Isla Dorado

What People are saying

We Liked This Resort!

casa33on 27/03/2010 22:01

My husband, sister and I spent a week here. After reading the previous reviews I was anxious that it would be unacceptable (we usually stay at 4 or 5 star resorts). We were pleasantly surprised as the resort and unit was clean and quiet. There is a restaurant right at the resort that caters for breakfast and lunch. Their prices are very reasonable, the food was good. They bring it right to your terrace and set up with a table cloth. The beach is about 1 1/2 blocks away. The staff were wonderful. Our only complaint was that the beds and the living room sofa are quite hard. We bought a couple of foamies at Walmart for the beds and that helped. We would go back!

Be well informed before you plan your trip

vemon 29/11/2006 05:30

Manzanillo is a great place to go if you avoid the hottest months (June through September). If choosing to stay at Isla Dorado and also choose to go with the 2 meals included, you need to know that the restaurant where the meal is served is more than a mile away... If you have any problems with walking by no meanws stay here. The hotel itself is definetly not 5 stars. Although the villas are huge and space is not a problem, the mantainance that they have been giving is quite poor. Basically the AC are in terrible shape (that`s why I advice not to go in the hottest moths) Other than that the rooms are OK (just ok, not 5 stars). The pool areas and the garden areas are SO beautiful!! that you can even forget the villa. The food served at the 1 mile away hotel is outstanding, worth every step of walking (completely in the home made style side kind of food) The walk to the dining place is also very pretty and it is the real Mexico. If you are aware of all these things, you will love this place. Great for young children (at an age where they can handle the walking, please).

We want to go back

femailladyon 17/07/2005 05:30

Whether or not you like Isla Dorado depends on what you want from your vacation. We loved it and cant wait to go back. We went there in January which is off season for the locals. Only 2 units in our cluster of 4 were occupied so it was like having our own private pool. The pool man was out there every morning as the sun came up, keeping it nice and clean. The water was not heated but that felt good after the heat of the day. The condo is older, but well maintained. There is only one TV (with HBO) but we didn't come all this way to watch TV. The maid cleaned every day, she even did our dishes for us. We did have a problem with the hot water upstairs and it was fixed as soon as we pointed it out. The air conditioners in the bedrooms were noisy but they worked. Sure, the beds are hard but that is normal for the area. We like to pack light, we had plenty of room in the closet. There is a safe under the sink in the downstairs bathroom but you have to bring your own lock.

The first day, we walked the long way down the road to find the beach access. Then we discovered the stone path shortcut. It is marked with a little sign that says "Isla Dorado". Easy to miss. In fact there are many shortcuts across empty lots or between houses. Look for them. One leads to the convience store. One leads to Hotel Tenisol, our favorite place for breakfast and the best place to catch a taxi into town.

Isla Dorado doesn't have any organized activities, but it has a playground for the kids, and a wonderful pool, and cool lizards to watch, and easy access to the beach where you can find food, shopping, swimming, boating, horseback riding, you name it, someone will probably be offering it. We had a fantastic time and will gladly go back. It does help (tho it is not a neccessity) to have at least one person in your party who is fluent in Spanish. Take along a good map and use it. We did and we still had to ask directions to find it. Everyone we met was quite friendly and informative.

