We booked our trip for 2 weeks in the Memories Flamenco hotel in Cayo Coco, we are a family of 4 (including a 5 month old infant and a 7 year old child), and this is our experience and my expressed opinions: 2 6. Sunwing: Sunwing knew the issues with the hotel, including the mold in the pool, and in the rooms, they knew that because we complained and gave a written complaint but they did not act on it at all, looks like they and the memories hotel belong to the same company or something like that, no escalation whatsoever, and no action was taken on their side at all. All what they wanted is us signing papers saying we will not tell anyone or post any reviews. When we asked if we can go home early ( after 3 days), they answer came back that we have to pay almost as much as the cost of our flights back in order to send us home, this amount being huge for us, we were stuck there for the rest of the 2 weeks. 7. The GM offered us to come back for another 2 weeks , because of our bad experience that we had during our stay and she gave us an offer to come back. And we thought that if they cleaned the places ( which she said it will be clean and under control in 3 month) we can come back, anyway they did not not honor their offer to us. 8. The infestation of mosquitoes that they do nothing about, we traveled a lot, and went to many hotels, and they usually spray, light candles, do something, just anything, but in the memories they did nothing at all. Having a baby with me, i always went to the room early, because i cannot spray the baby with chemicals, and i will not leave her to be eaten by the mosquitoes.
This was the worst vacation that we have ever been to, we are very thankful that no one got sick and that we reached home safely. It was weird for us and our friends the extreme feeling of happiness and relief when we boarded the bus to leave the hotel and go back home. We are always sad leaving our vacations and going back. We do not recommend this hotel to anyone. It is rated as a 4.5 stars but in my opinion it is at best a 2 to 3 stars.
Room Number:
NA
Room Block:
NA
Arrival:
1. The extremely slow check-in : 1 hour and 25 minutes to get the real keys to our rooms, taking into considerations that the rooms were already assigned to us when we were in the bus.
Rooms: . The Room : Our biggest concern was the MOLD, mold in the bathroom (Big patches) you cannot miss it, around the toilet, and on the tub walls too, that was room 2216. Also, Mold was around the air conditioning opening. Staying there for 2 weeks and with little kids including an infant, we had to complain, and when we did, they at first ignored us, but they started talking to us and offered us a suite, as long as we sign papers saying that we will not post this on Trip advisor. We were extremely upset that we had to sign papers to get into a normal clean room, but anyway we had to do so , since we were extremely concerned about the well being of the kids. The room cleaning : I was staying in the room with the baby for longer times during the day and watched the staff cleaning the room, and it was shocking to see the staff using the same cloth and same small bucket to clean the toilet seat and the counter around the sink as well as the small bar area in the room. They all get wiped with the same cloth, she does not wear gloves, and she does not wash her hand, before she start touching anything in the room including the sheets. The sheets: we asked for the sheets to be changed, they did not change it. So i pulled the sheets and put it on the floor, sure enough they picked it up and put it back on the bed ( i can still see the same spot on the sheet, which was the reason why i needed the sheets to be changed in the first place) , at the end i pulled the sheets and put it on the floor and i had to throw some shampoo on it ( blue in color) so i can make sure they get us a fresh set of sheets. By the way this process took 5 days. Oh and by the way, leaving tips did not make any difference.
Cockroaches : yes, there are cockroaches in the rooms, in our room and in our friends room and in the hallway, they live mainly behind the refrigerator. And when we were there we heard they closed a whole building because they had to deal with a cockroaches infestation there.
Restaurants and Bars: The food: The open buffet restaurant is a closed restaurant (not open air), very hot inside, you will be eating and sweating, as for some reason the air condition is not strong enough/ is not on at all. The flies was one of our biggest struggles, you come to have a seat and there is at least 15-25 flies all around your plate, your cutlery, and your glass, so we stopped drinking in the restaurant, and we wiped our forks with hand sanitizer before we ate. I complained several times, and brought the restaurant manager attention to the fact that sometimes the plates are not washed properly, it sometimes smelled really bad, and are not clean, and he seems to be fine with the flies and the dirty plates, saying that everyone is eating, and everyone is happy, i think that just a little bit of soap in the washing process would have made a huge difference in the smell of the plates. And he also said that we cannot do anything about the flies, not sure how can he accept this as a standard. I found a spider in my rice in one of the a la carte restaurant The food quality and quantity is in my opinion similar to a 2-3 stars hotel max, no variety & no seafood (for 2 weeks we didn’t see any shrimps for example) and fish is being grilled with no spices whatsoever (you can have some spices if you give the chef a tip), toast in the morning was a rare thing ( my 7 year old missed having soft bread), flies all over the fruit counter. It was really a challenge to find something to eat at every meal. We limited the kinds and amounts of food and drinks that we ate , specially for my 7 year old, we did not eat anything fresh/not cooked, just wanted to make sure that not one gets sick. Drinks: water is one bottle per room, and it is very hard to get another. Soft drinks all tasted different ( no fizz), juices did not look clean ( the fruits were not washed properly, so we did not try any).. my experience is that i did not have a good drink during my stay of 2 weeks.
The a la carte restaurant, was same as the buffet, i did not enjoy a meal during the 2 weeks stay. And the good side of it that we all lost some weight.
Beach/Pools/Grounds: 3. The Pool : Like any family with kids we depend heavily on the pool as part of our day. We saw black mold in the bottom of the pool and close to the sides of the pool, and we for sure complained, and I personally complained to the assistant GM. I took her for a walk close to the pool and showed her the mold, and opened a website on my phone and showed her what are the health problems that can rise from having growing black mold in pool. She smiled and did nothing. They do not clean the pool enough, and they do not put enough chlorine in the water in order to keep it clean. The mold is clear from the outside of the pool, you do not need to jump in to see it. And if you are inside the pool you can feel it under your feet and feel how slimy the floor is. Please check the pictures attached for the mold in the pool. Scared for the well being of the kids and us after seeing that we all stopped used the pool at all.
4. The beach: tons of rocks and there is a lack of shaded areas, even the small food shack on the beach is not shaded enough.
Activities on and off the Resort/Hotel:
NA