The hotel was beautiful, as were the grounds and the pool. Most important to my wife and I was the fact that our room was nice and very clean, and the staff couldn't have been nicer.
We only ate dinner at the hotel the first night. It was very good, but as others have stated, it was not cheap. Breakfast was included in our plan and I looked forward to it every morning. We had a rental car and a GPS, so we were out and about every day exploring the area. We ate dinner most nights in Tamarindo. Some reviewers complained about the road to the JW. Get real, you're in Costa Rica! If you want smooth paved roads stay home. The only bad thing I have to say about the hotel is that it really is quite remote.
Everything we wanted to see was hours away, so we put a lot of miles on the car every day. (about $600. in gas in 9 days) We LOVED Costa Rica,we're going back this July for 10 days but on a tour staying in many different hotels.

This is a lovely hotel in a great setting that needs a real makeover on customer service. 2 days of lukewarm showers and waiting until 3 pm for a room to be made up were just the tip of the iceberg. Time after time the staff were simply not up to Marriott resort standards

We stayed at the JW for 5 nights Jan. 20-25 (points). The hotel, rooms, grounds, and pool are all very nice. The staff was also very good except for a bartender at the pool bar that seemed completely indifferent.

Food was all very good, but on the expensive side and drinks are around $10. However,all the prices at the JW include the 25% tax and service fee, so they were not really all that out of line for the area. High, but not outrageous. Pool is hugh and very nice. The beach is nice, but you really can't go in ocean because it is all volcanic rock as soon as you go out more than about 10 feet.

The JW is about 25 minutes out of Tamarindo and there is really nothing else around. Most destination tours were 1.5 hours or more away and since we were going to La Fortuna for 3 nights next, we really didn't want to spend a lot of time driving, especially on dirt roads. Therefore we spent a lot of time at the resort. We did drive over to Lola's, about 10-15 minutes away and would recommend it.

As noted elsewhere, there are lots of large group tours that come to the JW. A waitress told us they had 3 150 person groups rotating through the week before. One night they had a big group dinner on the lawn and another night they had a big awards banquet on the beach. Occasionally one of the restaurants would be closed for the night because of a group dinner.

I don't really have any negatives about the JW itself, but would probably not go back. We really like going in the ocean, but you really couldn't here bacause of the rocks. You had to go to another beach like Tamarindo. We just felt a bit isolated after 5 days. It would have been much better if we had stayed 3 nights here and 5 nights at the Manoa Arenal in La Fortuna.

Loved the Hacienda style of this oceanfront hotel. It is fairly isolated out on a 4,500 acre Hacienda 15 minutes southeast of Tamarindo. It was very new and you could tell the developers put some serious money into this place. This might be why the feel worthy of the prices they charge for just about everything. They gift shop had no snacks or drinks.....must order from room service, no ice machines, must have ice brought by room stewart, etc. We had heard about this and brought a cooler bag and our own snacks for room & pool otherwise I would have had tro sell one of my kids when I returned home! (Example $9 for a beer / $15 for a Margarita / $22 Fish Tacos) That is poolside not at one of the formal resturants. Also, this hotel had a much older client base average age seemed to be upwards of 50.