Folks, I have relied on Trip Advisor heavily over the past few years for picking my hotels, so I thought I would give something back and write a review of my experiences.

We stayed at the Golden Crown from April 11 to April 20 2008 (it was our second visit, we stayed from April 21-28 2007). Overall, the experience was a good one. However I completely believe you have to make your vacation "great". You have to roll with the punches as best you can and enjoy yourself. So......

Good:
Rooms are clean, the cleaning staff do a very good job and we had no complaints about this, no bugs, no plumbing problems, nothing.
Beach is lovely; very busy with vendors and parasailing and all the guests, but you can still relax in the sun and listen to the waves crash. You can walk quite far down the beach (walk away from the hotel and its sister resort). We did that twice and it was really great.
Staff are decent overall. Some are really helpful (Juan at the Breee bar) some are not so good. That's normal for any hotel or restaruent or hospital even!
Location: location is absolutely great. A 10 minute ride into downtown PV for about 5 bucks (do not pay anymore than that). And PV is amazing. Quaint yet busy, historical, lovely architecture. Great restaurents. Just one of my favorite cities in the world. And the hotel is literally 10 minutes from the airport which really is worth a lot.
Pools: since we wanted to avoid the crowds, we had a selection of the other pools.

Bad:
The food is not good. Its tolerable, but after 10 days I was cranky and hungry. The breakfasts at the sister hotel are the way to go, no doubt about that. Lunches can be ok (small salad, a burger maybe) but the dinners were not good. We ate out a few times. It is all very bland, tepid, or defried and refried. However, this is apparently the standard at most all iniclusives. It is just something to be aware of.
Noise: rooms aren't that great at blocking out noise from other rooms, so bring ear plugs.
Other guests: I realize this isn't a "bad" of the hotel, but unpleasant, extremely loud and obnoxious guests have to be discussed. We literally say people falling down drunk knocking over chairs at the Breeze bar; a man walk about 15 feet away from the Breeze bar, urinating right on the beach, and it goes on. Try your best to avoid them, we tried, it was impossible sometiems, but sometimes we could. I had to fight not to let that ruin my holiday, and I'm glad I did.
Water: the water is not clear, in fact it is extremely dark and silty. It isnt' dirty, there is simply a lot of sand and silt in the bay making it impossible to see through/in the water. And the waves do tend to be quite rough about 75% of the time.

Overall - good hotel, decent staff, tolerable food, fabulous location. I'd reccomend this hotel for sure if you are looking for an all inclusive. We have very fond memories of incredible sunsets and strolls along the beach. We would even go back for a third time. Hope this helped.

I stayed at this hotel for 6 days last week. Do not be fooled by the 5 star rating, unless you condsider sushi with paturized cheese rolled around it 5 stars. This hotel is not worth it. The food was low grade and the "romantic" restaurant called Belvader's played 70's rock. I listened Foghat as I sipped my lobster bisque. Weird.

Get this...An attendant at the Info Desk told my husband and I we she would give us an excursion for the price of one if is we paid her $10(refundable only if you ask for it back) to attend a 1 hour meeting to welcome us to the hotel and talk about all the excursions and general info about Puerto Vallarta. It was supposed to give us a chance to set all our excursions before everyone else as well. So, we meet at the sister resort next store (literaly) the next morning. As we check in for the breakfast, we were asked to tell them what credit we travel with. We always travel with Discover (which Mexico does not accept...WARNING!!!). We were told we coulf not get the promo excursion for the pricre of 1 b/c we did not have another form of credit on us. They tell us we can give you 20% off and a blanket. Whatever. We thought we go ahead with it since it was still money saved. To make an increasingly long story short, this whole thing was a time share meeting. There was a breakfast, but it was with a guy who tells you all about PV, Mexico. Nothing about a time share or anyting of the nature. Then, he leads us up to a top level of the resort, sits us down and we are attacked about time share..out of nowhere. The whole experience was awful. They are rude and want you to sign contracts (uh, hello...why would I sign a contract in a forgein country) and almost call you chicken for not wanting to do so, telling us we wasted their time (we would not have if we told this was a sales meeting in the first place).To get to the point, they signed off on our 20% excursion coupon. We go back the the excursion desk and the lady (who knows nothing about the excursions) tells us she has no indea what the coupon is and cannot honor it. By this time, I was PISSED! The whole thing was just appaling. I heard a few others complaining and yelling in the lobby area about the hotel during the stay.

