Sandals Grande Antigua Reviews
Reviews
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3.9 out of 5 rating
3.9 out of 5 rating
14 Reviews
79% recommend it
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User1681986 Sent on 06/27/2014We loved Sandals Grande Antigua - the beach was beautiful and the campus was just like in the pictures. We had butler service and they were amazing. They really attended to all of our needs. Food was good and the services were excellent. We recommend staying in the Mediterranean section - more updated -
User1172361 Sent on 05/23/2013Wonderful, wonderful venue. The coordinators were very friendly and fun. They did not pressure me to purchase anything and they surprised me by going above and beyond. Not to mention the gorgeous views! -
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Brandy Sent on 02/01/2011We had our dream wedding at Sandals Grande Antigua. we wanted a unique wedding on the beach but sadly the beach wasn't as private as we wanted. But we found a beautiful gazebo with flowers surrounding it and had our ceremony first dance and cake cutting there....then had our reception in the reflection pool area..which was gorgeous. We wouldn't have picked it any other way. We had beautiful weather...80 n breezy. Everyone was soo nice. The wedding is free if u meet the rewuirements. They provide u with a bouquet, boutineer, hors d'eurves for reception, music if u don't have it, cake etc. My wedding cooring was wonderful. My hair and make up absolutely perfect...u have nothing to worry about in their hands and it is soo stress free which we like :) even tho we wanted to get married on the beach...and didn't we took pix to last us forever...we had pix after the reception by the beach as well as during ceremony n reception then came back at sunset in our wedding attire and did sunset photos...we had two photographers and they were both different and out of this world..they were beyond incredible. I would highly recommend destination weddings in sandals grande antigua for a dream come true stress free wedding ceremony :) -
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Kwame B. Sent on 05/15/2024You don't get what you pay for
The Sandals Marketing team is a juggernaut. They have global recognition and have spent much on superficial views and amenities. However, when you try to take advantage of them, you will be overcharged and under-serviced.
Our wedding planning started 2 years ago, and as an expat to Antigua, I was proud to invite our friends and my wife's family to Antigua. We settled on Antigua to ensure my family on the island was able to attend without paying for international travel. However, that eventually became a major issue as the Sandals Grande Antigua Resort made it their business to keep locals off the resort. They heavily police the resort to ensure local vendors and individuals are secured from the hotel guests. As the locals are Black and the average guests at Sandals are white, this played a role in the frequent harassment of our wedding guests (who were Black). The Sandals prides itself on not making its guests wear any visible signs of being a guest like wrist bands/lanyards or Special room cards. Well, that made it easier to single out guests repeatedly. This gave them the feeling they were not allowed to be there and were not welcomed at Sandals. Even senior managers confronted people in restaurants, at bars, and walking around the resorts. This was very bad as we had over 85 Black people on the resort for the wedding, and had to field multiple complaints from our upset guests. The staff, who were encouraged to police the resort, were not informed about the large Black Group on the resort and had no issue harassing their Black Guests as a course of regular practice.
Secondly, during the planning process, it seemed that even though were had a large party and were planning a large local contingent, staff were more focused on collecting revenue and tracking locals on-site than encouraging local participation. Charging $200 US to attend our wedding while, when locals have events on-site, are charged Close to $50 US. They used the excuse that it was an offsite guest rate, while they knew that the people being invited were local citizens of Antigua.
The Resort itself is in the dark ages. Even though they attempted to be "secure" concerning access to the resort, there is no security system or means of quickly identifying on-site guests. Security guards are rent-a-cops with flashlights and walkie-talkies, with ledger books and in many cases, no pen and paper. What are they checking? The front gate is constantly calling the main office to check names as they are going off of names on a sheet, which is horrible for large parties and large events, with large lines of cars waiting to be admitted.
As the groom, my wife and I expected to be showered with beautiful welcomes and catered to by the resort where an event of over 150 people is being planned. However, there was no wedding welcome, no welcome signs at the resort, no limo services, or dedicated transport. As we walked by other resorts welcoming their guests and other bridal parties being welcomed, were were very disappointed that were were shuffled off to the joint minibus with all the other guests of the resort. The staff were not prepared or notified of our arrival and were not prepared in any way for our wedding party. As a result, as the guest staggard for over 3 days, they were not prepared for us or our guests. The check-in process took 3 hrs, and our first meeting with the on-site wedding team took 2 days before we spoke to them. The internet access was inconsistent and unreliable which made it impossible to download planning documents and contracts in meetings. Seemed like we had to print everything out and walk in with a pile of paper.
