Sandals St. Lucia Regret
Written: Jul 31 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: No pros of any kind at Sandals.
Cons: Almost Everything
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| maestro562's Full Review: St. Lucia |
HERE IS A DRAFT OF THE LETTER THAT WE SENT TO SANDALS AFTER RETURNING FROM OUR HONEYMOON. WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THERE FROM JUNE 26TH THROUGH JULY 5TH, BUT LEFT ON JUNE 28TH, 2000. PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU SPEND $4000 ON A SANDALS ST LUCIA VACATION. WE DID LOVE THE REST OF OUR VACATION AT THE NEW HYATT ST LUCIA RESORT. THE FOOD WAS PHENOMENAL, THE LOCATION IS PERFECT AND THE STAFF IS WONDERFUL. WORTH EVERY PENNY. IF YOU TRAVEL AT THE CORRECT TIME OF YEAR, IT WILL EVEN BE CHEAPER THAN SANDALS.
Unique Vacations, Inc.,
4950 SW 72nd Avenue
Miami, Florida 33155
Sandals Resorts International
5 Kent Avenue
Montego Bay, Jamaica
To Whom It May Concern:
We recently stayed at your Sandals St. Lucia Golf Resort for our honeymoon. We were horribly disappointed in almost every aspect of the resort. We searched endlessly for the most perfect place in the Caribbean to spend the most wonderful week of our life. On the recommendation of our travel agent and several acquaintances, we decided on a Sandals resort. We received the brochure and decided to stay at the Sandals Halcyon Resort in St. Lucia. We could not wait for our beautiful honeymoon suite on the beach, wonderful food and drink and the idea that we would not have to worry about carrying money or tipping. At the last minute we were upgraded to a suite at the Sandals St. Lucia Golf Resort. Less than 48 hours after we arrived at your resort, we decided to move to another hotel on the island because we were so disappointed in everything.
The problems started the moment we arrived. We arrived at the concierge office at the top of the hill only to find that our room was not ready. We were expected to leave our bags out on the step of the concierge office and sent off to lunch to wait the hour or more that it would take to prepare our room. Now, I realize that you cannot be perfect, but I'm sure you would charge us if we did not check-out at noon, so why should we have to wait to check-in at noon. When we finally started off to our room, we had to carry our own bags because of the construction on the road behind our suite. We did not realize that our room upgrade included 12 hours a day of road construction outside our front door. We probably would have kept our reservation at the Halcyon if we had known that piece of information.
I think that the most disappointing part of our experience was that terrible quality of food and drink. The first lunch at Armando's included a tortellini appetizer that consisted of canned (and very salty) chicken broth with three small tortellinis that tasted of freezer burn and preservatives. My new husband ordered a plate of lasagna that he was unable to eat and later complimented that the airline lasagna that he had on our trip home was much better. We ordered some frozen beverages to accompany our first meal and were disappointed 20 minutes later when they finally arrived at our table in plastic cups with no fruit garnish. Every drink in your brochure comes with a fruit garnish… I could barely drink my pina colada, which tasted like water with some coconut flavored ice chunks.
We made reservations at Kimono's because we had heard that was the best restaurant at the resort. We were served salty meats with badly cooked rice and flavorless vegetables. It took about an hour for the waiter to notice that our drink glasses were empty. None of the employees had a smile on their face or were happy to serve our every need. In fact, many of our servers never said one word to us, but just arrived at our table with a notepad and expected us to speak up. This is not the service you should receive with a $600/day fee.
The corkscrew in our room was broken when we arrived so my husband called to see if we could get a new one or to have someone come and open our bottle of wine. We waited a day and no one brought us a new corkscrew so we asked the concierge. After another couple hours, we called again and were told, "no one had the time to run into town and buy a new corkscrew." The concierge did not know when we would get one or how we should go about opining our bottle of wine. A resort that has 300 rooms does not have one extra corkscrew?
The suite included a small mini-bar, which was very nice, except that it was never restocked while we were there. I have never been to a hotel that only offered three choices of wine (red, white, rose) and one type of champagne.
The suite was nice, but no better than Embassy Suites here in the U.S. The balcony was nice except for the large "S" on each windowpane or the view of the huge "Sandals" on the pool bar. Advertising to people who are already at the resort seems pretty futile.
The first night we took a walk around the resort to see the beach and some of the pool areas. As we walked past the Arizona Grille restaurant a very large rat ran out from the bushes and into the barbecue grill area. That's not something you want to see while you eat dinner.
The pool never had a towel in the towel bin and none of the employees seemed to know where the clean towels were located. So, we froze at the edge of the pool drinking horrible mixed drinks from the pool bar. We dried off (without a towel) on one of the pool balconies overlooking the ocean until a strong sewage stench filled the air. We moved to the hot tub to avoid the smell and realized that the whole pool area was filled with the odor. We ran back to our room only to listen to the banging of road construction outside our door. Is this how you imagine your honeymoon?
We were given a list of tours that were available from the resort. Several of the tours sounded really nice, but the prices were outrageous. Why would we take an all day cruise that includes meals when we have already paid for the whole day at Sandals?
The location of the resort is not as idyllic as it sounds or looks in the brochure. The beach is rocky, deep and not very wide. The bar near the beach is always busy and you have to wait in line with the servers as they get drinks for people eating lunch at the grill. Also, the brochure does not show the huge oil storage tanks that are just around the hill from the resort. Several of the pictures in the brochure look different from the actual thing. Many of them look air-brushed or altered to remove the resort name from the buildings.
Our last breakfast at Armando's included the Tuscan Sunrise, which was supposed to be poached eggs on foccacia bread. I have never seen foccacia bread that looked like regular white toast. The hash browns were the potato patties that you buy in the freezer section of the grocery store and they were fried to a burnt crisp. The meals sound so good on the menu, but they quality of the ingredients and the chefs is awful.
It was supposed to be the honeymoon of a lifetime and it became a honeymoon of horrors. On our second morning at your resort we called a taxi and demanded a refund. We spoke to a manager who was more than happy to refund our money and did not even want to know why we wanted to leave. We told her anyway and seemed to think that it was just a preference we had and not a problem with the resort. Does that explain the two other couples we met at our new hotel who had also left Sandals because they were so disappointed with it?
We would like our money back for the two nights that it took for us to get unhappy enough to leave. We could have gone down the street from our house and stayed at a Holiday Inn and eaten at McDonald's and our trip would have been just as high quality as your resort. We do not think that the resort was worth the price that we paid. We ate better food in our high school cafeteria and had better mixed drinks at a college fraternity party. We expected a little more for our once in a lifetime trip.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
maestro562
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 1 member
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