Kerri Timbers.LIFE

All-Inclusive Mega Resorts – Stay at one, play at more.

Updated Winter 2022-2023

If you’re like me and like to stay busy during a beach vacation, but don’t want to spend a fortune on excursions, finding a mega resort with lots of amenities becomes important.

Mega resorts are becoming more common. It allows you to “Stay at one, play at more”, sometimes referred to as “sister property”. You choose your resort and you have access to other resorts in the complex. The resorts are typically tiered. For example, if there are 6 resorts in the complex you can stay at a tier one resort and play at all others. But if you book at a tier two resort in the complex you can stay at all others with the exception of the tier one resort. These mega resort complexes are also great if you have many people travelling with your group, with different budgets.

I compiled this list because as I was doing research for my own vacation it was tough to find the information in a central location. If I missed any, please let me know and I will add them.

Mexico – Riviera Maya

Riviera Maya Riu Complex

Tier 1 – Bahia Principe Sian Ka’an 5* built in 2011

Tier 2 – Bahia Principe Luxury Akumal 4.5* built in 2005

Tier 3 – Bahia Principe Grand Tulum 4.5* and Bahia Principe Grand Coba 4.5* built in 2005

Riviera Maya Barcelo Complex

Tier 1 Barcelo Maya Riviera (18+) 5* built in 2019

Tier 2 Barcelo Maya Palace 5* built in 2007

Tier 3 Barcelo Maya Beach 4.5* built in 1999, Barcelo Maya Caribe 4.5* built in 2007, Barcelo Maya Colonial 4.5* built in 2007, Barcelo Maya Tropical 4.5* built in 2007

Riviera Maya Grand Palladium Complex

Tier 1 TRS Yucatan 5* built in 2017

Tier 2 Grand Palladium Kantenah 4.5* built in 2002, Grand Palladium White Sand, 4.5* built in 2002, Grand Palladium Colonial Resort 4.5* built in 2002

Riviera Maya Iberostar Complex

Tier 1 Iberostar Grand Paraiso (18+) 5* built in 2007

Tier 2 Iberostar Selection Paraiso Maya Suites 4.5* built in 2005

Tier 3 Iberostar Paraiso Beach 4* built in 2001, Iberostar Paraiso Del Mar 4* built in 2005, Iberostar Paraiso Lindo 4* built in 2003

Riviera Maya Princess Complex

Tier 1 Platinum Yucatan Princess (18+) 5* built in 2014

Tier 2 Grand Riviera Princess 4.5* built in 2007, Tier 2 Grand Sunset Princess built in 2007

Cancun Royalton Complex

Tier 1 Hideaway at Royalton (18+) 5* built in 2015

Tier 2 Royalton Riviera Cancun 5* built in 2015

Riviera Maya Riu Complex

Tier 1 Riu Palace 5* built in 2006

Tier 2 Riu Yucatan 5* built in 1997, Riu Tequila 4.5* built in 1998

Tier 3 Riu Playcar 5* built in 2000

Dominican Republic – Punta Cana

Punta Cana Bahia Principe Complex

Tier 1 Bahia Principe Luxury Ambar (18+) 4.5* built in 2006, Bahia Principe Luxury Esmeralda 5* built in 2008

Tier 2 Bahia Principe Fantasia 5* built in 2018

Tier 3 Bahia Principe Grand Aquamarine (18+) 5* built in 2015, Bahia Principe Grand Turquesa 4.5* built in 2004, Bahia Principe Grand Punta Cana 4.5* built in 1995

Punta Cana Palladium Complex

Tier 1 TRS Turquesa (18+) 5* built in 2004

Tier 2 Grand Palladium Bavaro Suites Resort and Spa 4.5* built in 1992, Grand Palladium Palace Resort Spa and Casino 4.5* built in 1993, Grand Palladium Punta Cana Resort and Spa 4.5* built in 2004

Punta Cana Iberostar Complex

Tier 1 Iberostar Grand Bavaro (18+) 5* built in 1995

Tier 2 Iberostar Selection Bavaro Suites 4.5* built in 1995

Tier 3 Iberostar Dominicana 4* built in 1995, Iberostar Punta Cana 4.5* built in 1997

Punta Cana Riu Complex

Tier 1 Riu Palace Bavaro 5* built in 2006

Tier 2 Riu Palace Punta Cana 5* built in 2006

Tier 3 Riu Palace Macao (18+) 5* built in 2006

Tier 4 Riu Bambu 5* built in 2000, Riu Naiboa 4* built in 2006

Punta Cana Secrets/Dreams Complex

Tier 1 Secrets Royal Beach Punta Cana 5* built in 2009, Dreams Royal Beach 5* built in 2007

