Obviously, the pandemic is a shitty situation all around – people are losing their jobs, businesses are shutting down, our entire world has been disrupted in ways large and small.
Still, I’m an optimist at heart and I can’t help but think of a few ways that I’m personally fortunate, even in the midst of a growing dystopia.
1. As Gen-Xers, Shea and I are in a good spot to get through this. Millennials have youth, Boomers have financial stability but Gen-Xers have a good mix of both – many of us are well-established in our careers but still young enough to not be the most at-risk demographic for this virus.
2. We’re very fortunate that this has hit when our kids are 12 (going on 13) and 6 (going on 7). Pace is old enough to babysit his sister and though most of his babysitting has been shorter stints of a few hours or a day at most, we are willing to try extended babysitting for him, especially now that school is out by the end of this week. (I also work five minutes from home so can run home in an emergency.)
3. Shea and I both have unionized, good-paying, relatively stable jobs. We each have lots of seniority and banked paid sick time if needed.
4. Our tropical vacation happened *just* as coronavirus was getting bad and we made it home safely. Lots of people we know either had to cancel trips or are scrambling to get back to Canada. In a similar vein, our house sold at the start of December. If it hadn’t sold by now, who knows how long we’d be sitting on it or how much of a hit we’d take to sell it?
5. Having lived in a few much larger places, we’re lucky to live in Regina (I have no idea how accurate it is but someone said there’s probably no better place to be during the pandemic than Saskatchewan – world-class healthcare, first world infrastructure for Internet and utilities, sparsely populated population, temperature extremes – though I’ve never found confirmation if virus is affected by temperature either.)
Again, this is a shitty situation that’s affecting many people in many ways – I know friends who have lost jobs already, people who are anxious about continuing to care for their elderly parents, people who aren’t elderly but still high risk due to other health issues, people who are stranded outside Canada. I’m very conscious of ways that life could be worse (and being married to a frontline healthcare worker isn’t great) but overall, I’m trying to maintain perspective and be positive.
As a fan of dystopian literature, it’s still shocking how quickly we’ve gotten to this point. Within a couple months of COVID-19 appearing, we’ve shut down billion dollar sports leagues, concerts, schools, libraries and more.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences between a panicked response, a prepared response and a proactive response and where that line is/how you define that line for different people/organizations.
Same thing with fake news – I mean, as a librarian, I’m a fan of accurate, scientifically valid information but I also know librarians who are fans of 9/11 conspiracy theories and Gwyneth Paltrow “crystals and chakras” woo stuff so we all have our biases (including me). Hell, Saskatchewan’s Chief Medical Officer was seen as given contradictory information in his update today.
I will not confirm nor deny that a few days ago, I may have looked at an online travel site to see if there were massive price drops and I may or may not have briefly contemplated what it’d be like to do a *second* tropical holiday. 🙂
Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now. This sort of ties into that earlier comment about panic/prepare/proactive. Is this article which is very factual but also written by someone who is not an expert in viruses but has two Masters of Science – Engineering degrees and an MBA from Stanford alarmist or factual?
Ultimately, it depends on this: ““In the end, it will be impossible to know if we overreacted or did too much, but it will be QUITE apparent if we under reacted or did too little.”
With apologies to Daniel Dafoe, some scenes from the past few days…
Busy disinfecting everything in the house…
I *love* my library’s “In the News” display. It’s been a huge hit with how timely and responsive it is and our COVID-themed display was no exception (yes, I know some of those “boost your immunity” books are probably not going to help anyone but we do the best we can with the books we have available in branch)…
If your local grocery store is out of TP, don’t forget about the corner convenience store (I didn’t buy any – honest!)
My phone buzzed for about half an hour straight at one point last week with notification of game postponements of the games of NHL teams I follow…
Surprised how many enterprising artists were quick to release Covid-themed songs to streaming services…
Also checked my Flipp app which lets you search all local flyers at one time to see what deals are on for toilet paper (no mention of limits though!)…
We bought an industrial sized package of Lysol wipes at Costco months ago around the time we were selling our house. Little did we know it was like buying Apple stocks in 1982! 😉
We also have a stockpile of milk. Again, I’m not sure if this is hoarding or “having a teenaged son”.
Some advice for dealing with the Spanish Flu, most of which is still relevant today…
Some are stocking up on toilet paper but we all have our priorities (I did hit the liquor store but only took this picture to double-check prices when I got home as I stupidly think I paid *more* for the same bottle at duty free in Cancun. Why didn’t I just buy much cheaper tequila and coconut rum???)
