Having just been to Sandals Grande in St. Lucia we were ready to be
wowed once again. Well, although Sandals Negril is nice it certainly
was NOT the Grande in St. Lucia.
Our room was the The Honeymoon Concierge Beachfront Walk-Out room
(although we were on the second level and had a balcony). These rooms
are located in the Sundown Village. Our view was nice (beach and
ocean) but we also had a view of The Sandals Café right below
our room. The rooms are not private as they all face the beach and
anyone walking by can see what you are doing on your patio (in your
room if you have the bottom level and don’t have the curtains
closed) or on your balcony.
We had a mini bar in our room which was stocked every day and had 2
bottles of wine, some hard liquor and some juice as a mixer. We
really didn’t use the mini bar much as we got most of our drinks
right on the beach.
What we noticed in our travels about the resort is that none of the
rooms are private (except the Millionaire Plantation). I guess we were
expecting the privacy we had in St. Lucia.
The river suites although I am sure are very nice inside are less than
private outside There's about five of them all in a row sharing the
same "pool" so if you are outside on your patio/pool area and your
neighbors are too then they can see everything.
There was another building of rooms just like ours and I would pity
anyone who had those rooms. Those rooms were right next to the piano
bar/game room which was open and playing loud music till well after 1
a.m.
There are security guards everywhere so, you always feel like there are
eyes on you. DO NOT set foot off the resort unless you are on an
excursion or prepared to deal with obnoxious vendors. My husband and I
made the mistake of taking a walk down the beach. We checked out with
security (hut is right at the end of Sandals property). The second we
set foot over the "line" the vendors where on us to buy their
wares. A polite “no thank you” and you would think
they would leave you alone. They did not, they kept pursuing us . We
decided after about 2min to go back onto resort property.
There are 3 bars. The main bar is in the lobby area, the grill/bar is
right outside the lobby area and the piano bar is at the other end from
the grill bar.
There are 5 eateries but we only frequented the buffet and the beach
grill. I must admit that the beach grill has awesome Jerk Burgers!
There is 1 smallish main pool with a tiny hot tub and 1 other smallish
pool. We never went to either as we are more beach/ocean people than
pool people.
The ocean is beautiful but there are only certain areas where you can
swim. These areas are roped off. Nobody yells at you though
if you go outside of the roped area which my husband did many times.
We had a concierge level room and I must complement the level of
service we received from our concierge. The concierge service is great
to have because they make it very easy to book your excursions.
We went to the concierge lounge shortly after we checked into our room
and sat down with our concierge. She gave us a book of the
different excursions to do and we told her which ones we wanted and she
booked them. At this same time I also had my husband leave the room so
I could speak to the concierge about the private beach dinner I had
already signed up for online. She gave me the menu so I could choose
our meals and the time I wanted the dinner to be. I also ordered a
special anniversary cake for my husband (I had to pay extra for it as
that was not included in the price of the beach dinner).
Each night before the excursion was to take place we got a call from
the concierge telling us that we could go down to the excursion booth
and pickup our tickets and info on what to wear/bring or not to
wear/bring on our excursion.
For our excursions we did dune buggies which were a lot of fun.
They took us up a mountain and onto an old farm. We went through
lots of mud puddles and were completely covered by the time our
adventure was over. When we got back to the dune buggy place we all
jumped in the ocean to clean off.
We also did a booze cruise which took us up the coast to Ricks
Café. Not that Ricks is anything more than a bar but the cliff
diving was fun. Our catamaran stopped a ways out in the ocean and we
had to swim over to Ricks. I jumped off the 10 ft cliff with my
husband and he alone jumped off the 30 ft cliff. After about a hr. it
was time to get back on the catamaran and party all the way back to the
resort. I will say, if you like to drink then this is the thing for
you. We were rocked by the time we got back to the resort.
We
of course had to hit up Margaretaville. What a big let down. We stayed
for maybe an hr. All the place is is a restaurant/bar/tourist trap.
Our last excursion was horseback riding. We took the bus from Sandals
to the tour place. Upon arrival we were helmeted up and assigned a
horse. We got on our horses and rode around in circles for awhile to
get used to them and them used to us. Then we were off. We rode on a
trail and through old plantation land. We rode for about 45 min out and
then 45min back. After we got back the horses were unsaddled and we got
to ride them bareback though the ocean. I will say that the ocean were
we rode was very deep (up to the horses neck) and it’s not easy
to hold on but it’s an amazing ride.
All in all, we give the resort a B (had we not previously been to the
Grande in St. Lucia the resort may have received a higher grade) and
the overall experience of Jamaica a B+ We will definitely be
going back to Jamaica but we will either stay at a different Sandals
(after all, there are 7 of them) or try a different resort all together
for a different experience.