Punta Cana Dreams/Breathless

Tier 1 Breathless Punta Cana (18+) 5* built in 2013

Tier 2 Dreams Onyx 5* built in 2016

Jamaica

Runaway Bay Bahia Principe Complex

Tier 1 Bahia Principe Luxury Runaway Bay (18+) 5*

Tier 2 Bahia Principe Grand Jamaica 4.5* built in 2006

Montego Bay Iberostar Complex

Tier 1 Iberostar Grand Rose Hall 5* built in 2012

Tier 2 Iberostar Selection Rose Hall Suites 4.5* built in 2007

Tier 3 Iberostar Rose Hall Beach 4* built in 2009

Montego Bay Secrets Complex

Tier 1 Breathless Montego Bay Resort and Spa 5* built in 2016

Tier 2 Secrets St James Montego Bay 5* built in 2010, Secrets Wild Orchid Montego Bay 5* built in 2010

Ocean Complex

Tier 1 Ocean Eden Bay (18+) 5* built in 2019

Tier 2 Ocean Coral Spring 5* built in 2019

Montego Bay Royalton Complex

Tier 1 Royalton Blue Waters Montego Bay 5* built in 2016

Tier 2 Royalton White Sands Montego Bay 5* built in 2013

Montego Bay Riu Complex

Tier 1 Riu Palace Jamaica (18+) 5* built in 2001

Tier 2 Riu Reggae (18+) 5* built in 2016

Tier 3 Riu Montego Bay 5* built in 2007

Full Walk through tour of the Traveling Timber

Traveling Timber Photo Gallery

Photo gallery of the 16’x8′, 120 sq ft tiny house built for traveling

16′ x 8.5′, 120 sq ft tiny house

How did I decide on the size and design of my (very) tiny house?

I’ll walk you through my process, it may help you, it may not. When beginning, don’t worry too much about the size. The beauty of a tiny house is that you customize it to your life and the size will present itself in the design process. A lot of people make the mistake of starting with a size in mind but that really limits the level of creativity that can go into the design process.

Here were my steps, I am sure I forgot something but this is for sure a good starting point:

Document your day from morning to night. This will help you to identify the must haves. Don’t limit anything from this list. It also helped me to walk through my house and look at every nook, cranny and item. Things that popped out for me here that I may not have thought about previously were things like a place for coats and shoes as I come in the door and little things such as garbage/recycling storing linens, storing books/DVD’s etc.
On this step go into all of the tiny (no pun intended but still funny) details. For example…

Wake up, pee (need a toilet), have a shower (need a shower), get dressed (need somewhere to store clothing), brush teeth (need a bathroom sink), do hair and makeup (need somewhere to store beauty products, list them all), make a coffee (need space for coffee maker, cups, spoons etc), make breakfast (need all the items needed to make and serve breakfast), do yoga (need a spot for yoga and somewhere to store yoga mat), sit down and work (need workspace and storage for all related items)
1. What things do you do in your home?
2. What items do you use in your home?
3. What items are important to store in your home that you may not use all the time but you would like to keep?
How often would you be traveling with your home?
1. All the time
2. A couple of times a year (over a short distance)
3. A couple of times a year (long distances)
4. Whenever you move it from location to location, which wouldn’t be often.
Are there any considerations to make for animals? i.e dog beds/food storage, cat litter boxes etc
Would the home be on grid (plugged into water and power) or off grid (running solar for power and trucking in water) or some combination of the two?
Would you want empty floor space available for activities? i.e. yoga space, dance space etc
What would you like for kitchen setup?
1. fully functional kitchen (full size electric appliances)
2. fully functional kitchen (full size propane appliances)
3. partial kitchen (smaller fridge, portable cooktops, toaster oven, small appliances)
4. basic kitchen (sink, basic storage, bar fridge etc)
How many people will be in the home?
1. How many beds?
2. Future growth of family?
3. A space for guests?
Any personal mobility issues that would need to be designed around?
Loft or main floor bed?
How much clothing would need to be stored?
1. do you get dressed in the bedroom area or in the bathroom? (I put all my clothing in the bathroom and it opened up a lot more room for clothes.)
Would you like any type of working space? i.e. office area, craft area etc
When you close your eyes and see your space what sorts of things are there for you that we didn’t catch in this list?

Additional tips…

I personally took this list and made every “required” item out of grid paper. From there I move things around (a lot) to get the best layout.

Try your best to ensure that as many items as possible has at least 2 uses, for example a table that is also a desk or additional counter space for the kitchen. This makes your home extremely efficient.

