Hard Rock Hotel Vallarta — Hotel in Nayarit

My wife and I stayed for two weeks (7 - 21 May), and we had five other couples with us who each stayed one week at various times overlapping with our stay. So our "group size" ranged from 2 - 12 over the course of the two weeks. This was our first time at Hard Rock Puerta Vallarta (we've been to Cancun, Punta Cana, Riviera Maya, and Los Cabos in the past).

Our butlers were Francisco, Alex, and Uriel, and they all did a great job. They were very responsive to all requests (dinner/show reservations, nail salon, excursions, room services). In particular, they arranged to reserve us 2 chairs and an umbrella for each couple in our group setup at the Frida pool every single day!

We had great service from pretty much everyone throughout the resort (bars, restaurants, lobby services). I particularly want to mention the drink server Obed, who delivered drinks to our group at the Frida pool for many of the days during our stay. He was probably the friendliest and most earnest server we had during our stay (and he and his wife have their first baby due TODAY)!

We also had great service at the Frida bar and with drink service from Gregorio and Geovanni in particular. And Hugo at the Frida bar -- while not the warmest/friendliest guy around -- still did a great job making drinks over the whole two weeks, and would always remember everyone by sight and would be making our next drink before we even reached the bar and asked for it!

Overall we had a great time at the resort, although we wouldn't put it as our favorite (we still like Punta Cana the best). The food, drinks, and service were all just as good at Puerta Vallarta (PV) as they have been elsewhere. And we knew going in that PV would be quite a bit smaller, so a couple fewer restaurants and a LOT fewer pools (only two pools). Weather was fantastic while we were there (sunny all day ever day, temps in high 80s, ocean temp 82). But the thing we didn't like as much was there was no way to get away from the "noise" at the main/party pool (the constant yelling and riling up the crowd day in and day out got annoying). The Frida pool was nicer, but still not far enough away to avoid the noise.

The beach was great (nice and wide and sandy), but the sand is less white and the water less blue than at Punta Cana or Cancun.

The one and only pickleball court was a bit of a joke due to the fence being only a couple feet away from the side/base lines (and even ON the base line for part of the court). But we made due and enjoyed playing on it anyway. And some of the things in the resort were aged and breaking down occasionally (some elevators were out of service for some of the days, but not a big deal; on our final day they shut down the main beach entrance way by Frida with the shower/foot wash due to having to knock down the concrete shower towers and rip up the concrete drain area for some reason, so the noise from that demolition was annoying and the blocking fence took away the ocean view). But overall the atmosphere was still very nice and we really enjoyed the stay. It's just that we wouldn't recommend it over the Punta Cana location.

Probably the biggest "plus" for the PV location relative to the other Hard Rocks is the accessibility of the nearby town of Puerta Vallarta itself, where you can roam the streets and shops and restaurants a bit. We ate at The Blue Shrimp one evening and that was quite good.

We used the (free) bicycles at the resort one day for a ride on the road/bike paths outside the hotel, going up/west further into the village of Nayarit. The bikes were in not-so-great shape, but they all worked!

We liked the availability of the sea kayaks and stand-up paddle boards (also free). And the ocean was extremely pleasant (temperature and calmness wise...some waves but nothing killer, and very nice/sandy/gradual entrance into the water).

We went to a few of the shows in the theatre...a couple pretty good (rock circus and rock concert), and a couple not so good (some of the "tribute" shows).

Ran out of room...see sections below...

