NAK729
LIF Infant
Member since 9/11 113 total posts
Name:
Nancy
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Re: Worst vacation EVER?
MY HONEYMOON! La Toc - Sandals St. Lucia
We faxed over our marriage certificate to inform the resort and verify that we were on our honeymoon like our travel agent informed us to do. We do not understand why we needed to do this seeing as we did not receive anything out of the ordinary having to do with our honeymoon. We were told that we were going to get breakfast in bed one day, but we never did. We were told that we would get something special over the course of the week, but never did. It was honestly pointless telling them that this was our HM...especially because once we got there the concierge department wished us "Happy 5th Anniversary" because apparently someone put our information wrong into the computer (not our TA because all our paperwork was 100% correct). All of the information on our registration was wrong, our birthdays, our wedding day, EVERYTHING...except our names.
Many times over the course of the week, when we sat down to eat both lunch and dinner, we would be waiting for a long time (a good 5 to 10 minutes) before anyone would come over to give us water, take our drink order, or even take our meal order. One time in particular, while at Neptune’s (a restaurant) for lunch, we waited over 15 minutes for water (forget about anything else), watching the servers walk past us, completely ignoring us. Finally, after getting frustrated, we got up and left since it was obvious no one wanted to help us. The waitress saw us get up and said, "Oh was your meal ok?" I looked at her and said, "We never got our meal, we never ordered, we sat there for 15 minutes waiting to get water so we decided it was time we left." I handed her the menus and walked away before I strangled her. Brian stood there shaking his head!
While sitting at the pool and on the beach, DH and I would have to get up numerous times to go to the bar to get our drinks, and ever then the only bar that seemed to be open was the one IN the pool so that you had to swim to it! One time in particular, while at the pool, a server came over to ask if we wanted anything. I had asked for a glass of water. She left and never came back with the water. It wasn’t like we had gotten up from the chairs. We saw her pass a few times in front of us, but still no water. The only way to get water was to go in the pool, swim over to the pool bar, and then swim back. Another time a server brought DH a beer without even asking if he wanted one and it was hotter than hell...we're assuming that someone asked for it, he forgot who, and just gave it to the closest guy!
Apparently, the only time we could get our mini bar restocked was before 9am because we got woken up Monday morning, Tuesday morning, and Wednesday morning by the damn housekeeper wanting to clean our damn room at 8:15am. We couldn't find our Do Not Disturb sign to put out so we asked for a new one. The concierge dept said they'll send one down...NOTHING. Then they said they would "make us a new one" (arts and crafts anyone). Finally we searched the room and found it in the CLOSET!! However, since we kept turning housekeeping away, we never got our minibar restocked, and we only wanted juice water, and soda...that's it! When we would call the concierge department to ask for water, juice or soda, they would inform us that they were out and wouldn’t be able to get anything for us until the following morning. The following morning would come, we would be asleep until 10am, and therefore couldn’t get our mini bar restocked. This occurred numerous times over the course of our stay. Because of this, we weren't able to bring water with us to the pool or beach. On the beach, however, we got solicitated many times for various trips or to buy stuff. DH even got asked if he wanted to buy and smoke some pot.
Also during the week, we kept getting information sent to our room for some couple named “Nicole and Jeffrey.” Seeing as we weren’t them, we ignored it, but was curious as to know why we kept getting information for them. we knew they had a photo shoot booked, and when their dinner reservations were. We asked the concierge to look into it, but they never did. I was beginning to HATE nicole and jeffrey towards the end of the week!
The Thursday we were there, we had many issues come up that really made our stay suck. We found our Do Not Disturb sign on Wednesday (it was in the closet...who thinks to look in the closet) night so we thought that were finally not going to get woken up on Thursday....WRONG! It started out with a phone call (no housekeeping intrusion) at 8:30am where we were informed that we were supposed to be in the lobby waiting to go on a jeep excursion. I told the person at the tour desk that we didn’t plan any excursions for that day. She INSISTED that we did, and I continually INSISTED that we didn't and even gave her permission to look at my credit card statement to prove that we didn't book anything just so I could go back to sleep. She then asked if this was room 160, which it was, but I reiterated the fact that we didn’t book any excursions for that day and informed them that we kept getting information for Nicole and Jeffrey so maybe they were supposed to be on the trip. She asked if our last name was Meyer, and I replied that it was KALLmeyer, and at that point she hung up the phone and I was able to go back to sleep. She didn't say sorry or anything...just hung up.
