Tom Ertle

Review of Sandals Royal Caribbean

Let me start by saying this trip was supposed to b...

Let me start by saying this trip was supposed to be a reprieve from our poor Sandals St. Lucia trip... We were pressured into allowing them to make everything better as they sold us on this beautiful OCEAN-VIEW Butler Room with dipping tub... Well... this was partially correct... you could kind-of see the Ocean over the construction site... I am on construction sites with my work and a room over looking a construction site listening to them cranking up a cutoff saw, running tampers, tying in rebar and having a wall around the construction site to stop the cool island breezes was not my idea of a relaxing vacation! That being said, the majority of the staff were friendly, pleasant and professional! The restaurants were so so.. The Thai Restaurants and French were good but small portions. We had the Surf and turf at the Caribbean restaurant and found the steak to be small and tough and the lobster tail to be extremely small, very disappointing... Back to the room...After arriving, I explained about my discontent to our Butler. He explained to me that all rooms similar to ours were in this section and switching to another room would simply be in the same location. After hearing the cutoff saw crank up again I called and asked to speak to a manager... a manager called me back and I explained my dilemma. He asked if I would like him to come to the room and see to which I said yes. About an hour later, he showed up. I showed him the view and again stressed my discord. He said he would see what he could do. That was the last time I ever heard from him.. no follow-up, nothing! About mid week, we were being flooded by a leak from out air conditioner. We were told it was probably because we had our patio door open too much but said they would send someone from engineering. I didn t think we had left the door open that much but thought whatever.. from then on we were pretty vigilant in keeping it shut... no word from maintenance, at all! I reminded our Butler, who made the appropriate calls as well as housekeeping who made the appropriate calls... Nothing! The bed, as quant as it looked, was extremely uncomfortable! The last three nights of my stay were nearly sleepless due to back pain radiating into my legs! I ve stayed at hotels which were 1/8 the price and had a terrific nights sleep! Lastly ( on the room) watch the wet floors; I and my wife nearly brook our skulls from slipping on the wet marble floors, one from the shower area and one from where the AC was leaking.. now, onto the resort, the resort was much smaller then anticipated. There was only one relatively small (6 seats) swim up bar. The drinks were VERY watered down, there was not a large beach area and a chunk of that was taken up by the new construction area and of course there was the low flying jet traffic starting at around 7 am and then about every 30 minutes until about 5 PM. I mentioned the restaurants.. We heard about one restaurant, Butch s, we tried to make reservations and found it was at another Sandals and was booked about a week in advance.... on the positive side, the scuba diving was great, the spa was great and the staff were superb. The Butlers ( Sheldon and Andre ) were exquisite! We ve been to several 4 and 5 star resorts and feel that this resort is mismanaged in comparison. We also feel that we were bamboozled into taking this unique trip having a Butler and beautiful room overlooking the Caribbean ... and are very disappointed.. Perhaps some advanced warnings about the construction (as we were told about on one of our Mexico trips by a well managed 4.5 Star resort) and follow up by the management as to our discontent with various issues, a pre-warning about the air traffic and showing some real customer care would have elevated the resort from a two star to a three star but it is definitely NOT a 5 star resort!