The staff is ok. Not rude, but not that great. Half of them hardly speak English. The rooms were clean. The Beach View rooms are better than the Beach Front. Ask for a room on the 4th floor or up, though. You get a better view of the ocean. We were on the 5th floor, Beach View and we had a great viwe of the ocean and the pool.

The evening shows were across the street, which was fine, but the shows were shared with the family resort, Crown Paradise. I paid for all adult resort and this was not really the case. The Crown Paradise is connected to the Golden Crown. Kids are all over the place.

There is more, but overall, the resort was crappy. As far as Puerto Vallarta...it is not nice. The water is not clear (it is like South Padre, TX). Do not fooled by taking a snorkeling trip as the water is always too dark to realy see anything. The scenery is nice with all the mountains. The only really fun excursion we took the Sea Safari excursion by Vallarta Adventures. Very fun!!! The are about 7 excursions to pick from by about 10 different vendors. They all offer about the same trips. You will hear about The Rhythems of the Night excursion. It is nice, but what is cracked up to be.

Hope you find this this helpful!! If you are new to checking into resorts, consider Sandals Resorts. They are a little more $, but well worth it. Now those are 5* resorts!!! I'll be sticking to them in the future.

This was our third visit to the Golden Crown Paradise Resort. Overall it was good. However I noticed that there were areas where service and quality dropped a bit from our previous trips.

Arriving in P.V. via U.S. Airways on Thursday 4/24, we walked into the new portion of the airport. Immigration was set up and running well and we were through in no time. Then came the very long walk to claim our luggage. Customs was a breeze and we were met by a representitive of Tukuri holding his company's sign. We were given a welcome packet and put into a cab for the short ride to the resort in a matter of minutes.

We were greeted at the lobby and proceeded to check in. Normally in the past, guests were given a cool drink at the desk , but not this time. Oh Well.. We went to our ocean front room #2503 and found it to be just fine.

That night dinner was at Paradise. Dinner was good as usual and Poly did his Sexy Coffee for my wife. He's such a character, and he really makes you feel welcome.

Friday was a good day at the pool. My complaint wa that the pool bar which had always opened at 10:00 A.M. did not open until after 11:00 . My favorite bar tender "Aldo" had been moved to the bar in the Paradise restaurant and "Alberto" was now tending bar at the pool. Alberto is a friendly enough guy but much slower than Aldo and really shouldn't be working the pool bar where that's always a lot of activity and demand for bar service. Luckily he has "Miriam" to help with the drinks between taking orders for drinks around the pool and delivering them to the guests. She's really great.

We brought inflatable plastic seat type floats with that we got at Walmart for about $5.00 each. They were super and everyone kept asking where we got them. They may be available at Walmart in P.V. a few blocks from the resort too.
A word of caution; be sure to bring a water proof sunscreen with. The sun is brutal and there a definite lack of shade around the pool. More on that later..

Friday evening we were going to go to Salvadore's for dinner and we went down to the Breeze bar for a cocktail before dinner. The staff was setting up a few tables on the beach for a dinner and we thought it was for a wedding. I asked Enrique what the occasion was, and he told me it wa a dinner for repeat guests. I told him that I was on my third visit and that I hadn't heard anything about it. He was suprised and contacted his manager. Eventually they verified that I was indeed a repeat guest and asked me to join the dinner party. It was a very nice dinner and I guess it was just lucky that we stopped in for a drink at the right time? I told the manager that the previous year we had a sign outside our door that had our last name on it but that this was not done for us this time. That evening a sign magically appeared. Go figure. I think that someone dropped the ball this time. I had written (and E.Mailed) to the hotel to tell them I was returning again and it was noted on my reservation when I checked in but I guess no one read this. I would think that if nothing else the resort would go out of their way to recognize a returning guest and make their stay as pleasant as possible.

Nothing much else had changed. The beach vendors were the same as always and a polite No Gracias was all that was needed to stop the sales pitch. The beach canopys should be replaced, they're really worn out and faded.