Since we were awake, we decided that we might as well go to breakfast and at breakfast, Brian and I decided to book the zipline adventure for the following day so I went to see the concierge department who told us in the beginning that they would book everything for us. The only person that was truly helpful to us throughout our trip was an intern from Holland, Niek. He was a true pleasure to work with! He was 19 years old...a 19 year old was more helpful then some of the older people!!! He called the tour desk immediately and helped me book the zipline, but while on the phone with them said, "Oh....ohhhh...hmm, ohhhh...well can you just book it for me and when I get off the phone I'll get to the bottom of it". When he got off the phone, he told me that we had already had an excursion for the following day...UGHHHHHH. I told him that we thought there was a mix up seeing as we kept getting information regarding Nicole and Jeffrey and explained that we didn't book ANY excursion....NONE! He said that the tour desk would know more, so he walked me up to the tour desk and left me with one of the tour directors. . She informed me that the excursion was definitely for us. I asked her who booked the excursion. She told me that our travel agent booked the excursion the previous day. I said, first off our travel agent is in Mexico so I highly doubt that she booked the excursion. Secondly, if the travel agent booked the excursion, and we didn’t come down to get the boarding pass, why weren’t we notified about it? And then I asked for the travel agents name. She told me the TA's name was Pauline. NOW, here's the best part...our TA's name is Kelly...we don't know a Pauline. I told her this, but she didn’t have an answer for me. She asked me what I wanted to do. I told her that I needed to ask my husband what he wanted to do and would be back within the next ten minutes. I walked back to my room and explained what was happening regarding the excursions to DH. While in the room, I grabbed a pineapple guava juice from the fridge (one of the few times we actually had juice - the mini fridge only got restocked that morning) and opened it. Shock to my surprise when ants (yes, ants) started coming OUT of the juice. Brian came over and was amazed that this was happening. I quickly put the cap back on and walked back to the concierge department where Niek and 2 fellow employees were there. I showed him the juice and the three concierge employees stood there in amazement. They told me that they would send someone immediately to our room to clean out the fridge. Niek actually looked at me and started screaming, “This is like a horror story. Ants coming out of the drink.” Since DH was in the room, I figured he would deal with who ever they sent to the room, I walked back to the tour desk to plan the excursions. At this point, the first lady I was dealing with wasn't there, but Ava (another employee) was. I explained what had happeend and she said, "Oh, well we have to apologize." I said, "for what?" She then informed me that it didn’t matter that we didn’t take the excursion that morning because it wasn’t the correct excursion anyway, and that the other girl that she worked with made a mistake and we had gotten a phone call FOR NOTHING because we wouldn't have been able to go on the excursion anyway. I said fine, whatever, and we tentatively booked the zipline for the following day and also for Saturday because we were trying to determine what was going on with the jeep excursion and if it would actually run because it required a minimum of 6 people which didn’t seem to be happening. Well, PS and by the way, the jeep tour did not go out so the credit was placed back on the credit card of whomever booked it, but we still have no idea who this person is. Not to mention the fact, that we had to go back to the tour desk 5 times to make sure that they remembered to credit "Pauline's" (who the f is Pauline) credit card. Here's another great thing...when someone was sent to our room to check on the remaining drinks in the fridge, they walked in and said to DH, “I heard you have ants in your room.” That employee looked around the room, didn’t see anything, said to DH, "I don't see any ants" and walked out. He basically did nothing! I sure as hell wasn't going NEAR that fridge there after!
