soy

nope, just there with the family.

kapooncha

FYI, I contacted the property and said they shouldn't have increased my daily resort fee to 70 per night as I made the reservation when the daily resort fee was 60. They ended up refunding my entire 3 night resort fees of $210.

Not bad!!

soy

nice, now I almost wish I had been charged $70, ha ha

sunshineonlieth

I was at the Seafire during the BMW convention as well. The first night I arrived the agent could not find my reservation at all. I had to email him my confirmation emails. It took about an hour of back and forth at the front desk before I was put in a accessible king room on the 10th floor for one night, with a promise to get me in another room for my other three nights. I was pretty frustrated but I didn't complain or push the desk agent. The hotel was quite full and he made it sound like I was lucky my reservations were being honored (??).

Kimpton more than made up for the kerfluffle. I was moved to a one bedroom ocean front suite with a full living room, kitchen, and dining room and a wraparound balcony. It was stunning. I was IC last year, and my profile still shows IC with a 2018 expiration date, but I am not sure if I still show as IC in the backend system or not. Either way, the upgrade far exceeded expectations as did the service recovery gesture. Kimpton more than made it right, without me even having to ask. Love this brand and their properties.

I was charged the $70/nt resort fee but not the 10% room fee. Considering the suite was going for $2200/nt and I will be using an Arrival plus credit to cover it, I'm pretty pleased.

jonecasey

kapooncha

Here are a bunch of emails, feel free to add them to a wiki.

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Tony300S

Just snagged 7-Nights here for an August family vacation on 100% points. Excellent IHG reward redemption rate at close to 1.22-Cents per point based on current rack rate for these dates.

490,000 IHG Points (Standard 7-Night Stay) - 70,000 (4th Night Free IHG Premier Card Perk) - 42,000 (10% Points Rebate IHG Select Card Perk) = 378,000 Total Points Stay + $70 Daily Resort Fee

I'll be sure to report back afterwards with a review and any upgrades as an IHG Spire AMB.

duceno1

I've been attempting to contact the hotel regarding questions about their accessible rooms. I've sent messages by Facebook, through the hotel's accessibility email, and more recently, to the email addresses posted above, to no avail. Has anyone had success receiving a response from them that I could at least direct my questions to? Thank you.

FLYGVA

I have edited the personal mails out of this post as it is not within the guidelines to share them on Flyertalk

Thank your four your understanding

FLYGVA
co-moderator IHG Forum

miles_navigator

We stayed here for 3 nights in April. I used 2 Chase free night certs and 70K points for the 3 nights. We reserved a standard room with 2 queen beds. We were upgraded to an ocean view room with 2 queen beds since we were IHG Platinum. I didn’t ask for a suite since I’d rather have 2 beds in the room instead of a pullout.

At check in we were welcomed with a glass of Champaign for the adults and small bottle of water for the kids. We got to the hotel around 130pm and the room wasn’t ready. The standard check in time is 4pm. We changed and the kids went to the pool/beach. There is a really nice and clean changing room/restroom behind the check in desk area and across from the marketplace.

On the 1st evening we were given a welcome gift. It consisted of a fruit and cheese plate plus some chocolate cake like things. I never made it to the desserts since the kids devoured them.

We were charged the $60 per night resort fee at checkout. There was no mention of the fee during check in but in reading the posts above I was expecting $70 so mentally prepared. I don’t know why I got charged $60 and others got charged $70. Did $70 folks have IHG Platinum or any status? I can see how someone can get upset at check out when the fee shows up. The resort fee includes valet parking (we rented a car; more on that below) as well as the non-motorized pool/beach toys such as pool floats, stand up paddle, snorkeling gear, sea kayak, water bicycle, etc. Also speaking of charges, I got a $15 credit towards the mini-bar for being IHG Platinum. They forgot to mention it at check in so it ended up being a $15 credit towards the final bill.

The service at this hotel is fabulous on the level of what I experienced at the Savoy in London years ago. They hired away a lot of people from the Ritz. Everyone here will do whatever they can to make your stay pleasant from the front desk staff to valet and pool staff.

Lot of little details such as by the pool there is both water and sunscreen for use. The pool attendants make your chair for you with wrapping around a big towel and then giving you a 2nd beach towel for use.

