Just finished up a stay here last week and wanted to share my thoughts.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
This place is a great value for now, and will one day be a great destination vacation. For the rates they are offering now, i can't think of any place where you'll get a nicer room or view. But as expected service is not quite up to par yet for a resort that I'm sure was built with rates over $600/night in mind. Everyone I interacted with was very nice, and I always felt like they were making an effort, but the service was what you would expect from people that haven't spent much time working at a 5 star resort. Some requests would take 2-3 minutes to fulfill and others would take 2-3 hours and you never knew what to expect. The staff also didn't do a great job anticipating the needs of the guests. We were never approached at the pool or the beach and asked if we wanted food or drinks. Each morning after our beach chairs were set up, we would ask for them to put up our umbrella for shade. They would, but then we would have to ask again for them to move our chairs around to actually put them in the shade of the umbrella when you would have thought it was obvious why we wanted the umbrella up.
At $1200-1400/night for the sea view suite, I would have been disappointed, but for our rate, we had a wonderful stay and I felt like we received a great value even with the service kinks. I would gladly go back any time for the current rates, but I would give it a few years before I would even consider paying the full rates. If you need perfection on your vacation, go elsewhere and pay for it. But if you're willing to put up with some service issues and training, jump on this place now before prices go up and you wont regret it.
BREAKFAST
The Globalist breakfast was still the Great House Selection, which was the buffet options plus any entree. The breakfast was excellent each morning, and if the fruit selection and coffee would have better it would have been one of my best breakfasts anywhere. On a side note, when I mentioned the Globalist breakfast the first morning, it was clear the waitress didn't know what I was talking about so they brought me a bill everyday and I figured I would straighten it out at checkout. To my surprise they had all been removed without me asking before I checked out.
BEACH AND POOL
As others have said, the occupancy is pretty low, I would guess 30-40%, and I thought it was great. We had the beach mostly to ourselves the entire week and I think the most people I ever saw around the pool was 10. The beach is rocky in front of most of the buildings, but there is a pretty large area with no rocks right in front of the pool where most of the beach chairs are set up. The water was a little choppy but that was likely due to the high winds and it was still a very swimmable beach. The water was only 4-5 feet deep a pretty good ways out into the water. The staff keeps the seaweed cleared out around the swimmable part, but there was a little seaweed on the rest of the beach. The pool was 3-5 ft throughout with a pretty large 1ft deep area on one side for toddlers. My only complaint on the pools was that the water temperature in both the family and adult pools was way too cold. For a 5-star resort, I think the water needs to be heated from November to February. We were still able to swim, but it was definitely a little uncomfortable and we very rarely saw anyone else in the pool likely because of the water temperature.
Service at the pool and beach was always very friendly, but we had to ask for everything. We would be the only group at the beach and aside from setting up our towels no one ever stopped by to see if we needed any menus, food, drinks, etc. That said, the staff was always super friendly when we would waive them over or approach them to order something. This was definitely an area where some additional experience and training will help. The drinks were pretty reasonable at $9-12 for almost every drink we ordered. The cocktail list was pretty weak, but the bartenders were able to make all the usual beach drinks.
Overall, the beach and pool setups were amazing and once the staff gains some additional experience this place will be top notch.
ROOM
As a globalist we were upgraded to a Sea View Suite which was great. Our room was on the middle floor and was probably 40 yards from the ocean. The views were spectacular. The space inside the room was great and the furnishings were mostly great. I really only had a few complaints. The shades and sheers should have been the automatic type that you see at other high-end resorts. For such a nice room, they felt cheap and did not do a great job of blocking out the sun. The shutters looked great, but they were poorly made. Out of the 8 or so shutters in the room, only 2 of them shut properly. I also wish they would have included a fully closed in bedroom. The bedroom closed off from the living room with two sliding doors, but one of the sliding doors closed against the window curtains, so light and noise came through between the rooms. Lastly, the patio included a nice outdoor sofa and dining set, but the patio covering was not solid so the afternoon rain made the patio unusable most nights. I think they should put in Plexiglas on top to keep the rain off the patio.
RESTAURANTS AND FOOD
We went expecting a poor food experience, but in general we were very pleased. Most of the dishes we had were very good and service at all the restaurants was great as well. I thought the prices were a little high, but mostly in line with expectations. A couple things were outlandish (most wine bottles, champagne, kids meals), but for the most part the pricing was pretty reasonable for an island resort. The only odd thing we experienced was a couple times items were substituted for what we ordered without the waiter mentioning it. One night we ordered a special gelato dessert that was supposed to have two different types of gelato and some homemade marshmallows. Instead we received two scoops of vanilla. We were only charged for the cheaper dessert, but still it was very weird no one mentioned it. At another restaurant we had a wonderful chocolate dessert one night and then ordered the same thing two nights later and a brownie with chocolate gelato came out instead. It turns out they were out of the other dessert, but again no mention of that and just a substitution for another chocolate dessert.