Ok first, if you disagree with me, fine, dont flame me for having an opinion.
We, me and my new wife, arrived at Sandals Antigua on April 13th, 2003, and departed on April 20th, 2003. We stayed in a Grande Luxe Beachfront Concierge Room, room 123.
Sandals claims to be a five star resort, as you can see from one of the pages where I
Highlighted their marketing. I will merely list the reasons why they are not.
1. Our room was supposed to include a sitting area, mahogany bed, and a daily newspaper. There were none of these. Our room was so small there is no way to get a sitting room in there. The bed took up the entire room, along with a desk, small chair for the desk, mini-fridge, and TV. The bed was not mahogany or raised up high as promised. Both the mahogany bed and sitting area are shown in the brochure picture and promised in writing.
2. We must make reservations for some of the restaurants, which close and odd hours, and some days are just flat closed. Our reservations were lost more than once, as were other guests.
3. The construction of the resort was horrible; I constantly hit my head on unmarked low ceilings and archways.
4. The meals were a complete joke. The portions were tiny, the one night I was able to get a good meal; I ate four entrées and two desserts.
5. The food, what little there was, what horrible. It was some of the worst food I had ever had.
6. Hours of the restaurants left several hours each day that there was any food to be found; despite being assure 24hr food service was readily available by the brochure.
7. Service of the wait staff was terrible. I could never ask for more food, since they never came back to our table. Never asked how the meal was, never refilled water, never took our plates. The entire time I felt as if we were a huge inconvenience to the wait staff.
8. The brochure promised air conditioning in every room. In our room, the A/C had to run at full 24/7 to keep the room cool, because the gap under the door was large enough to slide a plate under, and there was not any glass in the windows, just shutters that didnt keep the hot air out, or the cool air in. Aside from the room, and a single restaurant, there was not any A/C to be found.
9. Electricity was anything but stable, constant black and brown outs.
10. Room service was terrible. The mini fridge never got restocked, when we would call for things to be brought to the room, it took hours most of the time, if it showed up at all.
11. The TV kept dying. At this point we had enough and just wanted to sit there and watch TV.
12. In our room, there were huge cracks in the walls, that when brought up to management, they knew about it.
13. Screen door was broken and cut my hand.
14. Housekeeping couldnt just clean the room, they had to mess with the fan, A/C and then sit on the bed and watch TV.
15. The bellboys treated our luggage worse than the airlines, by just rolling it down 2 flights of stairs.
16. Turndown service kept bothering us at 10pm.
17. Guest services never picked up the phone when we called. We had to walk to the front desk for answers.
18. The toaster in the Kitchen only had a single burner working. So, it took 10 minutes to get some toast.
19. Management was totally unhelpful. They listened, but never event attempted to solve the issue.
20. Restaurants wouldnt go by their own hours. We were turned away at 1:45p even though the sign said they were open until 2. We had to get a manager to get us a table, and then there was nothing to eat because they had already cleared the buffet.
21. Winston, the resident manager, promised to call us by April 23, but did not.
This resort was a total case of mis-representation, and caused us to really regret choosing there for our honeymoon.
We did speak with management 6 times while we were there, and they promised to help, yet did nothing. We spoke to Winston, Steve, the Concierge Manager, and another, yet nothing was ever solved, just a bottle of champagne sent to our room, even though we dont drink.
Other than Sandals, the trip was great.
Shopping in St. Johns was pointless, but I guess that is because we come from Dallas, which already has great shopping, but it was fun to drive around in the rental car and explore the island.
The people are extremely nice in Antigua. Helpful and friendly.
The water and scenery were just awesome. Loved ever second of the time spent away from the resort from hell.
Spent a little more money than I thought I would, about 700 dollars US, but we did just about everything possible.
Ok, and now I saved the best for last. Eli’s Eco Tour…wow. It was great. We loved crusing around the island in the boat, seeing all the great nature and just enjoying the awesome beauty of the island.
My wife did get a little sea sick when we stopped for snorkeling, but Eli was very helpful and sympathetic. I really appreciated that, as did my wife.
Over all, we love the island, and would go back. But we would stay far far away from Sandals, since they clearly are full of it, and are just out for money.
