Sandals Barbados All Inclusive - Couples Only

First, Sandals Barbados and Sandals Royal Barbados is a connected resort. We spent 11 days in Barbados and split our stay. We have done this previously in Jamaica and when we purchased this vacation, we were under the impression that the two resorts were on different parts of the island. Once we realized the two resorts really function as one, we wished we would have just picked one room to stay in. Moving rooms mid trip didn't bother us, but if we had known what the real deal was, we wouldn't have chose that route. We were told that this was a marketing move that Sandals was doing. Since we purchased our trip 2 years ago, I believe they were into upselling both resorts back then. Not really an issue, just wanted to include that these are two resorts because we met many others that were under the same impression (2 resorts on 2 different parts of the island). Secondly, if you have been to other Sandals, Barbados may not meet your expectations, but if this is your first Sandals experience, you will most likely love it. Let me explain...The resort is lovely, the staff are pleasant (not overly friendly, but nice), the beach is beautiful, the rooms are clean. With all of that said, many (I would even go as far to say, majority) staff at this resort are just not as enthused or friendly as other Sandals resorts. Don't get me wrong, there are some that shine through (the bartenders at the Piano Bar, the Infinity Pool Bar and the Bowling alley) were all awesome, but other staff at some of the restaurants were either not happy to be waiting on us or just not good servers. We had 3 occasions at 3 different restaurants where we felt forgotten about. After a longer than usual wait, we actually got our food before our beer and diet coke at Neptunes on a lunch visit. We had a similar breakfast visit at La Parisienne. I was pretty sure the hostess may have forgotten to tell the waitress we were in her section, but food and drink were eventually ordered once someone realized we were there. And when we had reservations at The Greenhouse, our waitress came to our table and just said "are you ready to order?", no greeting, no offer to order a drink or wine first, just an awkward encounter, she did not seem in a good mood. We visited almost all the restaurants and many of them had good staff, so having a few negative restaurant experiences would not deter me from going back to Barbados, but I wanted to include them in this review because I have never had any experiences like this at any of the other Sandals (we have been to 8). Finally, the activity staff are around, but not super into the activities that they are supposed to be providing. The aqua aerobics guy clearly doesn't love leading this activity, not a big deal, I am sure it gets old, but I have never seen activity staff at any other Sandals be so aloof. Same with the girl who was going to lead a volleyball game. She called out "volleyball" faintly a couple of times. Can't complain because she did her

Sandals Barbados is a beautiful resort with very beautiful gardens. Very friendly and helpfull staff Because it was not possible to reserve all the restaurants you wanted to a 3 days stay did not bring what was expected. Room needs an upgrade. Food was good but not very special.

The good – ALL of the staff from general manager John Patrick Drake to the housekeepers and grounds crew were fabulous. They were friendly, helpful and polite in every interaction we had with them. The food was also top notch. Everything we ate was delicious and prepared as we had ordered. There was certainly some items we tried that were not to our liking, but that was due to our own taste buds and had nothing to do with the quality of the dish. The not-so good – When we arrived at the Sandals airport booth, we identified ourselves and were asked to wait off to the side for the next shuttle. We were 2nd in line for that shuttle. As more and more guests joined the queue, there was probably about 15 – 20 couples waiting behind us. By the time we boarded a shuttle – with our bags taken separately in a large truck – we were there about 35 – 40 minutes – TOO LONG. - We were in the Barbados Chrystal Lagoon Swim Up club level room. The room was terrific. Our only complaint was the “S” shaped, hard plastic lounges on our patio. We are in our 70’s and crawling in and out of these uncomfortable ground level chairs was quite a task. My wife laughed at me as it took me about 5 minutes to get up from one. We mentioned this issue to the Club Sandals staff and they quickly exchanged the plastic lounges for padded lounge chairs at a more suitable height for us old folks. When paying approx. $12,000 U.S. a week, we should all have a proper lounge chair in the swim up rooms. Most of the other swim up rooms in our bldg. had blue Sandals pool floats or the purple cushions from chairs at the hot tub, to cushion their plastic lounges. - We liked playing Cornhole, shuffleboard and pool. The 1rst time we played Cornhole, we had 8 bean bags, next time they were down to 6 for the balance of our stay. They only had 2 shuffleboard poles (they need a min. of 4 for doubles) and each one was broken on the bottom. The small black balls that contact the pucks, were continually falling off as the screw thread was stripped. The pool table near Spices only had 2 pool cues and one had no felt pad on the end, so you were striking the balls with a wooden end. These 3 items are only minor in nature, but for a few $’s and a bit of maintenance, the problems would go away. In summary – we had a great time and would certainly come back again.