When designing each of my storage spaces, I literally measured everything I wanted to bring with me into my tiny house. Dig deep into all the depths of your current cupboards and drawers. Purge, purge and purge again. There are many things you can eliminate and you’ll feel great doing it.

The process of designing your own home is one that will take you on a journey of self discovery. In the end, having a home that is completely unique to your wants, needs and personality is the most beautiful thing to come from this process and the final product.

I personally had heard from many existing tiny home owners that if they were to do it again, they would go smaller. So I challenged myself to go as small as possible, for the reason just mentioned but also so I could travel with it easily. The creative side of me had a blast with this challenge!

Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope it helps you on your journey!!! As always, feel free to reach out to me. I love talking tiny houses and if I can help you work through in any way I would love to. You can also subscribe to stay up to date, it’s off to the right!

The products used in my tiny home

This page may contain affiliate links. If you click on a link, I get paid a small amount. Thank you for your support 🙂

Winch bed system – designed by FRC Tiny Homes

Champion Power Equipment 12003 Power Winch Kit – 2000 lb. Capacity (Amazon)
0 HP, 12V DC
153:1 gear ratio
With remote control

Heating – propane direct vent heater and electric in floor heat

Martin Propane Direct Vent Heater 8,000 to 11,000 (Costco)
QuietWarmth electric heat film with conductive ink technology

Flooring – Luxury Vinyl Plank (New Era Flooring)

Twelve Oaks flooring – Greek Villa (colour name)
7” wide plank
3/16” thick
Beveled edge

Water Pump

SHURflo RV Water Pump (CanadaRV.com)
12v
3GPM (gallons per minute)
5 amps
Selling point – quiet to run

Generator

Honda EU2200iTC
2200 watts with 120 VAC power inverter
57dB(A)
Ability to run in series

Lights – Interior

LED RV Boat Recessed Ceiling Light by Leisure LED (Amazon)
3/4” thick
720 lumen (natural white)
9 watts

Lights – Exterior

LED Flood light (Amazon)
12v
10 watt
900 lumens, 6500k (daylight white)
Waterproof

Tank Monitoring

Seelevel II 709 (Garnett Industries)
Reads batteries, fresh water, grey water, black water and propane
Exterior senders for tanks (easy to replace and no damage from water)

Electronic Door Handle

Gatehouse (Lowes)
Lighted keypad

Exterior Door

Masonite steel entry door (Rona)

Fold down porch – designed by FRC Tiny Homes

Multinautic QP-400 Ultra-light Aluminium Dock (Costco)

Fridge

Danby fridge (Costco)
24”
10 cu ft

Backsplash

Ecoceramic Bronx turquesa (TileTown)

Sink

Blanco Corrence Single Bowl (Lowes)
Silgranit material

Faucet

Pfister Cagney 1-Handle Pull-Down Kitchen (CanadianTire)

Toaster Oven

Oster French Door Convection Oven
1500 watt

Cooktop

Tillreda Induction cooktop (Ikea)
1800 watt

Bathroom Sink

LILLÅNGEN bathroom sink (Ikea)

Why I am building a tiny house

My journey into the tiny house world actually started over 10 years ago. I was in my late 20’s and I was riddled with anxiety. So much anxiety I couldn’t eat without getting sick. What was wrong with me? I followed the path. I had a decent job, I was climbing the corporate ladder. I had a husband and owned a house and a car. Why wasn’t I happy? Why was I unfulfilled? That began a long path of undoing the social norm programming that consumed the default wiring in my brain. Was this actually the life I wanted? I put in a lot of extra hours for work. I would come home and keep working because that would get me recognition of being a hard worker and somehow made me feel like I was keeping up with the task list. But it really just got me a lot of unpaid hours of work and more of a workload. It was destroying my relationships and it was burning me out. But it was the way to success and success means money and money means no stress, right? We were also living beyond our means at the time. We had cars financed, the mortgage, credit card debt from buying stuff we really didn’t need. Shortly after my anxiety began, my marriage ended. In hindsight, I can see that everything that was making me unhappy was because I had expectations. Expectations of all the wonderful stuff that society and media had filled my mind with. Such as how my husband was supposed to be, in our fairy tale love. How I would skyrocket up the corporate ladder and be super successful before 30. How my possessions would make me look as though I had it all.

Fast forward a couple of years after my divorce. I uprooted my life and moved across the country to continue to chase my career goals. I still believed that my job title defined me as a person and my level of success. I gave everything I had to the company for 15 years. Only to end up fired because one of my employees made a safety mistake and it was company policy to fire the employee and manager too. This event broke me. I no longer had a purpose or an identity. How could I commit this much of my life to a company only to mean nothing to them at the end of the day. This though, this was the best thing that could ever happen to me!!!

