms-- Clean & comfortable. We stayed in room 308, which was by the Spa + Aqua (which I LOVED being away from the crowd and noise). The room had a steamer, hair dryer, two headed shower (INCREDIBLE WATER PRESSURE AND HOT WATER), king-size bed with lots of pillows, two robes, TV, coffee machine, mini fridge, AC unit, shampoo/conditioner (I recommend bringing your own though), NO washcloths just an FYI, and patio furniture. I did notice that the floors were slippery bc of the humidity, so bring some slippers or extra flip flops to wear in your room. Also, housekeeping did clean up, make the bed, etc, but they did not leave behind clean towels after taking all of our dirty towels, which I thought was weird. This didn't bother us though because we just grabbed pool towels from the Spa and utilized those. I'm sure if we called room service they would have given us white towels though.

Excursions via Amstar--Gilbert was insanely friendly and helpful. He is a fellow American, so he gave us really good advice and guidance on what we should do in the small amount of time we were there. We went fishing (3/4 day) and caught 2 rooster fish and a huge needle fish. We also did the waterfall + hot springs, which was so beautiful and absolutely relaxing, but you will have to hike a bit on this trip, but nothing too crazy!

*BRING BUGS SPRAY! & of course sunblock. Both are very expensive to purchase. Despite having bug spray on, we got eaten alive while being outside. There's not that much to do on the resort other than get drunk and eat, so bring a deck of cards or something that you can do together that doesn't involve being on your phones.

FYI- I am actually a very picky person, I like things to be clean cut, so for me to have absolutely nothing to complain about is amazing lol--10/10 would love to stay here for a...

My husband and I stayed at Secrets Papagayo over the New Year for our honeymoon and we left feeling a little conflicted about how the stay went. To summarize my points below in case it’s too much to read, we agreed that, for the price that we paid, we were not impressed and left feeling disappointed. There were highlights and low points, all of which I’ve summarized below:

ROOM AND RESORT: The room itself was fine and the resort was fairly outdated. We were a little disappointed that our honeymoon wasn’t acknowledged a single time on our trip despite the check-in host writing it down, but that’s not something we would take stars off for. The biggest downfall for the resort is that it is insanely hilly and spread out, making it really hard for all people to access main parts of the resort. Many rooms were so high up or far away you would need transportation just to get around. Not the end of the world by any means since transportation was fast enough, but just something to consider for those who are not capable of walking around or uphill easily. Lastly, it was nearly impossible to get pool chairs unless you were up early to claim one (despite them literally having a rule against doing so). They only have chairs to cover about half of the guests and many guests were rude and left chairs “claimed” and unused for hours on end.

SERVICE: Overall, the service itself was okay. There were general inconsistencies in service quality, with many of the staff seeming disinterested and rude. It felt like we were a bother to ask for anything. There were a few instances where the staff were blatantly talking poorly of other guests/my husband and I in Spanish, unbeknownst to them that I speak Spanish. That said, many workers were very kind and enthusiastic which was appreciated. In general, it just felt like there was a lack of training or general care from the staff.

FOOD: By far the most disappointing aspect of our stay. For a 5 star all inclusive, I would expect the food to be decent. Unfortunately, my husband and I enjoyed maybe 3 meals in total over the course of our week long stay. Even basics such as fruit, bread, and eggs were all mediocre. We ate at all restaurants on site and were still dissatisfied on numerous occasions. The coffee shop was our saving grace with delicious ice cream. One of the most frustrating things was the high extra charges for any other meals/nicer drinks. For an all inclusive at the preferred level, I was a little shocked that I was only able to drink house wine unless I wanted to pay 100-150 for a bottle of decent sauvignon blanc.

EVENTS: While we weren’t really interested in many of the hosted events, the ones that we did see/watched were fairly ridiculous. I appreciate that they were still trying to get events out there for other guests, but calling the shows entertainment was a stretch… it felt like watching something a high schooler made in an hour. The fire show was pretty cool. For New Years, the staff created three entire tented structures from scratch for guests to lounge in during the festivities. The festivities themselves were anticlimactic and extremely loud, but I’m sure people who love to dance and drink would have a good time. The fireworks were also great, but didn’t appreciate the screaming DJ that continued on until 1 AM.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Overall, we felt like we paid way more than we should have for this all-inclusive. We paid for the “preferred” level and the only things that we really got out of it were access to a restaurant at better hours, a lounge we didn’t use, a bottle of rum that we didn’t drink, and a mini can of Pringles with housekeeping. There were overall issues with quality during our stay, whether it was from staff or the actual goods. At one point, I received a drink that had several tiny broken shards of hard plastic in it. When I brought it to the attention of the bartender, she just quickly tossed it out without explanation. I wouldn't recommend this resort to anyone, especially honeymooners. Iguanas all over the resort was a massive...