31 reviews
Decent hotel, relaxing vacation!
If you keep your expectations in check, the hotel is pretty good. The price \ is it worth it ratio is debatable (did I pay for the Jamaica name more than anything else perhaps?) but this is different for everyone.
Overall, the hotel is a typical all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean. The food is better than most places, with a few exceptions. I was disappointed in the lack of fruit and vegetable selection at breakfast and lunch. I was also disappointed with the lack of choice and places to eat during the day. You get the buffet, a food truck, jerk hut and a coffee shop / ice cream place. That's about it. Would be nice to have more options. You can order a-la-carte via the television, but the choices are minimal and time to bring food is pretty much 45 mins to an hour minimum.
The rooms and resort are comfortable and relatively clean. I hated the pillows, but they were typical hotel pillows (way too soft for me). Beds were comfortable (a bit firm for some people maybe, but that's how I like my bed) My one minor negative here is that, while damage does happen in every hotel, they seem to be behind on some repairs. We saw more than just a few re-plastered walls in hallways or dining areas, but not repainted yet at all.
Beach in Bloody Bay is always amazing. The water is calm, clear and access is relatively easy. Snorkeling even locally in the bay will allow you to see starfish, minnows, barracudas, crabs, needle-nose fish, and the occasional sting ray (it is an ocean).
Pools are clean and there are plenty of them. There seems to be a lack of towels sometimes if you want fresh ones. There seemed to be very few towel locations (I can think of 4 and that's it). However, I only tried to refresh my towels once (and nothing was available around noon-1pm that day), as our butler ensured we had beach towels stocked in our room every day.
We had a swimout from our room. It was clean, and really nice. Be warned that most of the swimouts, because of the orientation of the hotel, will be in the shade for most of the afternoon. Sun in the morning, shade by about 1230pm-1pm. We went in January, and the swimouts were almost all in shade, and, because of the time of year, not really used by a lot of people since the water temperature was pretty cold in those pools.
Staff was amazing for us. I have no complains about the staff. We took diamond club and had a butler. Honestly should rename that position because they aren't butlers in any traditional sense (and some people seem to think this means they do whatever you tell them to). But ours (Oshane) was one of the nicest folks, and helped us out with restaurant reservations and any minor issues we may have had throughout our stay.
Booze is typical all-inclusive. Tons of cocktail sugar drinks you can order and get a headache or bad hangover from. For diamond club, I would have expected a bit more of a selection of more "premium" booze, but it was very small (I think Grey Goose was the most recognizable booze I was allowed to get for vodka). Most of the booze, however, is the headache inducing cheap stuff. Its Jamaica, and they don't serve Appleton?! The resort seemed to be in a deal with Wray and Nephew liquors. Fine, but Appleton Rum is really famous, and to have a resort in Jamaica basically not serve it is kind of weird. If you want particular types of booze or bottles, be prepared to pay (a lot and easily overpriced) for those bottles separately.
