We were at Beaches from Jan 23 to 30th with our 3.5 year old. Is it expensive? Yes. Worth it? Pretty close, to us. Having paid less for other all-inclusives in the past few years, we left the resorts disappointed. Happily, we were not at all disappointed with Beaches T & C. We are strongly considering going back in a couple of years.
My biggest concern about Beaches? I thought it would be too "Disney" for us. Our son is shy, and is generally opposed to people dressed up as characters. He doesn't like loud noise, and, frankly, neither do we. We go on vacation to get away from our busy work lives, and to spend time together as a family, not to be run off our feet, or always chasing the next exciting thing to do. I am happy to report that Beaches made this very easy for us.
Many other reviews cover the basics well, so I'll focus this review on things we really appreciated, and the few things we didn't.
Room - Tuscan Ocean View Suite
Our amazing travel agent talked us into this suite, and we were generally very happy with it. It is extremely well designed - it's not just nice, it's smart. Yes, the kid room is next to the door, but really, that wasn't an issue for us. The sliding doors separating the kids room from the main area were super-quiet. The trundle bed was awesome - we didn't need to request bedrails, which we often do. Having the separate space made us all relax and sleep better. We were in room 3333 (very exciting to a 3 year old) and it was convenient to the beach and the pool. It was also, importantly, quiet. You can request a step-stool, which we did, to facilitate hand-washing by the preschooler. Storage in the room is awesome - a huge benefit when you're spending a fair bit of time in the room, which we do, because of naps and a need for quiet time. The King bed was quite comfortable. The TVs had good kids' programming on (well, age appropriate anyway) - good for winding down before bed.
(Can I just say how nice it is to NOT have to sit in the dark at 8:00 p.m. waiting for the kid to go to sleep? As I said, we're not fans of the entertainment at resorts, so this was a non-issue for us. My husband and I just planned to stay in, and we had nice quiet evenings together after our son went to sleep. )
So - I know that the quality of the room matters a lot less to others, but we need to spend a fair bit of time in there for naps, early bedtime, and general chill-out time, so we want to be comfortable in there. We had no complaints about the Italian Village.
Pools and Beach
Our days were generally spent on the beach in the morning, and in a pool after lunch/nap. Yes, you have to put towels on chairs. We found that the other end of the beach was quieter (by the Caribbean village) the week we were there. It was perfect for us, though. Because of our early nights, we were up early, so no problem grabbing chairs in the shade, and then it was a nice short trek from sandcastles in front of the chairs to the ocean.
The beach is, as promised, stupendous. The only irritation for us were some of the photographers, who didn't appear to care that they were about to step on someone's sandcastle work, and they were loud and annoying. This was pretty rare, though.
We agree with the tips to bring your own shovel/pails - or be prepared to spend a lot at the gift shop.
We preferred the pool in the French Village - nice and quiet in the afternoons, and warm. Plus, it was conveniently located next to the amazing café. We did use the Italian pool a few times, and it's very nice, but always more crowded. Both pools have nice zero-entry areas, wading areas for wee ones, and are generally very kid-friendly. Happily, the pools were (mostly) free of loud music - a welcome relief for us.
We did bring our son's "Puddle-Jumper" (swimming/floating aid) and we were glad we did. Totally worth the space it took up in the luggage - he could swim about while we watched (from the pool bar...) and it was very safe.
The water park is great- though rejected, in the most part, by our son. : ( Fortunately - lots of other options for him!
(We did not have a problem getting fresh towels, but because we read of the issue, we made sure we had 2 clean ones in our room as back-up.)
Food
Because we are on the early schedule, we had no line ups or waits for meals. With rare exceptions, the meals were good and the service was good to very good. All places (except the 2 adults only places, we assume!) have something or other that is for kids or very kid-friendly - our kid is not a fussy eater, so we had lots of choice for him.
A few tips:
A) You can get take-out from most places - more than makes up for the lack of room service. We did this when the boy (and his parents) needed some quiet time away from crowds and noise.
B) Like most resorts, it's easy to stock up on snacks for the rest of the day if you plan a bit. We always brought some containers with us, to grab fruit, veggies, yogurt, etc., that we had on hand for snacks on the go.
