Okay, I managed to shove some lasagna down my gullet. Now we'll get to the more general parts of the review and I can stop being completely negative.
ROOM: Aside from not being in the room category we wanted, the room was very nice. Quite large, very comfy four-poster bed, flat-screen TV with a nice selection of channels, huge bathroom with an even huger jacuzzi tub, indoor and outdoor shower and really nice smelling bath products. My only quibble was that there was no toilet paper holder in the toilet room and instead the paper was resting on the top of the toilet tank. The mini bar was stocked with Diet Coke, Coke, Sprite, mango juice, water and Tecate beer. Tecate isn't one of my favorites, but it's beer right? Beer is always good.
The terrace was huge (since there was no pool on it) and had two chairs and a little table and a lounging bed that was nice for late afternoon naps. The view was both good and bad. We had a sweeping ocean view, but we also had a less-than-attractive view of the roof of the Sabores restaurant and a hurricane-damaged mangrove swamp.
You can see the floorboards just sort of thrown over what must have once been the pool....
If you DO book a swim-up suite, some of them are so far back that I'm afraid all you will see is Sabores, and very little Caribbean. The best suites seem to be 201, 202, 301, 302, 401, and 402.
GROUNDS: The grounds are very nice here for the most part, with plenty of plants and flowers. They're still doing some work, such as installing a fountain, on the grounds, but the whole place is quite pretty and so small that you'll be navigating it like a champ after the first day.
BEACH: Very nice for the most part, although a little weedy in the water and not quite as crystal clear and blue as other parts of the area. They have beach loungers but no umbrellas or palapas for them, so it's a good idea to get a beach bed AND loungers so you can get out of the sun when you want to.
The beach beds on the left side of the resort (as you're facing the Caribbean) are much nicer than those on the right. The left side beds, as you can see, are in palapas and give a lovely treehouse feel. The right side is more crowded, with the beds closer together and they have simple wood roofs. Some people might like that side more because there's more "action" but we loved the rustic feel of the left side of the beach.
By the way, one thing I loved about EDM is there was no towel check-out or two towels issued to you in the room. There are stands of rolled-up towels around both pools and you can take as many as you'd like. You could create a towel fort out of towels and loungers!
There's drinks service on the beach and the woman who did most of the service was very attentive and sweet. (Needless to say, we're big believers in AI tipping.)
Some have wondered about noise from Maroma Marina.
I thought it to be pretty much a non-issue and we were very close to the marina every day. Every few hours a booze cruise boat would come in or go out and you could sort of hear music from it, but it wasn't disturbing. Once I heard a guy power-washing his boat for about 10 minutes. I heard the waves, the breeze and the birds much more than the marina.
Back with more later tonight....