We went to the "Nitro" disco a few times and the service was excellent. The shows are fun and the drinks are really good and they serve Dos XX beer there. The resort uses Sol beer everywhere else. A few $$ in tips goes a long way to insure prompt service.

Dinner at the French Restaurant was outstanding. The Italian restaurant was very good. Breakfast at the sister resort next door was also very good. Eggs made to order, pastries, pancakes etc. The Paradise Restaurant on the second floor of our resort used to have a buffet breakfast but that has been discontinued and there is now a Mexican restaurant on the ground floor serving breakfast as well as the Bellavista restaurant, also on the ground floor. Service at the Bellavista is very very slow.
The lunches were super. Burgers and tacos and chicken at the pool snack bar. Sandwiches made to order at the Breeze Bar .
Nachos to die for. If you go hungry, it's your own fault. I have no complaints about any of the food. All of it was very well made and tasty.

Now for the pool; Getting a spot in the shade is at a premium. There are about 12 lounges in a shaded area just to the side of the pool bar. They go quickly and you've got to get up early to get one. Naturally we saw times when there were towels on the chairs to save them and the people didn't show up to use them until after 2:00 P.M. That's just wrong. Shame on them.
We had a few instances of ladies going topless in the pool. This is an Adults Only resort and if they wanted to risk a nasty sunburn, so be it.

The report has an activities shack where you get towels, make dinner reservations and pick up books and magazines to read. They also play music from 9:00 A.M. till about 6:00 P.M. If you bring a CD they will try to play it for you. Another word of advise here. Give the CD to "Janet" to play. If you give it to "Pablo" you'll never hear it unless it's Mexican music. He actually took out a great Kenny Chesney CD after only two songs and replaced it with a Mexican CD. I asked why he did that especially because everyone was enjoying the music and he told me that most of the guests were Mexican. That was far from true. The vast majority were Americans and Canadians. I understand that this is Mexico but all we wanted was a mix of the music. We had been listening to Mexican music for almost the entire day. We needed a little change. They have a CD album at the desk and you can go through it to pick out music you want to hear. Good Luck!!!

The return was an experience. The airport has beefed up security like never before. Both of our checked pieces of luggage were searched by hand at check in. We went thtough the routine metal detector on the second floor. The walk to out gate #9 was another very long walk to the end of the airport. Prior to boarding, tables were brought in and a squad of inspectors arrived. Boarding was not done by groups at all. The flight was called and everyone got in line no matter what boarding group you were in. All carry on luggage was hand inspected again. Any liquids were confiscated. You had to produce your boarding pass to get to the inspection table and you had to show it again after the inspection table to go through the door. When you walked downstairs to the tarmack, you had to show the pass a third time to another inspector.

The guests we met at the resort were great. Everyone was friendly and we made some nice friends.

All in all, I'd consider going back to the Golden Crown Paradise but they've got to pay more attention to the small details. I'm sure a lot of these are cost cutting measures but details count.

I stayed here in April 2008, overall the hotel was good. It was clean, the pool was nice and the staff was friendly and helpful. I agree with the positive reviews given to this hotel by everyone else.
A few things to know:
-The food was average, snacks and lunch food was good, the dinners left something to be desired so we went out a few nights, but what can you expect for all inclusive. If you order breakfast room service, make sure you do so the night before.
-They had entertainment and music each night, if you go to bed early get a room away from the courtyard so you do not hear the music playing till midnight.
-Location is good. A cab ride into town only took a few minutes and was 50 pesos. We did not venture on public transportation.
- The spa – we got massages, they were reasonably priced and the ladies were very professional.
- The beach was nice and clean just there were people always trying to sell you things, but they left you alone if you said ‘no thanks’
- The staff is very helpful, they helped us find nice restaurants (el polomar, I pry spelt it wrong, was fantastic) and book side trips through the various tour companies
- The hotel guests ranged in ages from young to old (but all adults)
- You can use the facilities in their sister hotel also but we never made it over there.
- They have safes in the room
- Make sure you have small bills to tip the staff
- Each day they had activities by the pool (aerobics, volleyball, music etc.), it did not bother me but there is not quiet time by pool.