If only that was the end of the day…we had reservations at La Toc Restaurant (supposedly one of the better restaurants on premises) at 9:15pm. We had asked the concierge department the previous night if there was any way to get an earlier reservation. They looked and informed me that there were no available reservations earlier, but would have the restaurant call us if one became available. At approximately 6pm on the night of our La Toc reservation, we received a phone call from the restaurant informing us that a reservation had opened for 8pm and were asked if we wanted it. I immediately said yes and thanked them profusely after repeating the time and having the woman confirm it. We arrived at La Toc at 7:55pm and gave our name to the man at the door and he replied, rather rudely, that there was no way that we received this phone call and that the earliest they could possibly take us was 8:45pm, but even then it wasn’t a guarantee. He told me that it was absurd to think that a restaurant like that would have the time to even call about moving a reservation and that I was obviously making it up. He was calling me a liar. As DH pulled me out the door (literally dragged me out of the door before I jumped the counter to stab the man), he poked his head back in and said, we're going someplace else...cancel all of our reservations.
The next day we woke up and went on the excursion. The zipline was great...probably because we weren't at the resort! But we noticed, on our way back, crazy lines at the gas stations. Apparently St Lucia gets their gas from trinidad who was currently on strike so there was an oil/gas crisis occurring and people were starting to line up to get gas before they ran out. Well sicne we had enough of our resort, and Sandals has 2 other resorts on the island that we had full range of, we decided to go to another resort for dinner. It was 15 mins from our hotel to the Halcyon, and another 15 mins to the Grand which was where we wanted to go for dinner. That night, we boarded the shuttle and 15 mins later we were at the Halcyon, but because of the gans crisis and the crazy ass long lines, it took 1 hour and 15 mins to get to the Grand.......it sucked being stuck on this van with the crazy a$$ drivers of the caribbean. We had dinner that night, went back to our resort and went to sleep.
saturday was fine...we didn't do anything, but get solicited yet again on the beach, but a few times DH pretended to not speak English and a few other times we just kept saying, we're leaving to tomorrow so leave us alone.
Sunday we woke up and couldn't wait to get to the airport!! HOWEVER our last night at the resort, although our room was cleaned, we never received new towels. Even the bathmat was missing from our room. Brian and I had to share a towel because they said that all the towels were dirty....ALL THE TOWELS?! ALL THE TOWELS WERE DIRTY?! ARE YOU F'N KIDDING ME?!
WHATEVER...JUST GET ME THE F OUT OF HERE!
Well, now we're at the airport, and there are 8 doorways in a (maybe) 100 foot distance that they consider their gates. Well, 6 flights were leaving within 15 minutes of each other and it was mass chaos. They don't call you by row, but really by flight and you just crowd the area so that you THINK you're standing on the right line. People that were supposed to be going to Trinidad ended up on the Miami line....the Miami people were heading to Atlanta. We actually saw people board planes, only to turn around and come off becasue they were on the wrong plane!
Well our plane was late getting in so we didn't have that issues, but we did have the issue that our plane was a half a mile down the run way and then the pilot decided he was going to swing the plane around so it was pretty late when we started boarding. Again, mass chaos to get on the plane, but while the pilot decided he was turning the plane around to get a better spot (must have been a man driving) people were basically getting striped search while we were waiting on line. I swear, they were giving free breast exams and prostrate examines to literally RANDOM people on our line bc the gate crew had NOTHING better to do! UGH...
Finally we get on the plane and we're waiting, and waiting, and waiting...we're sitting on the runway for over an hour when our pilot got on the PA system to inform us that St Lucia didn't want to give us enough gas to get home so that we might have to stop in San Juan, but no one could guarantee that they would give us gas or that they would even be able to take us. Finally, after seeing the pilot SCREAM at the St Lucian ground crew, he came on the PA system again and said, ok folks I THINK they're going to give us enough gas to get home.....HE THINKS?! SERIOUSLY...HE THINKS! Just get me the f home becasue I'm done with this country and this trip!
