Sandals, St Lucia 2024

Travel

APH looked after our car, and booked us into the Hampton by Hilton hotel in Gatwick North terminal the day before our BA flight. In the morning the shuttle service then took us to South Terminal, where we checked in and made a beeline for the BA Club lounge for breakfast.

A great Business-class flight took us to St Lucia in comfort with excellent food and drink. The 2 hour minibus transfer to Sandals showed us that St Lucia’s potholed roads are worse than the UK’s.

A very quick check-in at Sandals into our penthouse room in the Cap Estate building.

Two weeks later a late flight home at 10pm meant getting out of our room at 11am and leaving the hotel at about 4pm – fortunately the very helpful people in the Club Lounge found us a free room so we could stay until 4pm and have a quick shower before leaving.

The return overnight flight was very comfortable with a proper flat bed, a pillow and a blanket giving us a good night’s sleep.

Sandals Grande

The hotel is in a wonderful location on Rodney Bay, with a long beach studded with sun-shades and sun-beds. You can hire a beach cabana by the day. Butlers are early birds bagging the best sunbeds, so I had to turn out at 0700 to get our towels down on good ones near the quiet “Lovers Pool”, and some way away from the noisy pool bar. Occasionally bar staff would walk along the beach taking drinks orders.

The staff are very friendly and smiley – nothing is too much trouble. A special shout-out to the Club Lounge team, who really helped us when we needed it.

The hotel gardens are a real treat to look at, with colourful tropical flowers and shrubs everywhere.

The hotel is perfectly placed for exploring Pigeon Island next door (there’s a small entrance fee). In the past we’ve scrambled up past Fort Rodney to Signal Peak at the top. See our 2018 report (follow the link, choose "Grande" and scroll down to "Excursions") for an explanation about its role in Caribbean history. There's also photos of the fort and the view from Signal Peak in the "Photos" section. Well worth the trip, however, in 2024 it was just too hot (or wet!) to visit the ex-Island.

We again enjoyed joining in singing along with ace piano-man Gemma Flood in the Piano Bar after dinner. There was also entertainment laid on every evening around the main pool – eg fire-eaters, singers, and even what looked like a copy of Cirque du Soleil performing “Alegria”. New this year was a Burlesque show, with scantily-clad ladies dancing provocatively. There didn’t seem to be any scantily-clad men dancing provocatively…

The vacant plot next door to the hotel is still vacant, now overgrown and with at least one goods container dumped on it. There was talk years ago that Sandals had acquired the plot to build another resort, but it’s rumoured that there is disagreement about who does legally own the plot.

One major black mark for Sandals: there’s just one guest lift which serves the whole of the Cap Estate, Bonne Terre and Pigeon Island buildings. Unbelievably, it was out of action for our entire stay, meaning that, since we had a top-floor room, we (and a hundred other guests) had to climb a lot of stairs during the holiday. When I asked one of the senior management team when it would be fixed, he said 60 days. He didn’t sound at all concerned. I couldn’t believe it. The stairs were slippery when wet, as happened after regular mop-and-bucket cleaning, and after every tropical shower. The stairwell was dimly lit in places, making the stairs particularly treacherous after evening rain-showers.

Our Room

We’d booked a “Caribbean Honeymoon Beachview Penthouse Club Level” room, and had room 1409, just two doors along from the “William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Suite” at 1401 (he wasn’t in), with a magnificent view of Rodney Bay, Pigeon Island, and southwards right down the west side of the island. The room contained the huge bed (which you needed a ladder to get up onto) an enormous TV, a fridge and minibar, tea/coffee making supplies, an easy chair and a small sofa, a worktop with lots of both UK- and US-style power sockets for charging stuff, a coffee table and plenty of shelves and drawer space. There was a room safe, robes, an iron, a hair drier and lots of hanging space for clothes.

The balcony contained a table and two chairs, a small clothes-horse and that amazing south-facing view. We rigged some washing lines using paracord.

The bathroom contained the WC, a bath with shower over (though we’d asked for one with a walk-in shower cubicle), and two washbasins with lots of little bottles from the Red Lane Spa to try out. There was plenty of shelving and worktop space.

However, we soon discovered that neither of the two washbasins held water, which is no good if you want to leave some washing in to soak. Worse still, they had no drain plug levers, so the only way to empty the basin was to plunge your hand into the water and scrabble with your fingernails to pull up the plug.

The incredibly helpful team at the Club Lounge found another identical vacant south-facing room, 1417, just a few paces along the corridor, which had non-leaking washbasins, proper plug-raising levers, AND a walk-in shower cubicle. We transferred to the new room. Result!

Food+Drink

The Grande St Lucian has a good choice of restaurants, most of which are open-air. We tried most of them. Our favourite was Toscanini’s for breakfast outdoors with the occasional hummingbird for company, and also for evening meals. Gordon’s on the Pier had great charm, overlooking Rodney Bay with the twinkling lights of Gros Ilet across the bay, but with variable quality food – one night my scallops were cold on the inside, tough and stringy. Barefoot on the Beach has the open air, sand-between-the-toes atmosphere, and good seafood. The Indian restaurant, Bombay, is a good place to eat, but watch out: portion sizes are enormous! We also used the Pizzeria and Creperie for lunchtime snacks.

We tried Bayside for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with variable results: at breakfast one morning the fresh fruit buffet was practically empty, and one dinner took an hour to arrive, and was inedible. The Restaurant Manager promised us some Reward Points in compensation, but they never turned up.

The friendly London Pub is a bit like a London Pub, and does some tasty food. There are three huge TV screens often tuned to different US sports channels. The only UK beer is bottled Newcastle Brown. The AC is turned up to teeth-chattering levels, and, as the only bar open after midnight, it gets crowded and noisy.

It seems to be increasingly hard to get a decent Fillet steak or Filet Mignon at Sandals. A lot of the fillet steaks are now “plant-based”. Otherwise there is striploin steak, and sirloin steak, and beef tenderloin as part of a Surf and Turf, but no proper fillet steaks. Never mind – there’s lots of really good fish and seafood.

The All-Inclusive house wines were perfectly acceptable.

Trips

We went on a “Luxury Sunset Cruise” on a catamaran, booked through Island Routes. We were driven by bus to Castries to board the boat. The cat was comfortable, but the seating area in the cockpit was a bit cramped. Hot food was served up, and the drinks flowed. The cruise didn’t venture south towards the Pitons, but instead motored north to cruise past the Sandals Grande St Lucian hotel and Pigeon Island. The sky flushed orange providing a good sunset. A nice trip, but rather over-priced at US$160 pp.

Photos

Around half-a-dozen photos to a page. Pages vary from five to ten megabytes in size.

Conclusion

We enjoyed our stay at the Grand St Lucian. Our room was (eventually) good, with fabulous views across Rodney Bay. A good beach with lots of sunshades & sunbeds. Wonderful tropical gardens. Mainly good food, with some minor lapses. It’s a shame that they don’t offer fillet steaks at dinner at any restaurant any more. At least there’s lots of delicious fish/seafood. The Club Lounge team are marvellous - always eager to help.

On the downside, we have to mention the non-working lift, and seemingly no sense of urgency about fixing it, or enhancing the stairwells to compensate.