sharklover

If they all are over 12 you will get charged $99 a night for the 5th.

milesrus

So each room only gets two meal tickets?

dilbertsdaddy

Whatever you do, don't leave the property (not safe).

poker9ite

Maybe status had something to do with it but nobody charged me anything for the 5th child to eat and we were upgraded to a suite with the kids in a connecting room.

poker9ite

What made you feel unsafe? I was there a year ago and felt perfectly safe. I was offered some pot by locals but that's the norm down there. I guess it can depend on where you visit.

sharklover

Were any of the kids over 12? Did you just book 1 room for all 5? How old are your kids? I was just there with 3 kids as well but all were under 12.

poker9ite

It was me, my wife a 16 year old, 12 year old and 10 year old. I booked two partial ocean views and they gave me full ocean view on both. It was father day weekend.

milesrus

ihave a 15,14 and 12 year old by next july they will be older Hilton said I should be fine

isle-hawg

I just finished a 4 night stay there. I booked 3 rooms using points for the stay (I tried to use an AXON award but no-joy in that). The family and I had a great time down there! The food and drinks much nicer then the Hilton Papagayo in Costa Rica which is my only point of reference for an all inclusive (but we really liked it there as well). They put all of us up on the 7th (top) floor. The rooms each have balconies and we all had an excellent view of the ocean and overlooking the adjacent golf course, but we spent little time in the room. The room's themselves were fine, but not exceptional. The staff could not of been more friendlier and accommodating. The beach was pretty nice for Jamaica, a few rocks just off shore, but mostly sandy. The waterpark kept the 5 year old granddaughter entertained - and the adults too.

adambrock

I'm curious what time of room you booked and were upgraded to? We're going there in November and booked a Tropical view room, hoping for an upgrade.

isle-hawg

I was not upgraded, I booked a partial ocean view for all 3 rooms as it was an option for no additional points. I was offered upon check-in an upgrade (for my room only) if I was willing to move the 2nd day for the remaining 3 nights but before we were to move Mrs. isle-hawg asked me if we could stay in current room since we had a connecting room with the daughter's family/grand-baby (just worked out that way I did not ask for it), plus it was a nice view.

The front desk tried to talk me out of declining the move to the upgraded room because it was going to be so much nicer. I did not ask what the upgraded room was as I did not want to know what I was missing out on as I understood Mrs. isle-hawg liked the connecting room to grand-baby, and no reason to rock the boat, especially since we spent little time in the room.

My son and girlfriend's room had an AC issue on the 2nd night and they moved them to an oceanfront view room for the remainder of their stay. He told me that the rooms itself was same layout.

AGS

I'm taking my family (wife and 15 and 19 year old kids) here for a week over Christmas using points. I've read through this thread and looked through the hotel web site and think I know what to expect, but have a few questions for anybody who's stayed there recently.

Is there good snorkeling in the water near the hotel? Does the hotel provide snorkeling equipment?

I see that you can make reservations for Luna Di Mare and Three Palms. Should I make those now? Or can I just wait until I get there. I'm wondering since it will be Christmas week whether it would be good to make them now so that I know I've got them.

What's the dress code for the different restaurants? What's sufficient for the nice places? Shorts and polos? Are pants required anyplace?

What's the fitness center like? Treadmills? Is there anyplace to go for a run outside the resort that's safe?

Thanks to everybody who posted trip reports, there was a lot of useful information in there.

AGS

adambrock

We just got back from a 7 night stay around Thanksgiving and had an excellent time. No complaints at all. We booked a Tropical View room and were upgraded to an Oceanfront view. The food was pretty good. I'm a fairly picky eater and found something to eat every night. I felt the food was a lot better than what we ate at Sandals Antigua or the TreeTree Puntarenas resort.

The hotel has snorkeling equipment they'll loan you and there are also boats that will take you out further.

The concierge team reached out to me via email 3 days before I arrived to schedule my reservations. If you are staying for 3 nights or less, you can make a reservation at one restaurant. 4 nights or more you can book one reservation at all 3. The concierge is Andrea Whyte (Andrea.Whyte at Hilton.com). One good piece of advice I got from Trip Advisor was to make your reservations earlier in the day. This way if you don't like the offerings you can still fill up at the buffet.

