At Surf Club now...

Any questions?

If you are in Aruba.

How is the beach - any seaweed?

Does the Marriott Resort have any construction?

Thanks,

And the most important one-are you and your family/friends enjoying yourselves?

I read in another post that there is now wifi at the pool area. Can you confirm please.

Also, if you have used it, does it extend out to the beach?

Wally3433 said:

I read in another post that there is now wifi at the pool area. Can you confirm please.

Also, if you have used it, does it extend out to the beach?

Click to expand...

It's definitely in the pool area. Didn't try it at the beach.

Wally3433 said:

If you are in Aruba.

How is the beach - any seaweed?

Does the Marriott Resort have any construction?

Thanks,

Click to expand...

Yes....We leave in the morning.

There is no seaweed , beach is very nice.....but busy.

The only major construction I saw was the adult only pool, between the Ocean Club and The Hotel. Off property, there is construction at the Ritz and another high rise just past the Surf Club. I saw a lot of "normal" maintenance stuff going on....cleaning, washing, etc.

m61376 said:

And the most important one-are you and your family/friends enjoying yourselves?

Click to expand...

We are having a freaking blast!!!

If they were still selling three bedrooms, we may be owners......that good!

Wally3433 said:

I read in another post that there is now wifi at the pool area. Can you confirm please.

Also, if you have used it, does it extend out to the beach?

Click to expand...

Wifi is availble poolside...I did not try the beach.

tomandrobin said:

We are having a freaking blast!!!

If they were still selling three bedrooms, we may be owners......that good!

Click to expand...

:hysterical:
So nice when a plan comes together!!

I know- that 3 BR is pretty incredible. After we bought the 3BR Gold we were sorry that our Plat. was a 2BR.

tomandrobin said:

We are having a freaking blast!!!

If they were still selling three bedrooms, we may be owners......that good!

Click to expand...

Wow!!

I'm very happy to hear that -- I know you're a Starwood enthusiast who has spent time at Harborside, WSJ and Cancun -- can you contrast the pros/cons of the different Starwood Caribbean properties versus the experience at Marriott Aruba for those of us stuck at work slaving over a keyboard?

Thanks very much and enjoy it!!

Best,

Greg

GregT said:

Wow!!

I'm very happy to hear that -- I know you're a Starwood enthusiast who has spent time at Harborside, WSJ and Cancun -- can you contrast the pros/cons of the different Starwood Caribbean properties versus the experience at Marriott Aruba for those of us stuck at work slaving over a keyboard?

Thanks very much and enjoy it!!

Best,

Greg

Click to expand...

When Starwood first talk about adding a timeshare on Aruba, I was patiently waiting for them to build. But as you know, the lot is empty and the timeshare is not ever going to happen now.

Surf Club is a complete vacation experience. The weather is perfect....not too hot with the trade winds blowing all day. Harborside is great becuase of Atlantis....take away acces to Atlantis, Harboside is pretty blah. Here, everything is right outside your door. The pools don't equal Atlantis....but no resort anywhere does.

We all felt the resort was most similar to Westin Maui, except the Westin pool area is half the size.

I felt there were a lot more activities and little touches, more so then the Starwood properties mentioned above. One example is a ice and water dispenser pool side for all guests to use. There is even an adult only pool.

I only saw one area where ther resort was lacking and that were the grills. There is not enough, they are too small and are not cleaned or maintained very well. A few cabannas would have been nice, but I'm just being greedy. Other then that, Surf Club beats most of the Starwood resort properties.

Grills are not real popular at the surf club because there are so many awesome restaurants in aruba that are easy to get to and reasonably priced. Now when we stayed in maui laat year the grill area was packed....because dining out in Hawaii is expensive. Grills get little use in aruba because of the abundance of reasonable dining options

They were replaced about two years ago. If there is ever a problem (need to be lit or cleaned) the maintenance people will come in a couple of minutes. We always grill 2 nights just to break up the eating out, and I think there may have been once that my hubbie had to wait. Sounds like you had a popular grilling week. Even though there are a lot of reasonable restaurants, increased grilling may be a sign of the times.

Interestingly, although the Sc h been at full or almost full occupancy when we've been there, the hotels have been much emptier and saw lots of empty tables at restaurants. I saw a lot more people with pizza boxes last time. Maybe more people are grilling to stretch those vacation dollars, especially during time periods with families.

It may be that they need to add more grills to the area by the Spyglass building at some point. The other set of grills by the Compass building tend to get less use, even though they have picnic tables by those.

m61376 said:

They were replaced about two years ago. If there is ever a problem (need to be lit or cleaned) the maintenance people will come in a couple of minutes. We always grill 2 nights just to break up the eating out, and I think there may have been once that my hubbie had to wait. Sounds like you had a popular grilling week. Even though there are a lot of reasonable restaurants, increased grilling may be a sign of the times.

