Sandals Emerald Bay Day 5

Till the very end

Second try for Il Cielo

Sandals service continues to be absent. Once again we are having breakfast in Il Cielo as I'm updating this blog and our coffees were forgotten. Just sitting at our table with clean, empty coffee cups. Eventually we called the waitress for the coffee, right before our food came out. The hash browns were missing from the steak and eggs breakfast and the waitress straight up told us, "the cook forgot to put them on the plate."

Of course, Sandals wouldn't just let us leave without another kick in the ass out the door.

Conclusions

Sandal Emerald Bay is a beautiful couples retreat with gorgeous shallow beaches and customer service just as shallow. With customer service that rivals a Burger King register trainee on their first day, you'll only be receiving half of the premium dollars you paid for at Sandals Emerald Bay. I would recommend going to a different resort in the Bahamas for the same beautiful location. Not expecting premium service is better than paying a premium for garbage service.

I will also mention that they gave us $150 Sandal Credit for our troubles, which might seem nice but i'll also mention that Sandals gives away $150 every Tuesday and Thursday as a raffle prize if you post a photo with the hashtag #ILoveSandals. Now this seems more like a backhanded apology.

We will come back and allow the Bahamas to redeem itself, just not at a Sandals Resort.

Sandals Emerald Bay Day 4

On the beach

Breakfast at Il Cielo

We started the day with a simple breakfast at the Il Cielo restaurant and then quickly made our way out to the beach to grab a Cabana. Of course the simple breakfast was not made simple, the waiter failed to bring us the champagne mimosa we order. We actually had to remind the waiter that we were still waiting on the champagne mimosa after he brought a champagne mimosa to a couple who came in long after we had put in our food order.

Cabana life

We spent the entire day on the beach so there was no possible way for Sandals to assault our mood with their class act service.

The swings in the water

They were a photo worthy set of swings. They had two of these swings for couples planted perfectly on the edge of the beach. She may look comfortable on that wet wooden seat but believe me, beautiful pictures are rarely made easy.

More coffee

The Cafe de Paris is a safe place to go and get your coffee or other treats. You either get your own coffee at the self serve counter or you point at the dessert you want until they extract it from the show case and hand it over to you.

Steak and Lobsters

The Loyalty Dinner had the best tasting food by far but you really can't beat Steak and Lobster. This private dinner was for returning Sandals customers and involved speeches and presentations. The managers and directors from different departments also partook in the dinner so that meant everything had to be perfect. This begs the question, isn't every single dinner supposed to be like this? I mean, we paid for this experience and expected it every day but only got it at this one dinner!

Still hungry...

The Loyalty Dinner was great the portions were so small that it all just felt like an appetizer. Surprising (or not surprising) was that we saw other guests who were at the Loyalty Dinner at other restaurant having a "second dinner" just like us! We had our second dinner at the Kimonos Oriental Cuisine.

This hibachi style restaurant had very good service and they even sang us a song for our anniversary, how nice!

Sandals Emerald Bay Day 3

Pool Day

Management came and found us at the pool. We were able to express our concerns of the issues we had from the past couple days.

Is this island schedule?

Natali was expecting and anticipating for the Socca Dance Class but once again this did not happen. We actually waiting until 4 pm but still nothing?!

Are the schedules that they broadcast on the TV's not updated or are they really this disorganized? And can someone tell me, what is Piani Sing - A - Long.... what is a Piani???

Fridge left open again

We came back to the room with the fridge restocked and left open again but this time there was no water since it already drained out from last time. I have been vindicated, I knew that I did not leave the fridge open!

The letter

So the ranting we gave at the pool side made it's way around the resort and back to our room. If you think I am just making all this up about the first day and a half, we received this letter in our room from our TLC representative.

Indian Fine Dining

We went to the Bombay Bistro for dinner and we were pleasantly surprised at how nice it all turned out. We ordered buttered chicken because it was a dish that we knew and trusted. We also ordered another shrimp curry dish and it was pretty good! 

Late night beach walking

Here are some random night shots I took on the beach. The skies were so clear that we could see everything!

It wasn't our intentions to come out and take a late night stroll on the beach but we did because Late Night Dancing at the Drunken Duck Pub never happened, but not surprised.

Sandals Emerald Bay Day 2

Swimming With Pigs

Quick Breakfast

We started the day by going to Bahama Bay for breakfast before heading out to the lobby to get picked up for our excursion.

