Two night stay this week on points. Overall, I'll join the consensus - lovely property with lots of positives, but also lots of service lapses that would simply not be acceptable if paying the cash rate. We found ourselves looking around at breakfast and dinner and wondering about other guests "are they really paying $2000/night cash for this?"

Room assignment as Explorist was not very good during a sold out period, but this place is really about the outdoor facilities, so it didn't much bother us.

Did not love the food and the dinner menu was already old by the second night. Still, the all-inclusive concept did make for a relaxed, pleasant (and unbelievably cheap) stay.

We didn't fully appreciate how serene and relaxing this place is until we got to Carmel Valley Ranch yesterday. Totally sensory overload. We found ourselves longing for the peace and quiet of Ventana.

Weather was really weird with some sort of temperature anomaly . . . It was 101 degrees when we departed at 11 a.m. Friday., but only in the mid-80s in Carmel Valley a few hours later. I don't think the temp at Ventana dropped much, if any, below 80 degrees the whole time we were here (including late night/early morning).

Will definitely return, on points, targeting late spring to avoid both rain and smoke.