Interestingly, although the Sc h been at full or almost full occupancy when we've been there, the hotels have been much emptier and saw lots of empty tables at restaurants. I saw a lot more people with pizza boxes last time. Maybe more people are grilling to stretch those vacation dollars, especially during time periods with families.

It may be that they need to add more grills to the area by the Spyglass building at some point. The other set of grills by the Compass building tend to get less use, even though they have picnic tables by those.

Click to expand...

I talked to all the other people at the grills when we were grilling. Everyone I talked to were owners and over half of them were not aware of the grills until their current trip......which seemed surprising. Also, none of them ever heard of Tug and were surprised that I had made a "private" exchange into Surf Club.

We used the grills by the slide. I don't recall the name of the buildings, only the Lighthouse Building.

By the way, our friends who were also at Surf Club with us....our travel buddies, were equally impressed with the resort. If we do end up buying at Surf Club, they are going to buy a unit also.

One of my biggest regrets is not buying multiple Surf Club units when we bought our 2 BDRM OV preconstruction unit in 2003.

We're pretty happy with all our purchases but the Surf Club is definitely at the top when you consider the purchase price $20.9K, the MAR points received 465K and the tremendous rental income we get when we don't enjoy using the resort.

We own OV and think it may be the besy OV units available in Marriott because most have a 180 degree view. With the pool and lazy river it adds up to the nicest Marriott amenties we've experienced.

I don't see alot of them on the market so it hard to say what a resale will cost you but I would imagine $16-17K for a 2BDRM OV and probably 21K+ for a 3BDRM OV

MOXJO7282 said:

One of my biggest regrets is not buying multiple Surf Club units when we bought our 2 BDRM OV preconstruction unit in 2003.

We're pretty happy with all our purchases but the Surf Club is definitely at the top when you consider the purchase price $20.9K, the MAR points received 465K and the tremendous rental income we get when we don't enjoy using the resort.

We own OV and think it may be the besy OV units available in Marriott because most have a 180 degree view. With the pool and lazy river it adds up to the nicest Marriott amenties we've experienced.

I don't see alot of them on the market so it hard to say what a resale will cost you but I would imagine $16-17K for a 2BDRM OV and probably 21K+ for a 3BDRM OV

Click to expand...

During our tour, at no time was rewards or extra perks thrown at us. Maybe cause we were so set on a three bedroom unit, which there are none. The salesman did try to push buying two 2 bedrooms as an alternative. When that didn't work, he switched to pushing "points" and booking (or trying) to use the points to book a three bedroom at 12 months. But I no the value of buying resale and the fallacy of trying to book a unit with points.....it doesn't work in the Starwood system, I know it would not work with the 3 bedroom.

Joe-
There have been several Gold weeks but very few Plat. weeks on Ebay. 2 years ago one of the resellers all of a sudden got several Gold weeks and that, along with the economy, lowered the market for Gold weeks. I'd guess that your guesstimate would be very good low pricing on 2BR Plat. weeks, but I am not sure that the 3BR's would be that low for a Plat. but you may be right. I haven't seen any on Ebay and the few listed on Redweek are considerably higher asking, but ya never know. 3BR's had gone for about 1.5 times the price of 3BR's on the resale market a few years ago, but I know for Gold weeks today the difference is closer to double the price for good buys on each, mostly due to a significant decrease in the pricing of Gold 2BR weeks.

Tom-
I also highly question the availability of point reservations for 3BR units. The reality is that the DC point allocation for the Aruba weeks is out of sync with the rental market (for some reason, Marriott categorizes timeshare users differently than renters, such that less points were awarded to Aruba weeks than awarded to some weeks which Marriott itself charges half the rent for). A savvy owner is better off either trading in II, trading privately, or renting, and since there are no Aruba units in the trust, the only units will be if week owners trade for DC points, or if owners trade for MR points and Marriott decides to make that week available to the DC rather than renting. Otherwise, getting a reservation on points will depend on an owner having deposited the 3BR in II and Marriott taking it to fulfill a point request. Getting a summer peak week on points will not be easy, esp. since there are only 20 units that are 3BR's. So you are right to surmise that they are selling a dream but there isn't the inventory to make such requests an easy reality.

Oh- the reason why they didn't offer points is that they are now offering special discounts in lieu of points, but will be happy to offer some MR points if you are willing to pay several thousand more.

tomandrobin said:

When Starwood first talk about adding a timeshare on Aruba, I was patiently waiting for them to build. But as you know, the lot is empty and the timeshare is not ever going to happen now.

