Sandals Antigua Reviews

The bad: We arrived at Beaches resort around 1:30 PM after leaving our house at 2:00 AM. Around 7:00 PM I called down to the front desk and asked for two more blankets. Around 8:00 PM I went to the front desk and asked about the blankets and the worker asked if I was sure that I hadn't gotten them which I was. The front desk called housekeeping and they said they would bring them to my room. I went to the hot tub for 30 minutes and went back to the room and still no blankets. I waited another 20 - 25 minutes in the hallway waiting for the blankets because my kids were sleeping, and I didn't want the knock of the door to wake them up.

Around 9 PM after being up for 19 hours I went to the front desk a second time and asked if I could go with one of the workers and get some blankets which is what happened. My daughter and I have Hashimoto's disease which affects our thyroid and ultimately their body temperature. Which is why it isn't so easy to just adjust the thermostat. My daughter was at Mario's eating after her dive at 2:28 a worker said the restaurant closes in two minutes & took her plate of food from her. The worker could have simply said we're closing soon would you like a to go box. Very unprofessional.

Elvis from the dive shop: My husband went there 7 times trying to get an answer from him in regards to his and my daughter's Padi certifications. Elvis kept saying he was checking on it. Then finally my husband asked to get his boss Mark which he did. On the 14th my husband asked Mark about his certification and Mark said he would contact Beaches Negril and let him know by email as well as call his room phone. At 3:00 on the 15th my husband still hadn't heard anything and went back to the dive shop. Elvis stated that he just found out his certification was for a scuba diver. A minute later Mark walked to the dive shop and also said he just found out the certification was scuba and not open water. It's weird that both Mark and Elvis had just found out, but they weren't together and neither of them let my husband know. Alicia ** wasn't very responsive or helpful.

The Ugly: Jenny French Village bartender. I went to the bartender in the French Village and asked for a drink which Jenny did make. I asked for grenadine which she poured a small splash into my glass. Then I asked for more and she slammed the grenadine on the counter and told me to pour it. My daughter saw this and asked my husband why her mom was making her own drink. Very rude and unprofessional. I know we're all going through a labor shortage, but this bartender shouldn't be in front of guests.

Mario from the Scuba shop took my son and husband scuba diving. Mario went over the safety talk and told both of them they could only go down to 40'. My husband asked why that was because they had done three other dives together and my son was allowed to go to 60' while my husband was at 40' because of their different certifications. At this point Mario became rude and said that is the way it is and if they didn't follow his rules, he would cut the dive short. Really? Even though they did follow the rules he still cut the dive short because my husband questioned his authority. We just wish there was some consistency between the dive instructors.

On May 14, during my discussion with Windell, you asked me what would make this right. When we were at Beaches in Turks and Caicos, we spent a significant amount of time discussing our certification with staff and waiting for answers from Jamaica – we waited a total of 4 days, had numerous conversations, and worked our way up to a person who could address our concerns. There was a lot of aggravation, and we were not treated kindly or with respect by one of your staff (Denroy). Due to the aggravation and the way we were treated, members of our group decided not to scuba for the last couple of days of our trip. This was supposed to be relaxing, enjoyable and memorable and it left us frustrated and deflated.

We would like to try again with Beaches Turks and Caicos. As you recall in our conversation on May 14, I requested our group to be able to return to Beaches Turks and Caicos at the same price as we paid for our last trip. We would like to stay in the same room as before (noted above). Due to our children’s school schedules, we are looking from January 1 – January 8, 2024. We are returning guests; this will be our (**) third time to a Beaches resort. For our friends, Edwin and Christina **, this will be their 7th trip to a Beaches/Sandals Resort. The ** said they have never seen anything like this at Sandals. After many emails with Beaches they offered us $100 per person resort credit on a future vacation. Ridiculous. We were a party of 7 and as a group we have been to Beaches/Sandals 8 times combined. We won’t ever use Beaches/Sandals again. Super disappointed in their response.

Problems: Air Conditioning (AC) - The bedroom though was not as “functional” as the living room unit so we would wake up to a warm humid room as a result. Plus, the bedroom unit would drip water down the wall. Resort condition – Though everything was always clean however some sections of the resort were definitely a bit dated and due for renovation. The room jacuzzi tub had patches at the bottom where it had cracked and was repaired. One of the elevators in our building was finicky, sometimes nothing happened when the button was pushed and the door would just open & close. Tile was missing from one of the elevator floors and some fountain jets weren’t working. The biggest issue was at the swim-up bar at the quiet pool in the Caribbean village where a large section of the concrete counter had broken off under the corner and I witnessed people scraping themselves on the rough concrete edge.

Pot Smell –We experienced multiple instances of smelling marijuana being smoked, including at the beach, on our balcony, and at the pool. In fact, we even smelled it in the resort lobby waiting for the shuttle bus to bring us to the airport. Also, on one occasion we briefly interacted with a staff member who reeked of marijuana. Staff – While the overwhelming majority of staff we met were excellent a few of them were not. The front desk guy I asked about more coffee packets never wrote down my room number and nothing ever showed. One of the cabana attendants we rarely saw and seemed to be slightly annoyed the entire time. A few restaurant staff were phoning it in and didn’t come back to check on us after being seated. A few times had to bring my coffee cup to the urn to refill or went to the closest bar to get more diet coke.