The Excursion

The boat trip took us to a few small islands on the keys. The first island had a groups pigs that swam up to the boats. It was pretty cool to see the pigs swimming in the ocean but the novelty quickly faded. To be completely honest, why were we amazed with pigs on an island? The thing that got my attention was the numerous stingrays that boldly brushed up against your legs. These stingrays were also trained to associate the sound of boat engines with feeding time. The only thing that was a bit nerve racking was that the tour guides were hand feeding hot dogs to the stingrays. If you haven't realized, hot dogs kinda look like human fingers!

The second island was full of iguanas that swarmed us as we made land. Once again, these animals were used to seeing humans as a source of food.

We did a bit of snorkeling and checked out another small island that had a beautiful ocean view.

Back at Sandals

We arrived back at Sandals a little after lunch so we decided to try out the Jerk Chicken Shack for a quick snack and then dined in Bahama Bay for lunch.

Who needs coffee when you have Vanilla?

During lunch, I asked for coffee but was poured a cup of vanilla extract. I mixed in my cream and sugar and took a large gulp which immediately burned my throat from the vanilla extract. The apology that I received from the person who poured the vanilla sounded disingenuous but the apology that a received from the hostess was sincere.

Sushi on the Island

For dinner we went to the Soy Sushi Bar. The service we received at this restaurant was what we were expecting from Sandals. All of the orders came out just as we had ordered it and nothing was forgotten. The quality of the food was the closest to the value in my opinion.

Island time?

According to the schedule of events they have on their TV broadcasts, there was supposed to be a Showtime event at the Drunken Duck Bandstage but that didn't happen.

Talking with some other guests, I found out that they also went to a Bocce Ball event in the morning but the organizers showed up at 12 pm.

Solo that we can't hear you

We made our way over to the Drunken Duck Pub with anticipation of Karaoke night but wait a minute.... no Karaoke night!

Fridge puddles

The fridge in our room was left slightly opened after it was restocked which left a puddle of water on the ground. Natali had almost slipped on the puddle. I was wondering if maybe I had left the fridge open?

Sandals Emerald Bay Day 1

The Arrival

This place is, without a doubt, beautiful. When you walkout of your taxi and step on to the property, you instantly feel like you got your monies worth. All the staff here are friendly and almost always greet you as they walk by. You would think this is the perfect retreat, but it was far from it.

Too many little mistakes

Arrived around 2 pm, and were brought into a large room where they gathered all the guests to collect incidentals and give us our assigned rooms. Since our room check-in was at 3 pm, we went out to have a late lunch at Barefoot by the Sea, we returned but was told that our room was still not ready.

While waiting for the room, we tried to get a latte from the coffee machine but the machine stopped working right after grinding the beans. Staff came and reset the machine but to no avail. They told us that they will get it fixed but didn't offer to get us coffee. No one came to fix the machine and we never got any coffee.

4 pm and finally going to see our room 

Before getting our room we asked if we could make a dinner reservations but we're told that it couldn't be done until we got our rooms. It was almost 4:30 by the time staff was done showing us our room and tried to make dinner reservations. We had to settle for alternative dates and times because the restaurants we wanted to make reservations for were all booked.

The drunk duck drunk waiter

We went to the Drunk Duck Pub for a snack to hold is of until our 9 pm dinner reservation. We asked for wings, fried fish and water. We never got the water that was requested until I walked up to the bar with the glasses and asked for water. After I came back from the bar with my water, another couple sat behind me. They got their food before we got ours and then we realized that the waiter didn't even put our orders in. When we finally got our food, I asked the waiter for water refills  but he never came back.

No desserts for you!

We arrived at the Italian Cuisine few minutes before our reservation time but they still had us wait about 15 minutes after our reserved time. The place was nearly empty so we didn't understand why we had to wait. We never got napkins, until we asked for them near the end of our meals. The dessert never came out, and when we asked about it the time was already past 10 pm. They brought us spoons for the dessert and then started cleaning up the restaurant to close for the night. There was no dessert.

Reminders for someone else

When we made the dinner reservations, the staff told us that they will leave reminder card in our room. After dinner we returned to the room to find dinner reservation remind cards on our bed. The cards on our bed were for the room next door but ours were no where to been seen. We went ahead and slid the cards under our neighbors door, hopefully they got theirs.

First night is a very poor start for Sandals Bahamas.