The reservation form from the hotel says the dress code is "Males - Collared Shirt, Tailored Pants, (no jeans), closed toe shoe, Females – Semi-formal". However, I noticed at one restaurant the sign also allowed shorts for males. There were several males wearing shorts in the restaurants. My guess is as long as you don't wear your pool clothes, they won't say anything.

The fitness center had treadmills, weight machines, and elliptical machines. About the only place I think you could go running would be on the golf course adjacent to the property. We only left the property once to go to the shopping center down the road. Don't waste your time with that trip... it's about 20 stores with stuff you can buy on the internet for half the price, 5 jewelry stores and a coffee shop.

A couple other things:

The buffet restaurant has a nightly theme. This primarily seemed to effect the action stations and one section of hot foods (entrees and sides). They always had pizza and burgers as well as some kid friendly food (chicken tenders, onion rings, cheese sticks, etc.). Desserts were aplenty.

The nightly themes are:
Sunday - Jamaica
Monday - Around the World
Tuesday - Caribbean
Wednesday - BBQ
Thursday - European
Friday - Island Spice
Saturday - Asian

They had a detailed menu posted in the morning at the entrance to the buffet restaurant for what would be served that evening. I'm sure you could get it in advance if you emailed or were particularly concerned about the offerings.

The buffet restaurant is also open 11:00pm-2:00am with limited service for late night snacks. You can get pizza, fruit, burgers and a few other things.

Make sure you bring ample sunscreen and aloe vera. I'm not sure how much sunscreen costs, but the bottle of aloe vera we purchased was $18.00. I don't blame them for charging what they charge (supply and demand).

A lot of the Trip Advisor posts mention tipping. Based on those reviews, I got the impression I was expected to tip every time I ordered a drink or food. I rarely saw people tipping at the resort, and when they did it was typically because someone brought something to their pool chair. I did not get the impression your service would be impacted if you didn't tip.

They have some 110/120 outlets in the room and the bathroom. The outlets in our room were all along the wall opposite the bed, so we had to run a power strip to the other side of the room if we wanted to charge something and have it near the bed. You may want to bring a power converter.

We had no issues with finding a good set of chairs around 10:00am at the main pool. We typically stayed at the main pool until 2:00pm or so then went to the water park area for a few hours.

There is solid wifi coverage at the main pool, but it's pretty spotty over at the water park.

They use InnCom thermostats in the room, so you can put it into VIP mode to keep the room cold. Shower pressure was great as well.

The drinks were strong, sometimes too strong. I usually asked for two of whatever I was ordering since the drinks had to be blended / mixed by hand.

They have various colored wrist bands that each guest has to wear. We were curious and inquired about what the colors meant:
Yellow - day pass
Green - under 18
Blue - over 18 guest
Red - Diamond member
Purple - "guest of the week" (we only saw this once and the staff didn't elaborate on what it took to be guest of the week)

We brought some snacks in our checked bags (chips, crackers, wheat thins), in case we were hungry and didn't want to go to the restaurant. When we filled out the customs form upon entry into Jamaica, we went ahead and declared the food. We were directed to the (much shorter) line at customs for items to declare. When we told the lady what we were declaring, she just rolled her eyes and sent us on our way. This process was much faster than the line where people had nothing to declare.

On the back of the customers form you fill out upon entry into Jamaica, it says something about only one member per family needing to complete the form. This statement only applies to the back of the form - not the entire form. Everyone in your party needs to complete the front side of the form.

To get from the airport to the resort we stopped at Jamaica Tours but they were booked up. They referred us to Tourwise. Tourwise had us sit on a charter bus for about an hour while they tried to round up additional customers, which was a little annoying. For some reason they did not pick us up form the hotel and the scheduled time on our departure day. We ended up having to call them a few times and they were about 45 minutes late picking us up. We made it to our flight in ample time, but it still caused some undue stress. The cost of transportation was $25 per person round trip. A taxi was $35.00 for up to 4 people. Doing it again, I'd just pay the extra $20 for a taxi.

I'm happy to answer any other questions.

Here are some pictures I took of the fitness center:

AGS

Thanks very much for all the information!

AGS

aussiemate

adambrock - what an awesome report! We plan to go in 3 weeks, and I appreciate the timely, descriptive information!