OH, and our room key kept getting demagnitzed so EVERY DAY we went to the main desk to get it reactivated. They told us it was because 1) it was by our camera, 2) it was by our mini fridge, 3) it was by the TV, 4) it was by metal...and my favorite excuse, as i'm standing there IN MY BATHING SUIT...you must be carrying it near a magnet....I looked down at what I was wearing and said, "WHERE WOULD I POSSIBLY KEEP A MAGNET AND WHY WOULD I HAVE ONE ON VACATION?? I left my magnets at home holding up my 100% on my spelling tests." from that point on, we left the back door unlocked and went in that way!
I think that's everything that happened...I may be leaving out some other stuff, but in hindsight, those were just little bumps along this crazy boulder ridden path that was our Honeymoon!!!
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nyligirl
LIF Infant
Member since 2/11 200 total posts
Name:
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Re: Worst vacation EVER?
Posted by SusiBee
Honeymoon at Sandals Antigua.
Get there and we were upgraded to the new Mediterranean Tower. We had reserved an oceanfront room and wanted that instead of the tower which was a long way from the beach and the main pool. After a long hike, the beachfront room was disgusting, old, smelled like old lady perfume and was worse than the cheapest motel room out there.
Luggage never got delivered.
After an hour waiting for the luggage, we hiked back to the front desk to get switched to the upgraded room and were told we couldn't they gave the room away. We are hot, tired, cranky. My DH is arguing with them and no budging. Finally I sit down and cry out of frustration. Sales Manager sees me, talks with me and lo and behold, an even more upgraded room magically appears.
(BTW, our luggage is still sitting in the lobby)
Ok.
Now it's on to 7 days of fun.....not.
It's Travel Agent tour time, so some of the restaurants are closed to PAYING guests, the PAYING guests are ignored while the TA's get all the attention.
Since the Med Tower is so new, there is a Canadian radio station broadcasting live from the pool area. Cool, but they sucked so much electricity for their equipment that the power goes out a lot, especially at night when it gets really dark.
Mosquitos at night. Big ones.
Hey, it's also Sandals Promo Wedding week, so again a restaurant is closed to host the wedding, we can't walk down the main walkway because that's where the wedding is.
Whatever.
Sand fleas on the beach. No romantic beachside dining for us when we heard that, and saw everyone's red bumpy legs.
Bar service at the pool suc ks so bad that a guy jumps behind the bar to make drinks. Forgot to tell you that there were 4 bartenders behind the bar. Yep, doing absolutely nothing.
Activites director would take a pool float and create a "floating bar" with a drink of the day just to keep us happy.
4PM became "mimosas in the pool" time.
Jellyfish in the water. No signs either.
Got stung really bad on both legs. The cheap vodka helped with the burn.
We made the best of it, made some good friends for the week.
Once we got home and told our TA about this, she yelled at us for not calling her right away to get moved to another resort.
Lesson well learned.
Too funny, as Sandals Antigua was our worst vacation as well. No luggage from flight, but also cockroaches in all the rooms we were in. We switched rooms three times. Then there were no bartenders at night and some of the people we met, the DHs had to hop over and be bartender. Restaurants closed, etc. We all complained and got a few free nights to use in the future. Worst...
Message edited 2/19/2013 8:26:01 AM.
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we still had an absolutely amazing trip. I'd do it over in a heartbeat given the chance. But holy waters batman
. The first night was fine. A beautiful day in Miami. The 2nd day we woke up in Nassau. It was ovecast a bit & extremely windy but not a drop of rain. We went to Atlantis & thoroughly enjoyed the beach giant waves & all. 
That night we came back from the bar to a letter telling us the port of Miami had closed until at least noon Monday which out a damper on our 1pm flights home Monday. Oh well extended vacation we got rebooked for 4pm. 
. They were giving out seasickness meds like after dinner mints on the decks & that basically never happens. There are signs up saying they dont offer sea sick meds. My friend dragged me out of the room to the bar finally & all was well. The DJ made an announcement for the "gentleman to please catch the ladies as they fly by" 
We had issues with our housekeeper - the lady would try to clean our room at 9 am and we would still be in bed. 