Hard Rock PVR Review PART ONE Booked through Costco. Had what was called Diamond Ocean View with French Balcony I have read tons of reviews for every vacation we ever go on, so I like making one as detailed as possible. And it is fun to compare people and expectations. Day one: followed instructions to go straight through immigration and customs to transportation area. The Grey Line was easy to find and service was polite. Waited about 15 minutes. Took about 20 minutes to get to the hotel. Arrived at 220, but wasn’t able to get into the room til 330. Check in was a little late but we could leave our bags and eat. If you have WhatsApp, they can alert you to the room being ready that way. The room is nice, a little dated. Many might like the huge Jacuzzi tub in the bedroom, and it was comfortable, but in our opinion, it’s a waste of space and we would’ve rather had a seating area. It also faces the wall and not the TV or view. The hotel has tons of extremely small balconies, but this room had one of the larger ones and we were happy with it and the ocean view It is a little loud. I recognize we booked the Hard Rock, so…that’s on us! It would just be nice if there was one pool dedicated to quiet. Seems particularly loud 11-2 and 7-10pm. We did hear music in the hallway one night around 2am but it was Valentine’s Day and not each night. Went to Frida’s for lunch and it was tasty. Plenty of guacamole, a grill and buffet…all outside but a nice shaded semi-indoor place to eat with a good view. For dinner we went to Zen and that was not a particularly good experience. We were seated at 735pm and received appetizers and dinner together at 820pm. Unfortunate. Husband had lamb which was fine and I had shrimp fried rice which was delicious. Lots of shrimp as well. Day 2 We did it. We ‘accepted the invitation’ for the vacation club membership presentation. We have been to many, and know what we are getting into, so I would not call it high pressure sales, its average. If you don’t have the power and confidence to say no politely, or walk away without buying something, again…on you. I would say, I don’t think the membership is a bad deal at all, one of our timeshares certainly has worse terms. Dealt with Daniel, Monica and Diego. First two, kind and polite. Diego the ‘closer’ does a classic ‘how would you rate this and that’ game. (we’ve seen this technique before). Once you rate things high…how could you say no?? Diego, just because everyone did their jobs well doesn’t mean we give you money. It was 110 minutes, not the promised 90. So that’s done. I have two massages and a cabana. Will report back Dinner at Ciao was delicious. I had lasagna and husband had Chicken Gorgonzola and he loved it. Day 3 Cabana day. Got the one called The Who. I personally think it was the best possible location. It’s set back behind two others, but they are staggered so you have an unblemished view of the water and you don’t get the close-up beach sellers because they can’t cross the ropes. If you have one of the cabanas that is in the front at the ropes, you might think you have a front row seat, but all you have a front row seat to is the traffic. The cab was excellent and the city was absolutely wonderful. The cabana also has a power source and USB so you can bring your devices and charge. Another nice thing about cabana day is that it is relatively quiet out there. And it is a little bit sensory overload for me. Any other place in the resort. A word to the ladies: bring your own shampoo and conditioner. The shampoo is harsh, and doesn’t lather and my hair looks like it was glued to my head. The water pressure doesn’t feel enough to get it all out. Bring your own body lotion. All the products have the exact same smell, and it is not particularly feminine. It may be fine for the guys, but it pretty much smells like midlife crisis cologne, Drakar Noir circa 1982. TO BE CONT WATCH...

The personnel was extremely unhelpful and the hotel has MAJOR maintenance issues that won’t be resolved during your stay even if you bring them up to the personnel. I can’t believe that a multi million dollar hotel chain such as Hard Rock is not able to give its hotels proper maintenance. From the moment we arrived there was issues.

First, the room was supposed to be clean and ready at 3:00 PM but when we arrived at approximately 3:15 PM it wasn’t ready. Keep in mind that if you arrive before the check-in time then you are to be charged extra fees, so it’s ridiculous that when you arrive at the specific time they tell you to check in your room is not ready and you don’t get no credits for that whatsoever.

Secondly, we had problems entering the room and had to go to the reception 3 times, which is A LOT, in order to try to figure out why we couldn’t access our room freely. We were not happy with all the trouble and asked for a room swap but the personnel refused to do it, claiming the hotel was at full capacity when I could clearly see from the amount of people outside this wasn’t true at all. Another issue with the room is that it kept getting flooded during showers. Later we found out that the personnel always has issues with this one room yet they keep assigning it to guests.

We also had an issue with another room we were staying at. If the toilet was used by other guests in their own room then we would hear a terrible loud noise coming from the valves of our own toilet. This was especially irritating as it would trigger at like 3 AM when we were sleeping, it’s just not a good experience to not be able to sleep properly while on vacation.

In terms of food and drinks, we would say that there was some hidden gems that were great but a lot of the drinks and food were subpar. We went to the Brazilian steakhouse inspired restaurant and the meat was surprisingly good, the sides were nothing out of this world but not incredibly terrible, again, they were just okay. The Italian restaurant was okay as well, I ordered a ribeye medium rare and was served a very rare one instead, they did take it back to cook it longer but it ended up being overcooked and with a very carbon tasting sear. All desserts we tried during this trip were extremely awful, the cakes, brownies and other pastries were dry, even ice cream was low quality, almost tasted like medicine. The all you can eat breakfast and lunch was full of okay and terrible food, specially scrambled eggs seemed very hard to get right and were always overcooked. The food would spend too much time sitting on the counters so it wasn’t hot and became soggy. Again, there was a few hidden gems in the all you can eat as well as the restaurants but overall I would rate the food experience a 2 out of 5. The alcoholic beverages didn’t taste very great, I think they were watered down. Besides, they don’t give you straws so it’s hard to drink, while I think it’s a great way to reduce waste they should at least warn the guests so we can bring our own reusable straws.

There was 2 hot tubs in the hotel, one of them was very cold (85 F) while the other one was sorta hot (90 F). Both of them were broken as the jets were not working on either hot tub. The tubes were filled with sand, and while that’s the guests’ fault for not following the rules of cleaning properly before using the pools, it should be the hotel’s responsibility to give proper and constant maintenance to these hot tubs and obviously fix any problems that happen so every guest can enjoy their experience.

Overall, won’t be coming back to this hotel and I won’t recommend it to people. This business needs to tend to their customers and make sure we are happy instead of cutting corners to maximize profits. Considering the fact that the hotel is not cheap, the quality and value of the service you get is not worth the money....