I’ve heard stories about the chaos but I freaked myself out a bit when I hit a grocery store on the way home as it truly looked like the zombie apocalypse had already begun…
The obligatory shot of the depleted toilet paper aisle…
Luckily, I’d forgotten that my neighbourhood store had been planning a renovation and name change for *months* and it just happened to be the last day before they shut down completely. (Luckily, the only thing I couldn’t find on my shopping list was…toilet paper!)
Coronavirus
I was in a meeting tonight and in the course of about an hour, my phone buzzed to tell me that: 1) Trump was going to start heavily restricting travel from Europe to US; 2) the NBA was cancelling their season; and 3) Tom Hanks and his wife have the disease. It’s a wild, scary time and I oscillate between thinking everything will be fine and thinking I should start gargling with hand sanitizer and wrapping myself in toilet paper. 😮
Sask Provincial Election?
I’m an NDP partisan but trying to look at it from a completely neutral point of view, is it not *insane* that Scott Moe is thinking of dropping the writ right after the budget is released in a week and then having Sask people go to the polls in a month with so much uncertainty?
(With that said, if Scott Moe picks now to run against *Dr* Ryan Meili, by all means, do your worst. I’ll go so far as to predict that if Moe calls an election during a fucking pandemic, it might go a lot worse for his party than he expects.)
Democratic Primaries in the US
It’s not over yet (someone said Sanders is closer to Biden today than Obama was to Hillary in 2008) but I’m extremely disappointed that Bernie Sanders seems to have cratered after doing so well early on in the primaries. But it’s obviously a huge hill to climb to convince Americans to join the rest of the developed world in having a strong social safety net, reduce wealth inequality and yes, a healthcare system that’s not going to ask to see your credit card before they see your health card. But who knows – maybe Sanders won’t be the President to bring in a national healthcare plan. Perhaps he’ll be the Tommy Douglas, a socialist firebrand, who lays the groundwork for someone else (in Canada, Lester Pearson) to implement a national medicare-for-all plan.
And Finally, Will The NHL Season Be Cancelled Next?
God, I hope not. But it’s a weird coincidence that the NHL’s current best player (er, no offence to Sidney Crosby) has a name that provides a clue!!!
One of the biggest reasons we booked this resort was that it was a lot less expensive than some of the resorts we’d been to in recent years – nearly half the price of the place we stayed last year (which, to be fair, was also the nicest resort we’d ever stayed at.)
WITH THAT SAID, IT WASN’T A COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED CHOICE
To be honest, Crown Paradise Club Cancun has actually been on our radar for quite a while as we came across it years ago and always had it in the back of our minds since it did look like a very affordable, very family-friendly option with lots of features that made it unique.
Even among the many resorts that try to attract families, Crown Paradise has a lot of unique features – a mocktail menu featuring a wide variety of drinks named after superheroes and cartoon characters, a zipline and a rock wall, basketball courts plus three different kids clubs based on the ages of your children (babies/kids/teens) whereas many other resorts, even that are family-focused, might not have nearly as many of these options.
THE GOOD
Overall, I was very impressed with pretty much everything about this resort, especially considering the low price point.
Service was very efficient and friendly pretty much everywhere, food (especially in the a la carte restaurants) was well-presented and tasty, there was both a poolside grill and a Japanese buffet as lunchtime options near the pool (plus they often cooked special poolside meals as well which led to us having delicious tacos one day), the resort layout was very well designed and easy to figure out quickly, the lobby bar was very relaxing and enjoyable for people-watching.
Being a bit more downmarket, I found this also made the resort feel a bit more relaxed – something as simple as how you could simply walk into the buffet without having to stop to talk to a hostess or spritz your hands with sanitizer [Edit: this was written pre-Covid when sanitizing your hands felt unusual!] or talk about your allergies or whatever was kind of a nice change.
THE NOT-SO-GOOD
I think my biggest criticism is that this resort is clearly a bit older and worn in many ways but again, hard to make that a criticism when it was clear from reviews ahead of time that this was the case. (Another guest I talked to said if they put a few million dollars into this resort for upgrades, it could be one of the best resorts in Cancun. Hard to know for sure but the basics of this resort seem like a great foundation for that type of upgrade.)
Partly because we knew this and partly because we spent a lot less than we normally do for a holiday, we decided to pay for a room upgrade – something we hardly ever do.
