This property is typical of all the Grupo Maya Hotels. Very grandiose design externally but extraordinarily poor interior design. The Nuevo Vallarta campus is now full of lush greenery and no longer resembles the bomb site it did two years ago. But this means that all rooms on floors 1-3 are completely blocked by dense vegetation and have no view at all. The entrance lobby remains totally dark, presumably to enhance the feeling of a Mayan temple with 30 foot high black marble statues but these are actually very easy to trip over when one enters from the sunlight. Check in is reasonably efficient provided you do not want an ocean view room-- which are now completely blocked by Grand Luxxe owners on 4 week stays and for whom the Grupo Maya has not yet completed their accomodation. As Luxxe owners can book 8 months in advance they have a 2 month advantage over mere Grand Mayan owners or RCI exchange guests. Nobody wants to be on the "golf view" side of the hotel as most of the rooms either face the multi story parking garage and laundry and only very few have a partial view of a muddy pond and glimpse of the golf course over the roof of the golf clubhouse. Apart from the ghastly "artwork" on the walls, the suites are well furnished and bright and clean. But the kitchen facilities are totally inadequate. There is a very old fashioned 4 burner electric stove which is very slow to heat up and a microwave oven. However, no microwaveable dishes or casseroles are provided so the microwave is essentially useless for anything but a cup of water. While there is a coffee maker, there is no electric kettle (and of course no teapot) and as every tea drinker knows you cannot make tea in something that has been used for coffee.
The bathrooms are very elaborate but again impractical-- how does one wash in a wash basin that does not have a plug for the drain, especially when the tap is a tall goose neck over the centre which cannot be swivelled? Privacy in the toilet? Forget it as the toilet door is lightly frosted glass which instantly becomes transparent when the light is switched on.
If you want to read in bed you would be well advised to bring some high powered light bulbs with you, or a porable reading light as the bedroom lighting is very poor
Water supply in the hotel is good and we never have problems drinking it, despite their efforts to get you to buy bottled water (for which they charge heavily whether you use it or not).
We wanted the water charge removed when we checked out and we wanted our 10% discount on restaurant/bar charges as promised for doing one of their interminable "presentations" (read: high pressure sales pitch to get you to upgrade), this resulted in lengthy consultations with numerous staff and lists and the whole check out process took more than three quarters of an hour. Fortunately, we did not have a plane to catch!

This was our third year at the Grand Mayan in PV. Still love it. The suites are starting to look a little faded, but they are being redone this year (they re do them every five years). The staff is amazing. If you dont want to do the timeshare presentation, just say no politely but firmly. We have never felt hassled about it. The restaurants are mostly amazing. The Blue Fish hs the best ceviche we have ever had, and Gong, the Asian restaurant, is delightful if you are adventurous. If you are expecting North American style Chinese, go somewhere else. A lot of peopl go to the Walmart for breakfast stuff; great idea. We have found for us that room service is actually a good deal... the quantities are overly geneerous so we order one meal for the two of us. The trips you can organize from the hotel are very good.

Just returned from one week at this resort. We bought a week of one of the owner's timeshares at a local charity auction with another couple (so there were 4 of us in the rooms), and I think we got a pretty good deal. The Grand Master Suite was nice - two separate bedroom/bath areas with a kitchen & living area in the middle. One of the bedrooms has a plunge pool outside, with a very large combined (non-jacuzzi) tub/shower in the bath. The other bedroom had no plunge pool, but the deck was open so it could be accessed by everyone. The bath had a separate average-sized stand up shower and a jacuzzi tub. If you were in the bedrooms with the doors closed, you couldn't hear anything coming from the other bedroom - loud TV, snoring, etc. This was something I was worried about before going, and it was fine.

Several other reviews have mentioned being irritated with the timeshare reps calling the room repeatedly. We got one call per day that we noticed for the first few days and then none. We just didn't answer the phone, and we didn't feel any pressure to attend the presentation when checking in or at any other time. Perhaps this is because we were in an owner's suite. We talked to some people that had taken part in the presentation and they said it took 7 - 9 hours. I don't know about you, but 10% off my bill and 40% off excursions just wasn't worth it for us. It would have been about 4,000 pesos ($400 US), maybe a little more, but we were only there for a week and not willing to give up half a day.