Surf Club is a complete vacation experience. The weather is perfect....not too hot with the trade winds blowing all day. Harborside is great becuase of Atlantis....take away acces to Atlantis, Harboside is pretty blah. Here, everything is right outside your door. The pools don't equal Atlantis....but no resort anywhere does.

We all felt the resort was most similar to Westin Maui, except the Westin pool area is half the size.

I felt there were a lot more activities and little touches, more so then the Starwood properties mentioned above. One example is a ice and water dispenser pool side for all guests to use. There is even an adult only pool.

I only saw one area where ther resort was lacking and that were the grills. There is not enough, they are too small and are not cleaned or maintained very well. A few cabannas would have been nice, but I'm just being greedy. Other then that, Surf Club beats most of the Starwood resort properties.

Click to expand...

This is probably the most crowded month at the Surf Club...especially this week pre college and after the college age group quit their summer jobs so I suspect there might be more people grilling now. Most units have entire family groups this time of year and it is busy!!!!

I agree that grills are usually available and not as busy as they were in Maui. We also grill once or twice and try to eat left overs from restaurants in between and sometimes go for a salad before our leftovers....

So glad you are enjoying our property!

Sue

Did you notice if there were any restrictions on the use of palapas or covered chairs?

Random post from trip advisor said they could only use palapas on a certain number of days on thier trip.

Sounds bs to me.

I've never once had a problem getting a palapa, and never had to reserve anything ahead of time or pay.

Wally3433 said:

Did you notice if there were any restrictions on the use of palapas or covered chairs?

Random post from trip advisor said they could only use palapas on a certain number of days on thier trip.

Sounds bs to me.

I've never once had a problem getting a palapa, and never had to reserve anything ahead of time or pay.

Click to expand...

Chair tags and wrist bands were actively enforced. On a daily basis, I saw people being asked to get out of the pools if they were not wearing a wristband. And chair tags were also monitored. I think the early chair taggers were up and out by 5:00-5:50am, most came down 6:15-6:45am.

Same with the Palapas....I saw no issues or problems.....or limitations.

Wally3433 said:

Did you notice if there were any restrictions on the use of palapas or covered chairs?

Random post from trip advisor said they could only use palapas on a certain number of days on thier trip.

Sounds bs to me.

I've never once had a problem getting a palapa, and never had to reserve anything ahead of time or pay.

Click to expand...

Yes there are rules for Palapa rentals and use at the Surf Club and have been for years due to the overbuilding of the resort.

One can get a free Palapa if you wait in line in the afternoon for the next day. I think they release them (a certain number per day) at 4PM and the line begins usually at 3PM. They have put chairs and benches to sit and wait these days. The line in May started later and people were still able to get one for the following day as it is not as crowded then.

One can also get one the same day by going down early morning...don't know the time but the same routine and a certain number given.

One can also rent for 2 days on and 2 days off. So I can rent for 2 days in a row and then wait online for the other days.

We have never had a problem getting one but one needs to learn the rules and strategy.

Bimini chairs are not a problem but they are not permitted in front of the first few rows of the beach I believe.

We did however see a new vendor who will rent umbrellas and put them beachfront for $25 per day (one can negociate a weekly rate with him.) He has the beach rights and you use the Marriott chairs. The problem with this is he sets them up early morning and then others think they can park themseleves there and you have to ask them to leave when you get out. This happened in front of us in May/June this year.

The property is overbuilt and this is how they have been able to make things work. The extra adult pool has also alleviated some of the crowding at the pools. And one can always get a bimini chair which helps if there are no Plalapas left.

The resort is also watching to ensure the palapas that are taken are used and not left empty all day. I think there is a 2 hour rule.

We own at the Surf but also stayed at the Ocean Club this year where we were able to rent a palapa for the week. They do not have the same spacing issues.

So it is not untrue....

Sue

rosepointe said:

This is probably the most crowded month at the Surf Club...especially this week pre college and after the college age group quit their summer jobs so I suspect there might be more people grilling now. Most units have entire family groups this time of year and it is busy!!!!

I agree that grills are usually available and not as busy as they were in Maui. We also grill once or twice and try to eat left overs from restaurants in between and sometimes go for a salad before our leftovers....

So glad you are enjoying our property!

Sue

Click to expand...

If you think it is crowded now come weeks 51 and 52!

We were in Aruba last Christmas and walked past the Marriotts. It was so crowded and for some reason the area smelled. I have a Marriott and have stayed at both the complexes, during other weeks in the winter and it was okay, crowd wise, nothing like what I saw at Christmas.

donna

ilene13 said:

If you think it is crowded now come weeks 51 and 52!

Click to expand...

You could not give me those weeks for free.....



Sue