The room we booked was called a Honeymoon luxury, club-level room, which was overly inflated to infer to us it would be this magnificent wedding suite for us as a couple. The room wasn't even a suite! It was a single room with a bed and a couch. We kept asking about the room name and it being categorized as a luxury room, but it was found to just be a room category name, used to trick guests into believing they were paying for some kind of honeymoon suite. There was no attempt by the sandals team or the wedding team to upgrade us to a room category to reflect our huge room pick-up or the size of our wedding group and were given another room of the same size with an extra tub. We were told they were at capacity which I found very funny, because our party was the main reason they were at capacity with over 45+ rooms booked for our wedding.
We attempted to work with the on-site team weeks before however, as we tried to finalize our on-site guest list, we were delayed by a death in the family which complicated finalizing guest attendance at the wedding. However, our planning contact was less than helpful in securing communication. They were so rigid with their need to pay for the guest passes before the wedding while, refusing to assist with the wedding planning process ahead of time. Even though the rooms for all my guests were paid, the decoration bill was paid and the majority of my major items were done, they almost seemed to abhor anyone who didn't pay for things up front and seek correction later. They even made it hard for us to pay for large items, as financial institutions limited international transactions to over $5000 per day. they made it tedious to help us with the billing process. It took days to help us and made me have to split up my guest list to make it easier to pay for. Un-necessarily tedious.
Due to this delay, we had to spend days of our trip in the planning office which cut short the time we would have spent with family at the funeral, as well as quality time with our guests and with each other. Spending over 2 days in the office finalizing details that could have been done over the phone.
The planning process onsite seemed primarily focused on upselling us and charging us for more items at every turn. We brought our own sets of decorations to the resort to simplify the theme of the design elements, colors, and quality. During the early planning, they expressed a willingness to help set them up, but when on-site, a magical fee arose for it. Many items that were requested were not on the original invoice, and items needed to be removed or changed. The on-site people didn't even review our party size with the venue selected for the wedding to confirm spacing. and the number of chairs needed. We paid for a tent which they didn't know how it would be set up, we asked for a wooden walkway that wasn't long enough for the size of the ceremony, and wanted to charge us for more. Even the table decorating we spoke about had to be finalized as what we asked for wasn't accounted for. We sent the online team all the info just for us to rehash items on-site. We had our officiant which was shadowed by their officiant for no reason. We had our photographer, who was being chased by their photographer. Their videographer streamed a poor quality 480 video to YouTube which was filled with Sandals ads.
The insult to injury, was as the on-site events unfolded and guests arrived, they did not provide many of the services promised. We were told speaker systems would be provided for pre-recorded music, just to be asked to provide our own devices to play music. The cocktail hour didn't have a speaker system, and I was expected to provide for it or be charged extra for it. Lastly, Local guests were expected to surrender their ID on-site to attend our wedding. Asking 80 people for that is unheard of. In the end, when seeking to confirm the missing guests to seek reimbursement for missing local guests, I was met with personally recorded videos of my reception done by the staff to confirm individuals who attended my reception. As if this justified not refunding my money. First, you engage in this security theater, which is ridiculous, then assume that I snuck people into the resort for the reception while I'm in the middle of my celebration.
The hotel billing process on-site is horrible. their systems went down multiple times while on-site, and still required us to put a $400 US hold on our room. Even though they charged all the remaining and extra wedding charges to my room. For security's sake, I used a smaller card to charge that to my room to ensure no unknown charges. They couldn't apply the hold to my bill. they attempted the charge my card again for the billed items. If you already have a hold, why would you attempt to charge my card again?
Several other issues kept coming up which added tour frustration as the bride and groom and many items just seemed too petty to be associated with the Sandals brand.
The guests of my wedding, regardless of my best efforts to shield them, had to deal with insult after insult and my wife was distraught with the planning issues. They took away from the majesty of our wedding process making this week of the wedding just horrible, and it seemed the simplicity of the process they promised was anything but fluff and a sales pitch. If doing any kind of wedding at Scale, do not use Sandals. (Sorry for the spelling and grammar errors; I am very upset about this experience. )
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