It began in January 2019.
My wife and I were celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary, and she wanted to go some place special. I told her to plan whatever she wanted and not to worry about the cost. Believe it or not, she made the reservation based on which Caribbean island was predicting better weather the week we were traveling. So we found ourselves celebrating at Secrets St. James in Montego Bay, Jamaica. It didn't rain, and it was fun!
It was the first time we had ever been to an all-inclusive resort and the first time we had traveled overseas together since our honeymoon in 1994. It was so much fun, we talked and decided to spend more of our time traveling together. Our three boys were grown and starting their own lives, and we had more time and more money to spend on ourselves.
We were approached by the Unlimited Vacation Club (UVC) rep at Secrets St. James and agreed to sit down with him to see what the club was all about. We found out it was all about discount travel at many resorts, mostly in Mexico and the Caribbean. It looked great. There were several dozen properties where we could use our club benefits under different brands affiliated with AMResorts, the company behind the Unlimited Vacation Club: Zoetry, Secrets, Breathless, Dreams, Now (defunct), Reflect (defunct) and Sunscape. Each brand seemed to have its own vibe: Zoetrys were quiet and relaxed, Secrets were for couples, Dreams for families, Sunscape was the "budget friendly" brand.
There were a few other benefits to the club: RCI, Lifestyle Collection, Amstar and a Yachts Certificate. We didn't really know what any of those were about, but we didn't care. They were there to use if we decided to use them, but we were mostly interested in the all-inclusive AMResorts properties. They gave us a bunch of pre-paid (Premier) nights and some more discounted (VIP) weeks. When those were all used up, we'd be able to book vacations for our remaining years at AMResorts properties for 25% less than what AMResorts charged everyone else. It was just what we were looking for. We negotiated a price we could live with, and we left Secrets St. James as Unlimited Vacation Club, Gold Plus members!
