The arrival at the airport was quick and painless. A jump on the shuttle and off we went! The driver, Ken, shared lots of tips with us about things to do and interesting facts about the Bahamas. Upon arrival, the bellman took care of our luggage, we checked in effortlessly and off to the room we went. Seemed like we were off to a good start! Rooms:
The room was fine. Nothing spectacular. The bathroom was very large, but the water pressure was lacking big time. Clean and comfortable, but nothing more than that. On our second day, we were not left any towels so had to go get some from the desk, and the third day she left her bathroom cleaning supplies in the bathroom. Most places I have stayed have made little things with the towels every day, so not getting any towels was a bit of a shock….ah well, in the grans scheme of thiings no big deal.
Arrival:
The arrival at the airport was quick and painless. A jump on the shuttle and off we went! The driver, Ken, shared lots of tips with us about things to do and interesting facts about the Bahamas. Upon arrival, the bellman took care of our luggage, we checked in effortlessly and off to the room we went. Seemed like we were off to a good start!
Rooms:
The room was fine. Nothing spectacular. The bathroom was very large, but the water pressure was lacking big time. Clean and comfortable, but nothing more than that. On our second day, we were not left any towels so had to go get some from the desk, and the third day she left her bathroom cleaning supplies in the bathroom. Most places I have stayed have made little things with the towels every day, so not getting any towels was a bit of a shock….ah well, in the grans scheme of thiings no big deal.
Restaurants and Bars:
We went for the day life, and found the food at the buffet to be very good – better than most of the resorts I have stayed on. There was something for almost everybody and we found it to be very tasty. They had a great salad bar. The drinks were terrible. The soda machines were often empty, forget about getting ice from the machine and the water was absolutely terrible – we tried, but we just could not drink it. We spent the majority of our money at the gift shop buying bottled water. I’m not a big alcohol drinker, so can’t comment much on the variety, but the few drinks I did have were not very tasty. The coffee was awful. Getting a reservation at one of the 2 restaurants was quite a hastle. We were told that they start taking reservations at 11:00 for the next night. My friend was celebrating her 30th birthday so we tried to make reservations for a birthday dinner only to be told that because only one restaurant was open, they started at 10 that day and the restaurant is full. (You need reservations for both.) We went to MASO restaurant at the Wyndham up the street (delicious water, wine and food!) We did manage to get a reservation at the Italian estaurant for our last night, and it was very good. That’s where they hide the drinkable wine and water BTW. The food and service was great. And that is about the only place that the service was great. The dinner hall is set up buffet style, and while the majority of the tables were empty a lot of the time, they had not been cleared and cleaned, and finding cutlery was a nightmare! Many staff members simply walked by the dirty tables and left them uncleared. Many times we sat for our entire meal, including dessert surrounded by dirty tables that were never cleared. Amazing. We would offer our unused cutlery and condiments to people walking by who had asked for knives and forks and didn’t recieve them. My friend ordered a glass of wine at dinner, 25 min later she still didn’t have it. Another staff member walked by the table and she asked her for a glass of red. There was no "yes", "no" – no acknowledgement whatsoever. About 10 min later, after she had all but given up on having a glass of wine, the lady returned to our area and put the glass of red down on the dirty table next to us – NOBODY WAS SITTING THERE! You think I’m kidding, but I am not! The beach grill was pretty good, but the soda machines were empty 90% of the times that we went there. We let them know, nicely that the diet pepsi was empty, and returned an hour later – Still empty. Unbelievable!