Pool chairs were generally easy to get but the covered cabana needs to be paid for like most places. However, there are about 5 black chairs that can be sort of like the cabanas with the overhead umbrella that are free on 1st come 1st serve basis. 3 of them are on the right side of the pool (when looking at the ocean) and 2 on the left side. You need to get down there by 7am (or a little earlier) to snag it. When the pool attendant comes by he will make it for you and you can leave your stuff there. The pool attendant will say be back by X time (usually 1.5 hours so you can eat breakfast) in order to keep it. Then it is yours for the rest of the day as long as you are using it. We learned this the last day and made good use of it. Very relaxing!

The hotel has a shuttle that goes to the Cayman Turtle Center up the road. The free shuttle goes twice a day in each direction at a specific time. Since we rented a car we drove ourselves up there. The kids enjoyed this place including touching and swimming with sea turtles. Note the swimming in the turtle center is in a pool type structure and not the picture of someone snorkeling behind a sea turtle that you sometimes see.

Regarding driving, I was excited about getting a chance to drive on the other side of the road after many years. We rented a car from Hertz. Note most car insurance from the USA is not valid in Grand Cayman; do your homework before you get here. I used my AMEX credit card to cover the collision and damage to the rental car part of the insurance. I bought the liability insurance from Hertz for about $16 per day. This 2nd part covers you if you get in a (major) accident and hit someone else (which the credit card portion won’t cover their car). Though we didn’t need to claim on the policy the peace of mind is worth it.

The main thing about “driving on the other side” is the wiper and turn signals are switched so I kept turning on the wipers every time I wanted to use the turn signal. Also, look both ways when making a right turn. Folks from North America are usually used to looking 1 direction only for right turns. The last part is exiting the round-about rules. Watch the video on this one because it is still confusing to me how you can exist from the 2nd inside lane.

I had hoped to drive to the hotel from the airport using the tourist map expecting signs to 7 mile beach. No luck here and perhaps it is because I didn’t know what I was doing. After going around for 15 mins or so I finally had to turn on the cell phone GPS and give my carrier $10/day for the international cell phone usage. Once we had the GPS the driving was really easy.

Monday nights the hotel has a dinner (buffet) show on a deck by the beach. It includes all you can eat, the food is generally good quality include steak, fish, shellfish, and the desserts are awesome. They have a fire dancing show and then do salsa lessons. We enjoyed this dinner/show combo.

We had a great experience at this hotel. I am glad I used my Chase free nights certs here before they switch over to the 40K only per night and would encourage others remotely interested to do the same and look past the $60 resort fee. 3 nights was enough for us since we also got ½ a day on arrival to use the pool/beach. In all we had a good time here and I am glad we good use of the last batch of “use anywhere” IHG free night certs. We are mostly a Hawaii family so most likely don’t plan to go back unless there is a super good deal.

RandomInternetPerson

Google maps allows you to select an area and download maps that will be available offline for navigation. Even with no cell connection the GPS on your phone still works. We just did this for our trip to Turks and Caicos. Downloaded the maps to an old iPhone we don't use any longer and took it with us for navigation and pictures so we didn't have to worry if it got stolen or lost. And I also couldn't get the hang of the turn signals/wipers while driving.

spellbound2

We were there for a week in March and had a great time. The room lighting is pretty cool. It was a little crazy with a bunch of Edward Jones President's Circle winners and families, but the staff was great and we liked the Monday night buffet, music, dancing and fire show, too. It reminded us of the Maldives a bit with their special nights. Coccoloba is great for a quick lunch on the beach and it was fun to have all the different activities each day. We had such a great time on the bioluminescent night snorkel trip and the caves up north are really interesting.

dagangwood

Can I have some feedback on how kid-friendly this hotel is? Thanks,

sunshineonlieth

I stayed here with a toddler and a 6 year old and I highly recommend it. They offer a great kids club or in-room babysitting, kids eat free, there is a smaller wading pool, they gave the kids free sand toys and plush sting-rays too. The nightly wine hour has a special snack for the kids and a separate play area too. It is definitely one of the more kid-friendly Kimptons I have stayed at.

dagangwood

Thank you so much!