More info. to help you decide

TexasBaton 28/05/2005 05:30

We exchanged a 1 bedroom home resort for a 3 bedroom condo at this resort. There were only 2 of us so the extra room was nice mainly because we were able to use the upstairs closet space and not be so cramped. There is not a dresser with drawers. There is only a small closet in each bedroom with four open shelves to store items. Our main goal was relaxation so we went with no grand expectations and were still disappointed. Area - the complex is located in a residential area known as Club Santiago. Be forewarned that if you don't want to spend money on a taxi every day that you have to walk to the main gate to catch a bus and that walk is about a mile. We don't mind walking but the weather was like our hometown which is humid so if you plan to have a nice dinner you end up being sticky and uncomfortable. People from other climates would find it intolerable. The beach can be heard from the street outside of the resort but finding it was tricky. You followed a pathway that was not that obvious, to another street and end up walking between houses to get to the beach. It is not clearly marked and you think you are trespassing. We have been to other places in Mexico and there is usually a hotel zone or central area with restaurants, etc. Not the case here, you have to know where you are going to eat ahead of time. The resort - the woman who checked us in was nice enough but didn't go out of the way to be helpful. We asked about a convenience store and were told that they have a small one that they could "open up" for us. I never saw the store and she didn't show it to us. She told us where to find the big grocery store on the main street and towards the end of our week stay we by chance, found a convenience store in the area that had beer, ice, chips, hot sauce, etc. It would have been nice to know about this during our stay. There is also a restaurant on the beach not far from the resort that she didn't tell us about. We only ate there once because we discovered it about the same time as the store (towards the end of our stay) we had a bad burger which we exchanged for very good quesadillas - teaches you to stay with the local offerings. I think the place was called appropriately, "The Oasis". The villa - was not well maintained. The kitchen items seemed old, the refigerator had silicone on the pull handle to hold the plastic in place. The windows to the upstairs were dirty and no attempt was made to clean them while we were there (maybe if we had complained they would have done something?). Too bad since we had one of the better views into a neighbor's back yard where they had beautiful boganvillas of different colors. I did feel lucky though since I noticed some of the other villas looked onto a blank wall from their kitchen. There is no literature to help you decide on what to do or where to go eat. The taxi drivers were helpful and mostly nice but few spoke much English and we only knew a little Spanish so it was interesting. The other review is accurate concerning the description. It looks like the resort was originally designed to lock off the main bedroom and rent it out separately, thus the place for the t.v. that is not there anymore. The resort should remove the brackets or replace the t.v. to make it look better. The a/c kept us awake for the first 3 days because it rattled and it was a very old window unit that was not very efficient. The bathrooms were unique but the upstairs one was not air conditioned so it got a little warm. Again being from the South, it was o.k. for me but other people would not find it acceptable. The villa did have a lot of outside space which was a nice treat. Very large patio on the first floor that faces the pool, a nice size balcony on the 2nd floor and a smaller patio off the main bedroom and a small balcony off the other upstairs bedroom. The only drawback was due to the window units, it limited the room in these areas and the noise and condensation took away from the tranquillity. I also found it strange that the restrooms had the industrial toilet paper containers that you would find at a Walmart store restroom - I kept expecting someone to announce a special over a speaker - no illusions of luxury there... T.V. situation didn't bother us much since we were not there to watch it but if you want cable or a choice of programs this is not the place to go. I think there were 4 channels and 3 of them were in Spanish. However the English channel had the Spanish subtitles so you could pick up some vocabulary if you paid attention. I realize that this is a lengthy review but I hope it helps those trying to decide. I would not recommend the resort and I would not really recommend the city. If you want to visit this part of Mexico, you should check out the area where Las Hadas is located because that hotel and the ones in the area seem very nice and easier to get around. We took a taxi to Las Hadas and had a great breakfast one morning. The view was lovely and the waitstaff very attentive.

Didn't like the 'Resort' at all

on 22/03/2005 05:30

My family and I made plans to go to Isla Dorado in Manzanillo for our Thanksgiving break and was SOOO Disappointed when we arrived. First, I had gone to the resort's website to get more information and they said that they had received a 5 Star rating from Interval International and Gold Crown status from RCI (both of these companies are timeshare exchange companies) which obviously isn't true. We checked in with a man who spoke No english so that was interesting. Then he showed us to our villa via flashlight. The unit was very old. It was a 3 bedroom "air conditioned" unit. Well each bedroom had an old, loud window airconditioner (at least the air conditioners did work), but I wouldn't really call it airconditioned. The beds and the couch were SOO HARD they weren't comfortable at all. There was 1 television in the whole villa. The bedrooms had the hanging brackets for the televisions but there were no televisions there. To top off the villa, there was bird feeces in the bathroom.

Also, we were supposed to be 1/2 block from the ocean but I couldn't see it or hear it.

We left this resort and drove to Puerto Vallarta and stayed at a great resort.

I do not recommend this resort to anyone unless you have very, very low standards.