I had been renting a house because I still owned my house in my hometown. I quickly got rid of the rental and moved in with some friends. When I moved in, I put most of my stuff into their garage for storage. As we moved it all in, I stepped back and looked at the pile of stuff and realized I had debt and a lot of stuff that wasn’t actually needed but I didn’t have joy. This began my journey into exploring alternative ways of living.

I have a philosophy in my life of questioning why I do EVERYTHING now. Why do I think I need X amount of square footage? Why do I need X, Y or Z items? Why am I choosing certain relationships? Are these my thoughts and desires or are they programmed in me? Why does the model taught to me not working for me? Was I doing something wrong? No…I figured out that the model no longer works.

When I saw the first picture of a tiny house back in 2013, I was sold! It seemed to solve all of the financial problems that I was facing. As I dug in though I found out that it isn’t as easy as it looks. The tiny houses that people were building in warmer climates for under $10,000 wouldn’t work in Canada. That in fact it was way more expensive to build a tiny house here. There are other considerations as well, such as where would I park it? Tiny houses are not legal, year-round RV parks are extremely expensive here, buying land and getting utilities is expensive. I was quickly thinking darn it, maybe I didn’t find the solution. However, there was something that really kept me drawn to tiny houses. So I, along with 2 others, started up a tiny house enthusiast group called YEG Tiny Homes. For a couple of years we hosted meet-ups for others interested in tiny living. We started as a few people meeting in coffee shops and quickly grew to requiring boardrooms to host upwards of 100 people. Our group faded out for various reasons that I will get into in another post. But my love for tiny houses continued.

I began looking at my life. What do I want from my life? What would leave me with no regrets on my deathbed? I knew traveling and seeing beautiful places and meeting beautiful people was number 1. I began a journey into deciding what would be my best option for the life I wanted. I looked into van conversions, skoolies, motor homes, travel trailers, really any option I could think of. But my heart and my brain always came back to my tiny house dream.

Over the past 6 years I have designed and redesigned many tiny house layouts. Although I am a business analyst, looking at numbers all day, I have a very creative side to me. I wanted a space that I could completely design for myself that would allow me certain comforts and could be built with quality materials.

Here are my personal pro’s and con’s for each option.

**Keep in mind this is strictly my opinion, you’re more than welcome to have your personal opinions.

Van conversion

Pro – small and easy to travel with
Pro – customizable
Con – once parked for the night, no vehicle to run errands with
Con – tough to get a bathroom and shower designed into
Con – not great for colder temperatures
Con – if I went with an older van, I am not mechanically inclined. New van conversions are insanely expensive.
Con – nowhere to stay if I needed to get the van fixed

Skoolie

Pro – inexpensive to buy an older bus
Pro – customizable
Con – once parked for the night, no vehicle to run errands with
Con – not great for colder temperatures
Con – the company I worked for for 15 years and was unceremoniously fired from was a school bus company (ego decision hahaha)
Con – not mechanically inclined
Con – nowhere to stay if I need to get the bus fixed

Motor homes

Pro – lots of options on the market
Pro – accepted at RV parks and campgrounds
Con – my budget didn’t allow for a newer one, found a lot of “fixer uppers”
Con – construction and materials were not the greatest
Con – nowhere to stay if I need to get the motor home fixed
Con – not built for colder weather
Con – once parked for the night, no vehicle to run errands with

Travel trailers

Pro – lots of options on the market
Pro – accepted at RV parks and campgrounds
Pro – can set up camp and still have a vehicle to drive
Con – my budget didn’t allow for a newer one, found a lot of “fixer uppers”
Con – construction and materials were not the greatest. Touring new ones gave me a headache from the toxic chemicals used during the build
Con – not built for colder weather

Tiny house

Pro – customizable
Pro – quality building and quality materials
Pro – can set up camp and still have a vehicle to drive
Pro – can handle cold weather
Pro – can become my forever home when I am done traveling
Pro – can become an airbnb when I am not using it
Con – not legally recognized (there are options to have it certified as an RV or as a modular home, I’ll do another post on that)
Con – will be heavier to tow than a travel trailer and less aerodynamic
Con – may have unknown legal issues along the way
Pro – Pro – Pro – it is 100% my creation, my desires and my dream.

Traveling Timber Tiny House Journey Begins

Well….it’s official…I am building a tiny house. This has been quite the process already and I can’t wait to get started on the journey. I will be sharing my story here. Stay tuned 🙂