C) Everyone is different, of course, but our favourites were:
Breakfast: Mario's (buffet) and Schooner's (a la carte, but they have cereal and yogurt ready to go for hungry kids/husbands)
Lunch: Barefoot by the Sea, Giuseppe's (buffet), either pizza place (but be prepared to wait!)
Supper: Schooner's and Mario's - especially the app. buffet (when it wasn't buffet night - that was Saturday, and it was a zoo), Sapodilla's for our one adults only night out.
Arizona's was just OK for supper- my husband's food was very good, mine was just boring - but the chips and salsa/guacomole almost made up for it.
Cricketeer's pub was OK too for supper - but freezing cold air conditioning, which made our son miserable. My husband says the best beer is here, though.
We did NOT like:
Bobby D's - food is OK, the stuff you can grab and go is nice, but it's very noisy, and the service was bad.
(From my husband): The included wine, and much of the beer was not great. Good beer was found at the Pub, though.
Did not go to: Kimono's - the kid is afraid of fire - 'nuff said! : )
All time favourite? The café. LOVED that place. Best espresso drinks we've had away ever - iced and hot. Amazing pastries. Yummy crepes and croissants in the morning. Also, a nice quiet place to go to cool off in the heat and read a book in peace.
Characters and excursions
The first time our son came across a character, he ran screaming in the other direction. (See why we avoided Disney???) However, I have to hand it to the characters - they do a great job of adapting to each kid. Our son loved the shows (with noise-cancelling headphones - never leave home without them!), and started to warm up. He was keen to go on the catamaran with the characters, and so long as he could just look, he was fine. (Main complaint - the music is way too loud.) He had warmed up enough by day 4 that we did the character breakfast, and he had a good time - they didn't try to hug him or anything - just went by his cues. By day 6, he was hugging characters when he came across them.
What was key to this success was the fact that none of the characters were "pushy", and that you can totally avoid them if you like. This let our little guy warm up in his own time. It was a huge relief.
Our off-resort excursion was in the submarine boat, and that was great.
What about the grown-ups?
We found this resort to have the best balance we've found that respected kids and their parents individually. The food, while not stupendous every night, was good to very good. The size of the resort is nice in that you can wander about and not feel cooped in. The room was great. We had planned on doing a few things (snorkeling, and spa) and for various reasons chose not to -mostly because we were enjoying our very low-key vacation.
My 6'6'' husband's only complaint was that the tub was too small, but he always says that. : )
There were a lot of things for adults to do, for sure. We were just happy to hang at the beach and the pool.
Miscellaneous:
Flight/transfer to resort: We are in Ontario, so the flight was 4 hours flat, with a quick trip through customs, and a short trip to the resort - this is HUGE for us. I was very glad we flew on a Monday - I can see weekends being not as nice at the tiny airport. The transport did have seatbelts, so a carseat could be used. Return trip was all smooth as well - again, we were glad we were there on a Monday. If we ever flew on a Saturday, I would strongly consider paying for the VIP lounge - that departures lounge is TINY.
Bathrooms: Hugely important with a recently potty-trained kid. The public washrooms were all immaculate, and little boy friendly, and fairly easy to find.
Concierge service: Honestly- I would not pay extra for this - it came with the room we wanted, but as relative non-drinkers, we didn't really care about the room fridge being stocked with booze. Otherwise, they were modestly helpful, and maybe there were advantages that we weren't aware of, but it wasn't a big feature for us. We didn't use them for reservations as we elected not to go to Kimono's.
Babysitting: We did use this one night - they were very fair - only charged us for part of the last hour, as we only used part of it. She took our son to the beach party, which was nice. We felt very comfortable leaving him with her.
Kids club: We go on vacation to spend time with our son, so we didn't use it, but it looked very good. (To be honest, I doubt he would agree to go, but it looked well-managed - we saw the little groups trekking about the resort, and they were almost always happy, and they were always well-supervised.)
Laundry: Yes, they have it - $4 for wash, $4 for dry, and good equipment. Very much worth it for us. Very easy (we used the laundry in the Italian Village).
Playground: A very popular place for our boy - in the Caribbean village. Not too busy, either.
Overall- if you want a reasonably quiet, laid-back vacation, you can totally get this at Beaches. I'm sure there are a lot of exciting things to do, but that's not what we go on vacation for.
Room Tip: Room 3333 in the Italian Village (Pisa building, I think) was well-located and quiet. We liked the...
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This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
