North Florida Nesties
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
AI Recs
I know this has been discussed but I'm lacking in the mega awesome googling skillz.
What are your recommendations for all inclusive resorts? I don't really care where they're located, I'm just looking for ideas.
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Re: AI Recs
I haven't been to one (and not sure when we will because we keep committing to cruises), but here are the ones I am looking at for when we do go:
Excellence Playa Mujeres
Gran Bahia Principe Coba (Madisen found this one for my awhile ago)
El Dorado Seaside Suites
Secrets Maroma
I made this list at least a year ago though and I'm not sure how the situation in Mexico would affect where I would go.
I like starting with allinclusiveoutlet.com to narrow it down by what you're looking for and price and then cross referencing tripadvisor like Madisen said. Once you narrow it down, check applevacations.com for pricing but that one's hard to search unless you know what you're looking for IMO. All sign up for the emails from cheapcaribbean.com.
Again, I've only been looking at these and haven't been to one yet so take my ideas with a grain of salt. They mostly come from Madisen. lol
What kinds of things are you looking for? Kids or adult-only?
We went to Couples Swept Away in Negril, Jamaica for our honeymoon, and it was AMAZING. So far, CSA is our favorite AI - hands down. It blows the other places we've been out of the water in every aspect.
We went to 2 weddings in Mexico this year and stayed at Aventura Spa Palace for the first, and Dreams Puerto Aventuras for the second. Aventura was pretty nice, but HUGE. It sort of felt like we spent half the days wandering around the resort trying to find the other people we were with. We definitely liked Dreams better than Aventura. Dreams is family friendly, but there is an adult-only pool with a swim-up bar, so you can escape the rugrats if necessary.
My BFF honeymooned at Secrets Maroma Beach in Mexico, and she raves about it.
I don't want to have to drive all over the place.
I like both mountains and the beach and would be fine with either but I do find myself being drawn to the beach so I'll take that as a sign.
We both love museums a lot, sight seeing, being able to walk around and explore on our own, wine or other liquor tastings. DH will NEVER go zip lining or anything like it. I don't really have a need to swim with sea-life or SCUBA dive.
If we're going to do a big vacation like this I don't really want to have to do anything. I want to be able to do things on our own time or schedule activities around our lack of schedule. I want to be able to have some good food and enjoy fancy drinks with umbrellas.
I've been looking at cruises because we've never done that either and I feel like it will probably meet my goal of not doing much work, plus we could hit a couple of different places.
I'm wanting to keep it around $3000 but depending on how this job interview goes that could change.
The bolded parts are me exactly. I am a very lazy vacationer. I would rather have okay food (and lots of drinks) and not have to plan anything than go to foodie dinners every night that I had to plan. Even our long weekends away to driveable places stress me out because I have to plan our schedule.
So knowing my priorities, if I was going to spend $3k on one vacation for the year I would do either of these:
1) 7 day Caribbean cruise on RC's Oasis or Allure of the Seas. I would try to choose an itinerary that stops in Cozumel so I could go to Nachi Cocum. But you could find fun excursions at any port by looking at Tripadvisor.
2) 5 days at Excellence Playa Mujeres
I would not do a cruise or a tropical AI between April and September because it is so ungodly hot. And I have a high heat tolerance. We went on a cruise in August a few years ago and it was just miserable. We did one in September too and it wasn't much better.
Ditto LB about Nachi Cocum. That place was awesome. I have a review on my blog for it.
I'm normally ok with some planning. If we went to NOLA or Savannah i'd have no trouble planning everything and jotting all over the place... but I just don't want to this time.
I appreciate the suggestions from everyone. If you think of anymore throw them this way.
Take my opinions with a grain of salt because I've never been on a cruise, although I have researched them extensively and spoken to lots of people in detail about them.
In general, I seem to prefer a bit more autonomy than what a cruise seems to offer. I like AI's because I can relax when I want and do nothing when I want - because there's no disembarking or scheduled times for eating, attire required, etc. - AIs seem to allow for maximization of down-time. I also really like the planning aspect of vacations and love to plan things to do around the area, excursions, etc. I also prefer more heat on my vacations (ha!) so tend to plan a caribbean vacation around may or june, when it's hotter, cheaper and it's not yet hurricane season.
So what I would do is find some AI with airfare included that cost $2 - 2.5k for the both of us and spend the rest of the money on excursions at the location.