Garza Blanca Preserve Resort & Spa

Marianna Lima was amazing! The room was always perfect and clean. We will definitely come back. This was a terrific trip

My family stayed with the all-inclusive package, and honestly, I wouldn’t come back. I traveled with a large group, four families, and while this resort would be great for an only-adult group, it’s not worth it if you have kids. Pros: - The rooms are gorgeous. It’s one of the nicest all-inclusive resort rooms I’ve ever seen. It’s huge with the kitchen, dining table shaped like a heart, a living room, and my room had two bedrooms. Also, we had three bedrooms, which was great when we had 4 people staying together. - I miss their pools. Those pools were gorgeous and gigantic. Each pool had a nice view, and the bedrooms are equipped with a small hot tub on the balcony, which was a nice spot for the kids to hangout. Cons: - bedroom bugs: If you’re on a lower floor, dealing with the bugs is the worst part. In my stay for 5 days, I found 3 beetles, a handful of mosquitoes, a centipede-looking bug, and tons of flies INSIDE MY ROOM. You better be fast with opening and closing doors from the outside, but even so, the bugs find ways in and some of my family kept being bitten in their sleep. - not ideal for groups with kids: If you have children under the age of 16, please go somewhere else. It’s not worth the all-inclusive cost. This place was very tailored to adults when it came to amenities. Adults had many restaurants to pick from and no activities are limited except due to weather. Meanwhile, children can only eat at 3 places: the snack bar by the pool, the lobby restaurant, and the steakhouse. Kids under 16 can’t go to sushi, Chinese, Italian, and more. On top of that, there’s no gym for them. I know most kids don’t care about the gym but many young teens will want to exercise too. This resort strangely put their only two gyms in the two adult-only buildings. So if you have an athletic kid under 16, they can’t access the gym unfortunately. - Lack of nightly entertainment- My family has stayed in multiple Mexican all-inclusive resorts. All of which except for this place had night time activities. There’s no shows to watch and while there is a shopping center, it closes in the afternoon and it’s crazy overpriced. There’s a merry-go-round, but you have to pay extra for that, and honestly that ride sat there for display. After dinner time, it’s just straight to your room. Absolutely nothing to do because everything is closed. There is a rooftop bar in the adults-only building though, but that’s it. - transportation: This resort is in an optimal location with beautiful views, and in order to maintain that every building has a nice view on the mountain, all the buildings are spaced out. I get that, but they need to upgrade the transportation. They have these cute wooden trolleys, but they honestly belong in a museum. The ride is insanely bumpy, and if anyone has back pain or is pregnant, that trolley is unsafe. Also, they’re awful when it rains (and it rains a lot). The uphill roads are steep. The trolleys often slide backwards, and it’s a terrifying ride. If it’s raining, it’s safer to walk, but be prepared to walk through stairs through the forest with tons of mosquitoes. - the beach: there’s only one beach spot that’s accessible and the shore has so many rocks. I’m not talking about small rocks. Many of them are the size of your foot mixed with tons of pebbles. That shore is one of the most painful walks into the ocean. So please bring water shoes. It’s painless with water shoes, but some of my family didn’t bring such shoes and stayed out of the water entirely because it’s too painful. Also, the beach water is very murky with at most one foot of clarity on a good day. Most days, I couldn’t see three inches in front of me. Towel issues: The pool and beach towels were constantly gone. You’d have to ask a poolside server to bring you towels whenever they become available, which could be as short as 5 min or as long as half an hour. Restaurants can’t accommodate large groups: I know it’s hard to serve large groups of people, but all the other all-inclusive my family has been to has had little to no issues when eating. This resort forced us to eat whatever the restaurant chose to serve us in both the Mexican and sushi place. They wouldn’t take individual orders simply because our group was too big. Everyone had to eat the same thing. We got around it, but it required us to argue with restaurant managers (wasted 30 min of our time at the sushi restaurant). Places like the steakhouse, chinese, and Italian automatically gave each person a menu to order. The sad part is only the lobby restaurant (which is the Mexican spot at night) serves lunch. To avoid having an ordering issue, our group was forced to split up by smaller families just so we could order our own food. Therefore, we only got to eat together as a big family at dinner time.

I rarely write reviews. I had been to almost 10 all-inclusive resorts, I just have to write about my bad experience with this resort. Do not go here if you go with a party of more than 5 people unless everyone willing to eat the same dish for dinner. We had a family reunion and they will not let you order from the menu for dinner. They made you eat their set family meal. We had 4 families, and each family of 4 paid $5-6K for 5 nights and they told us we can’t order from the menu because we have a table of 8 people. If they couldn’t keep track who ordered what, we offered to have just one of us order for each table of 8 people.The manager at the Japanese Restaurant CARLOS and the head manager DANIEL treated us rudely, would not let us order from the menu. How can the resort make all of us eat the same dishes consider how much we spent for the all-inclusive? All these were not mentioned on the resort website, we would not have booked this resort for our family reunion. Our waiter MIGUEL at the Japanese restaurant was great. Most of the dinner restaurants at the resort allow 16 years and older only. Our large party has one child of 14, and they would not let us in the Chinese, Japanese or Italian Restaurants. We showed up for our Italian dinner reservation for 16 people and they told us we have a 14 year old teenager and it is only for 16 years old and up restaurant. We have no restaurant to go at the last minute with 16 people. We asked them to call another restaurant for 16 of us, and they said no one picked up the phone. My 14 year old niece and her parents had to split up to go to another restaurant. For the whole week, if you had a child less than 16, you only have 2 restaurant options: Mexican and steak house. All these were not mentioned on the resort website, we would not have booked this resort for our family reunion. This resort has no evening activities like other all-inclusive. Day time activities were often canceled, they should put on their website “ hiking, kayaking are seasonal.” All in all, the staff at the resort is not accommodating, and their customer service skills are not at the level of a 5-star resort.

We have stayed in many places across different countries, and this location was one of the best. We were in building 5, in a panoramic suite. The kids had their own room, while we had ours, along with a spacious family kitchen area that opened up to a beautiful, large veranda. The property is clean, attractive, and has a calm, relaxing atmosphere. There are options for adults only, including restaurants, bars, and pools. This was great because, even though we traveled with our 15- and 12-year-old children, we could sneak away for some quality time together. Have your concierge make dinner reservations for each night if possible. I have to mention Mariana Limo by name! She was our housekeeper during our 6 days and was the sweetest, most friendly person you could ever talk to. She made sure we had everything we needed. We will most definitelybe coming back to this resort!

This is our third trip to the Garza Blanca resort in Puerto Vallarta and every single time it has been nothing short of exceptional! 10 out of 10 on ambience, food, and service! We would highly recommend for anyone looking for an incredible experience!