Beach Venders -When you enter or leave the beach you are asked to look at vender wares, get reminded that you haven’t bought anything, etc. Also, multiple people each day coming up to you at your chair with briefcases of homemade jewelry, and t-shirts along with the guys trying to sell you catamaran tours, jet ski rentals, etc. So, would we stay there again? Absolutely, and for even longer than the 6 nights we were there as it is a great place to just throw your wallet in safe for the duration then relax and unwind.

25 days til our trip American Airlines changes and deletes connecting flights and changes time to fly in at 11 pm, this makes our wedding null and void due to time constraints on the island to be legally married. Called Sandals immediately, after 3 hours and numerous transfers and a supervisor I am informed I can cancel and only receive 50% back. Problem is we didn't cancel. I can not swim to Antigua and flights are not working for our travel to the island. I do not want to even reschedule after this experience and Let's not forget US travel 4 advisory. Then I am informed to wait until the airline department calls me. I am still waiting.... I could cry with frustration. I asked the representative if she would give me $6000 so I may keep half of her money for a trip she has no control over.. Crickets! Exactly it is unethical. Horrible unethical experience so far. TO BE CONTINUED....

I have written to Sandals to complain about their lack of responsiveness and to also complain about their travel insurance company's lack of responsiveness to my filing a claim. It’s been over 30 days since I filed my claim and after several phone attempts to find the status of my claim, I finally reached someone who said they would expedite my claim and “make a decision”. Based on my experience with Sandals’ non-responsive customer service, I’m not holding my breath for any just and equitable resolution. We had been to Beaches in the Turks snd Caicos and had a good stay so decided to try Sandals. After this money for nothing, I’ll never consider Sandals or Beaches for another vacation.

The food was far from being at a five star resort. I had arranged for a special menu because of my seafood allergies but they did not have that arranged for me. I asked to speak to the chefs to talk about my menu but was told that the world class chefs are not working with them any more {except Kimonos Japanese restaurant} and they were in the process of hiring new ones, so needless to say there were many meals I had to skip because I was afraid that I would have a bad medical reaction. I never thought with paying all that money I would be living on chocolate chip cookies and tea. The staff actually were having a better time entertaining themselves!!! Totally boring, depressing, and cheep!!! This resort needs to clean house. Their staff are not very useful and are LAZY!! Our room was never cleaned until the evening hours.

Just to let you know that we made our concerns clear to management which fell on Deaf ears. Do not waste your hard earned money at this resort! They really don't care and have no pride!! I think Sandals and West Jet really need to get their act together. I am considering legal action for false advertising and not giving you the experience you are promised to have. I took pictures and video and pics of all the name tags of the staff for my future reference. I could go on and on about this place. It was that bad. All travel agents should do their job and keep people away from such a bad experience!! It is truly not fair to take peoples money and have them think because they are paying for 5star treatment but only getting 1 star!!! They have not heard the last from me! This needs to stop.

Our trip began in the Mediterranean lobby. When we arrived, starving after 7 hours of traveling with no food, we sat in the lobby for 25+ minutes waiting on our concierge to bring us to our room. They were out of the welcome drinks while we were sitting in the lobby and no one replaced the water for the entire 25 minutes we sat in the lobby. Didn't tell us about honeymoon meet and greet, we were not informed of a orientation, didn't tell us when and where to go for our tours or that we needed to check in at a completely different location for the tours we paid for online, AND when we questioned Nerisa (management who also finally escorted us to our room) she said "you should have read the fine print and brought it up to your representative" (excuse).

When we went to dinner after trying to get over the silly little issues that seemed to plague the first day of our honeymoon, we were turned away by the restaurant hostess because she said I didn't have the proper attire. According to the printout handed to us by the front desk the attire was "resort casual" which stated that swimsuits were acceptable as long as they were covered. I was wearing a cover that was the equivalent of a full length dress and when I told the hostess we were tired and could we please just be seated, she told us "she didn't make the rules". Even after we walked 10 minutes back to our room and 10 minutes back so that I could change, we called the front desk to ask about the confusion and again were reassured that my attire was adequate.

When we were finally seated at the restaurant another hostess came and accosted us telling us that because my swimsuit straps were visible under the new dress, that I did not meet the required dress code. When we told her about the previous incident she told us the other hostess was doing her job and the front desk/management/printout handed to us was wrong. The restaurant was a surf side bar and grill where shoes weren't required but they apparently had an issue with my swimsuit straps showing. My husband said he was about to take my swimsuit top off and I'd go without anything! To top it all off the AC didn't work our first night either.

The next day, when we got to the restaurant we had made reservations at, they had no record of our reservation (also we were not informed by any management that we needed to make reservations at most of the nice restaurants). By the time we found out we needed reservations we had to choose from the "leftover reservation slots"!!! Also, we had reserved a "beach dinner" and requested our dinner be on the point... our dinner was NOT scheduled on the point and we did not find out until the hour of our dinner. Our butler told us it was not an issue and he would take care of it for us but then Management tried to say they never did dinner "on the point" yet the advertisement is clearly of a couple having dinner on the point and we had been told by various other members of staff that THEY DID OFFER DINNERS ON THE POINT.

Management apologized and gave us the dinner for free but there were too many mishaps on this trip for it to cost us 12k! We could have went to Florida for 2 weeks and lived like Kings for this kind of money. Thanks to Marie ** we were able to sign up for all of the tours we had already purchased online prior to getting to the resort. And thanks to Marie ** we found out early on that we needed reservations for all of our dinners. She also told us who we needed to speak to for different circumstances and she always remembered our names when she saw us! She was the best part of our trip to Antigua... that and the beautiful view... our Butlers were great but all of Management was rude, unorganized, and unhelpful!