Instead of a standard room with two double beds, ours had bunk beds for the kids in a small separate room plus a king bed. But even though we paid for an upgrade, we still ended up in a room where the bathtub faucet was hanging loose from the wall (though still working – one person we talked to didn’t have hot water in their room), the lock on our balcony door was very hard to work, we found cigarette butts on our balcony when we checked in and, most alarmingly, what appeared to be blood stains (presumably from a child’s nose bleed…maybe?) on the sheets of the top bunk which had clearly not been changed after the last guest (though a quick call to the front desk got this resolved right away.)
One big advantage of our upgrade that we didn’t realise at the time was that we ended up on the ground floor of this seven story hotel. We could still see the ocean (which is big for me) but there was a lot of commentary in reviews about busy/slow elevators so being on the ground floor was a bonus as we never had to wait for elevators and we could zip back to our room *very* easily from anywhere in the resort.
The pools being very cold was another common criticism and this was also true. But we haven’t been to many resorts where many pools are heated (even at higher end ones) and jumping into a cold pool can often be refreshing, especially if you’ve spent a hot day on the beach in the sun. Plus I always felt it wasn’t as cold once you got in and got used to it either.
OTHER THOUGHTS
This is a lot shorter than many of my other resort reviews but that’s for a few reasons – because we booked this resort so late, I didn’t spend as much time researching, reading and planning the trip as I usually do (which gives me lots to stay when I get back!)
Honestly, that’s probably for the best – I felt like this was one of the most relaxing holidays I’ve had. Other than our usual day trip to Isla Mujeres and me popping across the street to a convenience store to buy *much* cheaper snacks for the flight home then at the resort gift shop, we never left the resort. (I keep meaning to go to Mercado 23 one of these trips to experience a bit more of the local flavour but it’s hard to give up a beach day to go to what’s sort of a glorified swap meet/farmer’s market.)
Another random thought – I have a pet peeve with resorts that don’t have clear places to leave empty cups and plates and this resort was no exception. I’d often feel guilty about just leaving them anywhere on the ground or a counter but they never stayed long so staff are maybe used to this?
I think I’ve mentioned this other years but I’m also not a fan of blaring dance music at poolside – how come so few resorts play oldies (for me, this means 80’s, not 60’s but I’ll take either!). It’s enough to make me want to go to a Hard Rock hotel which I think is probably way better in this regard due to their branding. (And on days when I took my smartphone to the pool, I could easily listen to my own playlist in my headphones – not on a bluetooth speaker! – as much as I wanted.)
CONCLUSION
It’s funny – in last year’s review, I said that Shea and I have always like trying, not just different resorts but different resort chains and even different destinations so we’d never found a resort we’d want to go back to in twenty years of going to all-inclusives.
Last year, Hyatt Ziva became the first resort that I thought “This resort has everything I need – I could totally come back here!” but the high price point – we paid two grand more than we’d ever paid for a resort ever and that was *after* the price dropped by a couple grand already once I was watching it for a few months!
But strangely, as I say at the end of the YouTube room walk-through video at the top of this review, I feel like this is another resort I could see myself coming back to but from the opposite end of the spectrum – it was one of the most affordable resorts we’ve ever visited but also had all of the things we want – decent food, pools, beaches and drinks, decent service – and beyond that, what more could you want? Or to put it another way, is it worth three grand to make sure your bathroom faucet isn’t hanging loose from the wall? 😉
Anyhow, I’m glad we went to this resort when we did for another reason. Our kids are getting older and a family friendly resort like this is less important with every year that goes by – we’re way past the baby club and Sasha, age six, often seemed to enjoy the teen club more than the kids club. In fact, we’ve been talking about it for a while and are getting more and more serious about maybe renting a condo somewhere (Isla Mujeres being the most likely location) for a future trip so we can focus on a holiday that focuses more on getting out and about to explore more, trying different restaurants than what the resort offers, not feeling an obligation to eat and drink so much to “get your money’s worth” and having different experiences (family card games in the evening instead of a show at a resort’s theatre?)
We used this model for our 2012 family trip to Hawaii (where there aren’t all-inclusives anyhow) and that was a very fun trip as well.
But for now, I’ll spend the next few months paying down the new mortgage (I talked to one guy in line at the poolside bar and joked “I work for the bank” when I talked about buying a new house *and* going on a tropical holiday in short order but he actually *did* work for a bank and thought he’d found a colleague. He was very disappointed when he learned I actually work for a library but only feel like I work for a bank because so much of my income goes to my mortgage and paying interest on borrowed money!) 😉
Anyhow, just to summarize – I admit I was a bit nervous about how bad this resort might be based on reviews and price point but I was pleasantly surprised about how much I enjoyed it.