Pros about this resort:
* It is very, very big. This could be a con, depends on what you are looking for. It seems there is always some construction or maintenance going on, but it didn't really bother us, it wasn't noisy for the most part. Everything you could want is on the resort - there is a mini grocery, many restaurants & bars, a couple decent entertainment nights, shops, pools, the beach. The entertainment team did a nice job getting people involved but weren't too aggressive about it like at some resorts.
* The beach is nice and clean and there were always plenty of chairs available at the beach or the pool. If you want a specific spot, you should go early in the morning - the chairs by the swim up bar pools got taken early. The "rules" are that if a chair is unoccupied another guest can take it - but they never did. Most people put a towel and a book or some sunscreen out, rather than just a towel, and that seemed to work. If you are irritated by those people - I'm sorry - I am one of them. My theory is that if I'm going to get up and moving by 8 a.m. on vacation, then more power to me or the people that do it. There are plenty of chairs and you will always get one - maybe just not in the location you would prefer.
* The one restaurant we ate at was very good, both for service and quality of the food. This was Tramonto, the Italian restaurant. The chef forgot to plate up our soup and so it came late. He was very apologetic, and kept sending out additional free food for us and came out to the table personally to apologize, etc. We had the Frutti di Mare, Quattro Formaggio, steak, and lasagna, and it was all delicious. The entrees themselves were about $15 - $20 each, so reasonable for that, but if you also wanted a salad or soup, it added up. The poolside menu was OK - most of the food that we ordered was good, and there is plenty of bartender/wait staff walking around to serve you. Again, the prices were a little high, but the servings were good sized and well-prepared.
* The traveling happy hour is nice, and the drink of the day was usually good (though it wasn't really a "deal" - I think it was the same price as the rest of the frozen drinks). You can get two for one drinks pretty much from 11:00 or noon til 8:00 or 9:00 if you followed the happy hour trail. Beer wasn't included in this.

Cons about this resort:
* The beds were uncomfortable - very hard. Same with the couches. All of the furniture was just average, and one of the stools had a stain on it.
* There were some general maintenance things needed in our room - the toilet kept running unless you flushed it just so, there were some spots of mold on the shower curtain, the thermostat seemed to be broken or else we didn't know how to run it - no matter what temperature it was set on the air conditioner just kept running and running until we turned the whole unit off, the toaster in the room only toasted half of one side of the bread at a time
* We thought the prices were expensive for the food & drinks. We went to Wal-Mart and spent about $150 for four of us and bought some breakfast food, beer, drink mixers, etc. You can get most of this at the mini-mart on the resort, the prices were a little higher there. We ended up eating off of the resort most nights for dinner and some days for lunch. It's about a $20 cab ride to Puerto Vallarta.
* The average age at the resort was probably closer to 50 or 55 than 30. It seemed like everything shut down by 11:00 or so at the latest. This can be a pro or a con, depending on what kind of vacation you are looking for. There were some families with kids - the kids were well behaved and didn't frequent most of the pools. We usually go to adults only resorts, but weren't bothered by the children while we were there.

We usually go to adults-only all-inclusives. This was our first experience at a non-all-inclusive resort. It ended up being a little cheaper - but not much. We like to enjoy our drinks & food while on vacation, and while we tried not to worry about what we were spending, of course we did a little bit. It got us off the resort more than we usually do - which was enjoyable, but not quite as relaxing of a vacation.

Short distance from airport.If you notify ahead of time comp.taxi ride to hotel. Check in was quick and even got into rooms early.Grand mayan also exists with the mayan,grand bliss,sea garden and grand luxxe on shared grounds. The Grand Mayan is best suited to families with numerous pools and activities. There are a variety of pool bars and numerous happy hours. There are also a number of restaurants on grounds and courtesy rides are available if you don't care to walk.
Also available is a spa and gym facility.A golf course is also part of the complex.The beach is expansive and the water swimable.WIFI is available for a price.
You can walk along the beach and end up at the marina. Exiting the marina is a variety of restaurants and water taxis. There is also a free tourist bus that will drive around the area and drop you off at the paradise plaza.
Overall a very nice stay but a coffee pot in the room would of been nice!!