Sandals - Royal Caribbean Resort - Montego Bay, Jamaica

We stayed three nights at the Sandals Royal Caribbean Resort.  For our stay, we had a mixed experience.

After arriving at the Montego Bay airport, Sandals has a lounge that all of their guests can use while waiting to get to any of their resorts in Jamaica. You can get complimentary beer and other refreshments at the lounge and your luggage is tagged to go to your resort and you're given an estimate as to when your shuttle will leave. For us the estimate was 20 minutes, but it came in 10 minutes.

When we were about to board the shuttle, the skycap who took care of our luggage stood in front of the bus's door and insisted everyone give him a tip before allowing them to board. While I don't mind tipping for these services, it was pretty rude for him to insist that guests tip in order to board the bus. In addition, Sandals advertises you will not need to tip at all during your vacation, so this is something they need to look into as it definitely rubbed me the wrong way at the start our vacation.  Even if the skycap isn't an employee of Sandals, he is representing them and they need to ensure these people understand Sandals' policies and how to treat guests correctly.

When we arrived at the resort (about a 10 minute bus ride), check-in was confusing. After our luggage was taken off of our shuttle, the "Captain" then was guiding people to a waiting area, but not being clear about it. It seemed he was catering more to a large wedding party that was on the bus rather than the individual couples who were also riding the bus. We then had to go to the front desk to get clarification on this and they told us that you need to check in with the "Captain".  He then ignored us while he was working with the wedding party, so we had to go back to the front desk and insist they check us in. This Sandals location could do a better job communicating the check-in process during the shuttle ride over and after the shuttle ride is completed. They also need to make sure that couples that aren't there for weddings aren't treated with any less respect than those that are there for a wedding.

Since our rooms were not ready yet, we were told the best option was to have lunch in the resort, which we did. After lunch was done, our room was ready. This was a pretty good way of handling guests who arrive before their rooms are ready. The room we selected was a "Royal Sanctuary Grand Luxe". It was spacious with a comfortable 4-poster bed. The split bathroom area was clean and spacious as well. You also get a balcony if you are on the 2nd floor. You'll find your room stocked with some water, juice and sodas for your stay (complimentary).

One negative we found immediately upon arrival to our room was that they charge $14.99/night for wi-fi, which is very over-priced in 2014, especially for the amount you pay for a room here. I did speak to a manager about this and he did offer to waive 2 nights wi-fi charges if we paid for one. However, in 2014, wi-fi should be included in a resort like Sandals, especially when they advertise so heavily that they include everything in your stay. I didn't even really care too much about using wi-fi during our stay, but it is the principle that they say EVERYTHING is included, but then it is not when you arrive.

The bartending staff at various locales in the resort were friendly and made very good drinks. As far as food goes, the Caribbean restaurant "Eleanor's" was very good. Reservations for dinner at Royal Thai was easy.  However, when we wanted to make a change, we called their extension and were told that we needed to come to the desk to make a change; They couldn't do it by phone. Why even have a phone number to call for restaurant reservations if they can't do anything over the phone? Also, the room comes with a room service menu. However, when calling for room service, we were told our category of room wasn't eligible for room service. Why have a room service menu if you can't actually order off of it?

We also found that clean beach/pool towels were very difficult to find each day if you arrived at the pool deck later in the morning. The area to grab them was completely empty with the "dirty towel" area full. The resort needs to ensure more towels are available for guests. We did find an employee to get us towels, but it took about 20 minutes for him to track down some clean towels. This is an area the resort definitely needs to work on. There is no excuse for the resort not to have enough towels for each guest and to keep them fully stocked.

We were surprised the first night with chocolate covered fruit, roses and champagne was delivered to our room, compliments of the management, which we were very appreciative of (I'm not sure of the specific reason we received these, but it was probably due to me mentioning the issues above).

The resort has very nice, manicured gardens.  There are also cats and peacocks roaming the grounds. The cats are very friendly, the peacocks are not. The cats will come up to you in the outdoor seating looking for food scraps from the table or just a little attention.

In general, the resort is beautiful and a great place to relax and do water sports.  However, there are definitely some details that need to be addressed by management to really make this resort meet the expectations of guests.