22 Aug 2023
AVOID AVOID AVOID - Not what it built its reputation on anymore just an aggressive money making event that is truly awful and intimidating. Absolutely ruined my 30th birthday.
No matter what you pay for they will try to get more from you. Whether this is from charging you for stools for regular guests, giving you house drinks for premium wristbands drinks unless you pay more, sticking you in golden seats you can’t see from and offering you an upgrade to a better gold seat for an extra €120 or so each, VIP tables behind the stage where you can’t see and that the waiters will only bring you drinks to for tips.
I am quite taken back by how many good reviews this place has. (All the above can all be confirmed in the reviews if you weed through them) I can’t personally imagine how you can enjoy yourself here unless you are willing to throw unlimited money at the event or your 21 and don’t mind being crushed to death with drinks spilled allover you.
It seems the common response to bad reviews is an email address to email Sebastian to let him discuss this further/pretend to rectify this. Well I emailed him first, around 5 weeks prior to me writing this and he still hasn’t replied.. so it’s clear they can’t justify this and won’t reply to someone who is politely willing to stick the details in/cut out excuses early. Shows what kind of business they are running..
My Experience
I went to Coco Bongos Cancun for my 30th birthday in July and paid for the premium drinks general access, so upon my first visit to the bar I seen amaretto dissarano on the drinks menu on the wall - I asked is dissarano on the premium drinks to which I was given a yes, great - I asked for two, to which he poured me two drinks from this cheap plastic bottle of some kind of local amaretto equivalent with almond written on it.. ok no problem maybe he didn’t understand. I then went to a different bar and asked for the same again and he went to pour from the same bottle again and I politely challenged him and pointed to the dissarano bottle on the bar and he went “no, you pay extra for that” “you want to pay extra?” I replied “no, no” and further asked were these drinks not with premium drink wristbands to which I got an abrasive and rude response of “no” and “do you want a drink or not”. (Problem 1)
Another problem I had during this event was about where you could and couldn’t stand. Upon getting here I was made aware that you had to pay to sit on a seat or sit at table otherwise you would stand. Ok, fair enough I thought, I guess this has been the rules forever, it just isn’t advertised anywhere and a presumptions me presumed ‘Gold Zones’ & ‘VIP/ Front Row’ just meant better and exclusive seats not no seats.
Still this would’ve been okay until despite being told I could stand anywhere I wanted, upstairs or downstairs, and that I just had to pay if I wanted to sit on a seat, I then got moved 9 times in roughly 1 hour and 2minutes. I was sent downstairs, upstairs, downstairs, go over there, go upstairs.. at this stage I challenged the person and went look “where can I stand and where can I not stand I’m getting a bit sick of moving back and forth” he said here if fine, I said so I won’t be moved from here and showed him my wristband saying premium can stand here without a seat yes? He replied yeah and well.. no more than about 5 minutes later I was moved and told I couldn’t stand here and needed to buy a seat or move.
I felt literally harassed and aggressively pressured into either buying a seat/table or being made to have a severely crap time. It wasn’t even polite - the guys moving people shone bright torches at us like cattle with body language of ‘shooing us’ to move to what ever direction they pointed in with their torch (usually upstairs or downstairs vice versa) and if you didn’t move quick enough they would start shining it right in your face and on your wrist band in a peasant like attitude again shooing you to move in whatever direction they specified. $142 was the price I was told was the ‘upgrade’ price for the table which is actually the whole entry cost I think rather than an upgrade plus I’m not sure if this was for one or two.
What I will acknowledge is that the entertainment did seem good from what I seen although after a horrific and very intimidating experience (without exaggeration) after the hour and 20 and a 9th move I couldn’t take anymore and decided to leave as I was getting absolutely furious.
I didn’t want to just head straight out and do the typical thing though and get some lame excuse of you should’ve asked someone and we would’ve sorted it for you so I did challenge the organiser people outside selling the tickets about it. He was polite, but honest. He said he was shocked as he had never heard of this happening before (yeah right). He said that we had the premium wristbands and anywhere standing should’ve been fine and we shouldn’t have been moved (confirming what we were told inside multiple times).
Seeing I was quite serious about this and didn’t just want palmed off he then asked what I would like to happen. I said I would like my money back if I’m honest as I had only had two drinks that were cheap crap that I didn’t even want and I only spent just over an hour in there and had a horrific time getting harassed but I said I guessed that would be unlikely. He laughed and went yeah that’s not gonna happen (I appreciated the honesty). I went well I would at least like to speak to a manager or someone and understand what drinks you get in there and why I kept getting moved.
He eventually went and spoke to someone and they kind of came over, I can only
presume they were his manager as I had asked to speak to one and they were dressed slightly different. It was initially very clear though that they didn’t have the time to speak to us, wouldn’t be interested in doing so and were their as a necessity judged by their unwillingness to look at us, body language, dismissiveness, general attitude and distance they stood away from us. They spoke to the guy and the guy relayed to us.. he basically said we were being moved because we were standing here, here and there and showed me (some kind of google earth like version of the club) I went ok.. where do I stand, he showed me several places on the floor plan I then went ok so I was moved from there, there and there. Unable to have an answer then he just shrugged his shoulders and then blurted out ‘maybe buy a table next time, too busy, too crowded’ I went ok, not that I agree with that but for arguments sake I buy a table of which their was maybe 2 free I think in the club and say 30-50 stools where do you put the other 1000 people you can’t still fit anywhere. Your saying the only place you won’t be moved is the bottom but you can fit what 300 people there maybe, where does anyone else go? The other for argument sake say 700 people oh and look your still selling tickets right now and trying to get more people in without tickets despite saying it’s too busy..
It was clear my conversation here was done with them and they weren’t going to speak any further on the matter as their was nothing else they could make an excuse up about that would be plausible other than this being a HUGE BIG CON.
Funnily enough I got back to the hotel nice and early with my wristband on still and everyone started challenging me and coming up to me saying similar things. 3 different parties of people told me they had left within an hour and a half too. Luckily one person got their money back as they said they would follow the rep around all day long and tell everyone about their experience and not to book it and after enough time of them actually doing it they refunded them sure enough. Two other parties paid a lot more money on tables to be disappointed, one unable to even see the show etc. similar stuff and general stuff similar to what can be found on the negative side of the comments on trip advisor.