June 1, 2011

Subject: Sandals Ocho Rios

To whom in may concern,

I’m writing to inform you of the experience that my new husband and I recently endured at your Sandals Grande Ocho Rios location. We were married on April 16, 2011 and eager for our Honeymoon trip to Ocho Rios, Jamaica, for some much needed relaxation. We thought that we had spared no expense on our trip and decided to book the Romeo & Juliet Honeymoon Suite from April 23 – April 27 which provided us with a Butler, Concierge service and, what we thought, was a private pool within walking distance to the beach.

We’ll be the first to admit that our trip started off on the wrong foot when we were on a plane getting ready to depart St. Louis, MO at the exact time that it was struck by a devastating tornado. Long story short, we went through an emergency evacuation of the plane, and we’re told to leave all of our bags behind. We didn’t let the tornado hold us back from our long-awaited Honeymoon trip and we called American Airlines to have them redirect our flight. They assured us that our bags would meet us in Jamaica the next day so we drove through the night to a nearby city with only the clothes that we packed in a small backpack. After 32 hours of no sleep, we finally landed in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and thought that we were in Sandal’s capable hands now and we could finally relax. Here’s where the disappointments began….

Arrival at the Montego Bay Airport:
After we made our way through customs, we found the Sandal’s ‘store-front’ and went to the Front Desk there to check in. Upon not finding anyone at the Front Desk, we looked around for a good 10 minutes until we finally found someone around the corner from their location with a clipboard and checked in, received tags for the appropriate resort on our bag and were told to go back in, grab a beer and relax until the shuttle for our resort was called. You can only imagine our relief when we thought our vacation had finally begun! We were getting ready to sit down and relax when a young gentleman came with a Sandal’s shirt came in and told us our shuttle was ready and to follow him. We gathered our bags and turned around and he was gone! So, we walked out front and talked to our friend with clip-board that we had originally checked in with and they rudely told us our shuttle was NOT ready, and to go sit back down. Feeling confused, we walked back in to sit down and drink our beer, only to be grabbed by a third person that asked why we weren’t outside yet at the shuttle. We followed him out to the shuttle (not taking our eyes off him this time) and we ended up filling the last two seats on the bus. We settled in for a long 2 hour shuttle ride….

Arrival at the Sandals Ocho Rios Resort:
Once we finally made it to the first Sandal Resort, the bus dropped off passengers with the blue tags first. We were relieved that this wasn’t our resort as it was quite far from the beach and definitely not the location that we were going after, so, with the purple tags on our luggage, we happily stayed on the bus, and waited to get dropped off at the resort directly across the busy street. Upon departing at this location, we gave our name to the front check-in host and she rudely and abrasively informed us that the employees as the airport gave us the wrong tag for our luggage, so we needed to get back on the bus and go back to other resort. A little shell-shocked, we got back on the bus to go back to the first resort and get checked in.

Check-In at the Sandals Ocho Rios Resort:
Upon check-in at our proper Resort, we informed the front desk about our luggage situation, gave them all the pertinent information and informed them that we expected it from American within the next few days. They told us “You’re in luck, you have Butler service, they will take care of ALL of it for you.” After we checked in, our butler arrived about 15 minutes later and drove us in a golf cart an additional 5-7 minutes to our Romeo and Juliet villa at the back of the resort.

Romeo & Juliet Villa:
The only nice thing about our villa was the private pool and hot tub, which was surprisingly enclosed. If you look up the room on their website, they’ll show the private pool and hot tub with a beautiful mural right behind it, that, in the photos, looks like an open area, not a wall. Our villa literally backed up to the 10’ tall concrete fence at the back of the fence with barbed wire across the top and was about the furthest away from the beach that you can get. The most important thing to us was being near the beach and, according to the maps that they show on the Sandal’s website, our Villa was right next to the beach. The bed was nice, but, all in all, it was not worth the high price that we paid for it. Regardless, at this moment, we were excited for a warm bed and some alone time.

On the meals:
Since our bags did not make the trip with us, we were unable to attend any of the nice restaurants that had a dress code for them since we didn’t have slacks or close-toed shoes with us, so we did what we could to make the best of it and tried out a variety of restaurants. The food was below sub-par and tasted soggy like it was microwaved in the back. Due to the strict no-tipping policy, the majority of the waiters were rude and condescending and generally a hassle to deal with. In addition to all of this, there was an alarming amount of stray cats roaming around the restaurants at all times. We were finally able to attend one of the nicer restaurants when one of the causal restaurants that they have made a “Reservation” for us was closed and we pleaded with our Butler to get us into the nicer one, even thought we were wearing flip-flops. The food was slightly better, but still not what we were expecting.

On the Butler Service:
We didn’t experience much rudeness from our Butlers and we assume that this was due to the fact that they knew they would get tipped on their service. They were not helpful in getting our luggage to us and we ended up having to call American Airlines to check up on it most of the time (using high-priced roaming minutes in the meantime). We ended up finally getting our luggage on evening the day before we left. One of our Butlers was a hassle to deal with and it made it seem like it was going out of his way to come pick us up for meals. We tried to start ‘fresh’ every morning and think that it was all going to turn around everyday. One morning, he walked us down to breakfast, took our drink order and came back with mimosas. In doing so, he managed to spill an entire mimosa all over the front of my husband (keep in mind, we only had about 2 outfits a piece at this point). He told us he would clean it up and so we went through the breakfast buffet line and came back to find a table that had been cleared of any puddles, but still had a wet tablecloth with sticky mimosa. The butler service was another one of those things that was highly overrated.

On the Liquor:
What liquor?? I swear there was no liquor in any of our drinks! I’m not a drunk by any means, but two drinks usually have me feeling good and that never happened.

Needless to say, it was tempting to hide out in our room everyday, instead of dealing with the rude service everywhere we turned. Unfortunately, that was not possible, because our Butler wouldn’t allow that and would kick us out everyday at 10 AM. We would ready to come back home after a few days of this treatment.

It still brings tears to my eyes thinking that this is our Honeymoon trip that we will remember for the rest of our lives. Since we had spent so much money on this trip, another trip is not anywhere in our immediate future and we withheld a few items to do to the house in hopes of a great trip. This was, hands-down, the worst vacation ever. My only saving grace was being there with my husband. We had stars in our eyes from the great marketing that Sandals does and we found that it was not only deceptive, but, in some cases, straight lies. We had hopes for the “trip of a lifetime”, but got the Honeymoon from Hell instead.

Unless Sandals does something to restore my faith in them, there’s no way I would ever recommend them to another person.

Linda T.