Brenda Diuro

Review of Sandals Grande Ocho Rios

My husband and I recently stayed at Sandals Ocho R...

My husband and I recently stayed at Sandals Ocho Rios (Dec 29 to Jan 2 - but we left one day earlier due to being so deceived and disgusted.
Rooms not what you see on the internet. Extremely deceiving. We paid for the highest level in Club Building. After traveling from 8 AM we finally got there at 5 PM (Was lied to about the amount of time it takes to get to resort from Airport. Was told a little over an hour. It took 1.75 hours!) . Was shown to our very very small room. The minute we walked in we both said this will not do . My husband is a throat cancer survivor. He rarely sleeps in a bed. He needs a comfortable living room chair, which he puts a pillow against a wall and leans into it. There were 3 high back hard dining room chairs! Although the internet picture showed a comfortable sitting chair. For the first night they put us in a lower level room which was more spacious and they brought in a love seat. The problem with that is they placed the loveseat directly across from the A/C unit and my husband was freezing. The next day Jamal took us to a few rooms including one on The Hill (which was so small, both of us could not fit in front of the bed together). we ended up in 4408 a lower level room (of which we deserve a credit since we paid for a higher level room) with the loveseat under the A/C unit. we wasted 2 days! .
We could not make dinner reservations for the next few days. There was not one reservation available in any of the restaurants! We asked several staff about reservations when we arrived and they said no problem. They will handle for us. Guess what - They couldn t. Now I asked Jamal to speak to the property manager. He said I had to go through the Director of Guest Services first. I spoke to Maxine who was extremely kind and understood. She tried to get us into restaurants but to no success - on that date. And the Skye restaurant was terrible for dinner. Our oysters had sand and stones in them, the shrimp scampi had shells still on and was swimming a bed of mashed potatoes. New Year s Eve Maxine managed to get us into Valentino s. Right before going to dinner, we met another couple who was there the night before. They told us not to order the Shrimp appetizer or Chicken Parmigiana as her husband got food poisoning and was still sick. A great thing to hear right before our meal! The menu was not a typical Italion menu - no veal dishes, only 3-4 pasta dishes.
Some other issues were we never had our ice bucket filled with ice the entire stay. On New Year s Eve we called several times and it was not done. The liquor bottles left in the room are not premium alcohol as the ad states. And not everyone gets the same alcohol. We got a no name gin, rum and wine. We had to ask for a no name vodka, club soda and tonic. The stair cases through out the property are illegal in the US. They are multiple heights, and have no bannisters. The entire complex is terrible for anyone with a physical disability. The public bathrooms have no handicap stalls. We were not aware of all the stairs you had to go up and down to get to the beaches and restaurants. There were no elevators to the beach level. I have a damaged knee and it has gotten worse due to all the climbing we had to do! There are no bannisters on the steps that go from the lobby floor of the club building to the level were the office is, billiard are, and bar is. Beach was not a beach as far as I am concerned. It certainly is not what it is pictured. Another deception. The beach is cut up into 3-4 beaches with mud like sand. The beach chairs are all taken by 7 AM by guests running down to put towels on them to reserve. There are not enough beach chairs for guests. And there are no umbrellas. You can pay for a beach cabana - but this is an all inclusive, so again deceiving