Beach/Pools/Grounds:
The beach area was large and quite beautiful. This was the best thing about the place. There are very few Tiki huts on the beach, and there was always a mad dash in the morning to get one of them, lest you would be frying in the unforgiving sun all day. Luckily, we were part of the early to bed; early to rise crew, so we got one most days. We spent the vast majority of our time on the beach, partly because we wanted to and partly because the pool area was crowded and small. One pool?? Really? I must have missed that! Everything was clean though, so can’t really complain about it. What I will complain about is the constant harrassing of the salespeople on the beach. This is the first time I have stayed at a place where they allow multiple salespeole on the beach, constantly harrassing the people laying there. They started with the jet ski yelling at 8am and continued all day. Singling out people all day and asking them if they want to jet ski. I didn’t 5 minutes ago, and still don’t, thanks anyway. There were up to 4 women at a time walking back and forth selling jewelery, t shirts and offering hair braiding. They had a little table set up, so we could clearly go to them at any time, but all 4 of them individually approached us a min of 4 times each per day asking if we wanted to look at the ankle bracelets or get our hair braided. I’m going to tell you the same thing I told the jet ski guy – I wasn’t interested 5 minutes ago, and remain not interested. The final huge complaint is that they allow people from a time share company to come to the resort, suck you into going to a time share presentation (by assuring you that it is not a time share presentation) where the sales people are rude, aggressive and seem to not understand the word "NO". Unless you are interested in investing on the spot, or are able to tolerate an inhuman amount of frustration for some tickets to Atlantis or something, just insist that you don’t want to go. We regret going to it big time. I’ve also written a letter to that company. (Who would have though I’d start my letter writing campaigns in my early thirties??)
Activities on and off the Resort/Hotel:
We did a Dolphin Cay Adventure at Atlantis which was awesome. Dolphins are so smart and amazing…..Atlantis was quite beautiful but Holy Mother it is HUGE! I may think twice about staying there for the time it takes to get anythere! It was really nice though. We did a Snorkel and Booze Cruise, which was a nice little getaway. They take you from Cable Beach to pick up more passengers downtown and on Paradise Island and take you to a snorkeling place. The water was pretty rough that day, so most of us only stayed in for about 15-20 min. Then, they take us to a private beach for an hour where the only people on the beach are the people on the boat – and the Jet Ski guys…..at this point I was convinced that they were actually stalkers. They saw the boat coming in and circled the boat like sharks waiting to attack! Once the boat stopped and we got off the feeding frenzy began! Jet Skis – hey lady do you want to jet ski….never ending for the whole hour on a tiny beach where the only escape was to throw yourself into the water. All in all, it was 60 bucks, including drinks, a good BBQ lunch and an hour of snorkeling and on a beach, and dancing and singing the whole way back. I’d recommend doing this. Because apparently we are masochists, we walked to the straw market, where we were continually approached by what I can only assume were the Ying to the Yang on the beach – a lot of very pushy sales people….if you stop breathing down my neck and let me look, I may buy something…..they didn’t, so neither did we. Walked away shaking our heads at ourselves – what were we thinking? There didn’t seem to be a lot of activity on the resort. Nothing on the beach. They called it "beach games" but really is was next to the pool area. They played a game called ringtones a few times (think name that tune), had a few beach games here and there and an off with your head game – essentially a gladiator pit only on a wooden stage. Any other time I had been away, you were hard pressed to find an area where there weren’t activities, and the staff were very lively and encouraging everyone to get involved. Here, the staff were more relaxed than the vacationers, and you really had to go out of your way to find out what was going on and where. Had the best massage of my life there courtesy of Shelley.
Other Comments:
When I go away, even though it is an all inclusive for R&R, I don’t expect to be pampered. I’m very easygoing and self sufficient. I do, however, expect the same level of service as at a Wendy’s for example. The staff in general did not seem motivated, and while nobody was rude at all, little things like "hello how is everything going", making sure a guest has a place to eat the meal they just put together from the buffet, bringing the glass of wine to a table with the people sitting at it and filling the soda machines when it is brought to your attention is important to me. I don’t expect that the soda machines are checked – but when a guest lets you know that it is empty, change it! It was amazing how many staff members would walk past you without so much as a word. The maintenance guys were the friendliest and most outgoing people on the whole resort! I will not be going back there, and I would not recommend it. The Bahamas is a beautiful country, and I will return there, but I will be searching for somewhere else to stay.