Sandals Grande St Lucia Spa and Beach Resort

A review from a first time all inclusive resort traveler that has no idea how to write. Once we landed in St Lucia, the whole process from deplaning to sitting in our private car for our airport to resort transfer took 30-40 minutes tops. It was a seamless process. My advice: don’t let one of the airport porters haul your luggage for you. They pull your bags 50 feet to the Sandals check in and ask for a tip. So, after I tipped our luggage porter guy he handed my bags off to the Sandals people, we checked in and went and grabbed a drink in the Sandals lounge. Before we could even take our first sip our driver was calling our name for the ride north. The car was a nice clean BMW and our driver, Joshua was very friendly. I booked it through Trip Advisor. He gave information about the area the entire ride and answered all my questions. No matter how dumb they were. Okay, on to the resort, that’s why you’re really reading this. Upon our resort arrival the Sandals team took over and operated like a well oiled machine (pardon the old cliche). From handling our luggage from the car all the way to the room, to the entire check in process. They even sang us a welcome song. It was pretty cool, but we felt odd being the only two standing there. We had a club level room so we were whisked upstairs for the check in process. Once there we were offered a variety of drinks and settled on the mango mimosas. We were checked in and being led to our room before those champagne flutes were empty. The room was very nice with a walkout patio that had steps right into the pool. Ours had the walk in shower. The room itself was very clean. The big round cushion on the patio chair was a different story. It looked like it was used for oiling up before laying out in the sun. It didn’t really bother us enough to say something about it. It just looked dirty. That night, our first stop was at the pub. Are you sensing a theme here? (lots of drinks.)The appearance of the pub wasn’t all that great. It’s a little run down with paint missing from the walls, a random hole in the bar, which I later discovered was where a light fixture used to be, and a pile of something on the floor in the corner behind the kitchen door. I watched that pile the entire time just to make sure it didn’t move on its own. We ordered food and drinks. I had the shepherds pie, which was really good. My wife ordered a salad with chicken. Then ordered fries after seeing the salad was the size of a small side salad with a few random pieces of chicken on it. It was small, but good. So were the fries. I taste tested them several times. We wandered around a bit and eventually made our way back to the room. We were tired from the long trip. The morning wake-up came pretty early, around 7-7:30am with the sounds of carts full of rattling dishes being pushed down the ceramic tile hallway. This was a daily occurrence. And if the carts weren’t enough on that particular morning, the grounds crew were hard at work outside making plenty of sounds with their equipment to keep you awake between carts. Speaking of the grounds crew. They do an absolute amazing job at keeping the grass, flowers and trees looking beautiful. Our mornings typically consisted of ordering room service for breakfast, only because we wanted a noisy cart too, then having mimosas while we floated around the pool after eating. The room service food was pretty good and you can get creative making your own concoctions with the decent size selection of items offered on the menu. During our stay we managed to hit up several (maybe all of them. But we don’t talk about that) of the different bars that are scattered all around. At the bars, we noticed that service was hit or miss. Apparently this is a common thing at the no tip resorts, who knew? Not me. I did see people sliding cash to some of bartenders but I don’t know if it really helped. There was times we sat at the bar, that wasn’t busy for 20 minutes waiting to get a drink, or even get acknowledged. My take on the overall bar service, it’s lousy at best. But that’s not to say that certain bartenders aren’t better than most. We did eat at a lot of the restaurants, which all had pretty good food. I was impressed. We made reservations for Bombay and Gordon’s. Both of those had good food as well. The only downside to Gordon’s was I asked for another cocktail before getting my meal and then asked for it two more times after that. Once during my meal and once after. I did finally get it with an apology from the waiter stating “sorry, I’m new.” A few days into our stay they somehow ran out of washcloths. I was running around like a crazy man asking every housekeeper I saw if I could get some fresh washcloths. The struggle was real. Our building, #2, didn’t have an ice machine at the end of the hallway. There was just some pipes sticking out of the wall. We had to walk through another building into a small storage room thingy to get ice. Or our booze guy would fill it up for us. He was pretty awesome. The one thing that made this place so wonderful is the staff. Every single staff member I came into contact with, even the lousy bartenders were so polite and always smiling. Hopefully my little but very long review helped you out.

Wanting a Caribbean Island Vacation. Book Sandals St Lucia Grande for first-time vacationers or returning Sandals guests. We love the Grande, as we have been there 9 times and will always return. The Grande is home to us. All of the staff and management are personable and friendly and will help out with any situation or concern. The food is awesome, and activities are wonderful, with lots to do around the resort or off resort, if you just want alone time, you can get that also. Do yourself a favor and book Sandals Grande

I just returned from Sandals Grande St. Lucian with my husband for our anniversary. The island is great, the people are friendly and the resort is beautiful. This is the first time to Sandals without butlers and we had a great time. I was worried that this resort would not be on the same scale as St Vincent and Curacao, but it did not disappoint. The decor, the workmanship and design it took to create this resort is impressive. This resort should be at the top of your list for food, entertainment and the professionalism of the staff. With that being said, improvements can be made with the drinks (a little too weak), need more places to eat breakfast, the buffet was good, but got boring after a while, need a better shop that offers speciality coffee, tea and danish throughout the day. The ice cream store was very limited as well. Gorton restaurant is a must go to, Kimono’s food was delicious and though I was disappointed with two employees behavior, the matter was handled internally with their leadership team. The Jerk Shack and the other restaurant were all good. Many cats on the resorts, a little annoying, but not enough to complain and did not interfere with my vacation. I was looking for water sports that included Jet Skiing, or tube riding on the water and the resort itself did not offer that. However we snorkel right on the resort (near the rocks) and saw beautiful fish. There were events all day and in the evening on the resort. We ventured off the resort three times and had a great time purchasing all our souvenirs with the locals. A lot of traffic, if you do not leave early. A cab driver name Vincent was the best ever and made our adventures outside the resort great. Our interaction with Nacha, Jared, Zaiden, Leian, Sage, Hygena, Nicholas, Justin, Dylan, Theresa, C.J, Rins, Chavon, Tamia, Georgia, Yasmin and supervisors Dr. Judy, Joy, Anna, Judie, and last but not least Della the GM. All these people made our anniversary memorable and deserve a special shot-out. Most of the staff was friendly and greeted you, only a few walked right passed you. I will definitely be returning to St Lucian Grande with several family members and friends.