ORD-TGU, thanks for the thoughtful reply. To address some of your points:
-The "nickel and dime" comment was in reference to stingy room upgrades, fee for full breakfast, no lounge, high prices on food/drink. I always get a little frustrated when you seemingly get nothing for being a loyal Diamond member.
-Might take your suggestion and do a late breakfast and turn it into brunch. Good idea.
-I finally got a response from the hotel on the Diamond upgrade vs. eStandby upgrade. They didn't really get my question about not wanting to pay for the eStandby when the Diamond would be free, but they just gave in and said they upgraded me to a full Oceanview. I appreciate that, but I also contacted the Diamond desk before I heard back from them and that rep told me they had lots of full Oceanview inventory open for our dates anyways.
-I know there are no standalone restaurants within walking distance, but I guess I was referring to restaurants at some of the other nearby resorts. I found one that looked nice and was a short 15 min walk down the beach.
-I read something about the TPL on rental cars in Mexico. I looked over my Avis reservation and didn't see anything and then did an online chat, but the rep really didn't know what I was talking about. We'll see when we get there I guess.
-I saw La Comer mentioned in a couple reviews and you brought it up also. We were just planing on going to Walmart since it would be familiar and this is just a quick stock up and go run, but people seem to love La Comer. This lady did a whole
blog post about it. We might stop there instead.
-Good advice on the fridge. We would expect one for drinks so I will email and see if we can get one for our room.
-The Hyatt Ziva or Holiday Inn aren't really options. I stay at Hhonors properties and that is where all my points are. We looked at some of the Hilton all-inclusive properties, but they didn't seem as nice as the Hilton Los Cabos. It looks like Hiton is adding all-inclusives so it will be interesting to see what options we get.
-Interesting point about it being Mexican tourist season. The reason we picked the dates we did is because the point redemptions were quite a bit less on those dates (57,000 vs. 70,000). It seems the hotel is less full that week for whatever reason.
-I will try to post a report after our trip for you. I like to contribute back to the FT forums because I do get so much good information here.