I never write reviews but felt compelled to write this in hopes of saving someone else the money/headache. I had a destination wedding of about 15 people at Caneel Bay (at Turtle Bay) in August 2013 and the service was shockingly terrible. My previous experience with Rosewood (and the amount of money I was spending) led me to believe that it would be upscale/nice but instead, the staff was rude, lazy, and honestly, kind of mean. And- note that most of the rooms do not have phones in them, which causes a myriad of issues (for example the night before my wedding we wanted room service so my fiance had to walk around the resort searching for a "phone station" to call in our order). Although we asked (and offered to pay more for) a large/nice room (because the bridesmaids would be getting ready there), we were put in a tiny room with no phone. Finally, after asking twice more once we got there, we were switched to a larger room (after being treated like they were doing us a favor and already spending 2 nights in the other one).
But, the room issue was just the beginning-The day of the wedding, I requested access to a full-length mirror three times (so I could fully see myself in my wedding dress) and, although a mirror was supposedly "on its way," I never got one. The wedding dinner table set-up literally looked like it was decorated with purchases from the Dollar Store (for example, the main decoration was fake candles-without any kind of decorative votives- throughout the room). The "wedding coordinator" LEFT THE WEDDING literally 20 minutes after the ceremony. The guy that books events for the venue served as the dinner "wait staff" (and was, apparently, put off by having to do so because he threw our plates in front of us like he was pissed at us for even being there). My fiance and I had to coordinate the cake cutting (as the wedding coordinator had left- see above) and were instructed that we had to cut the cake as soon as the ceremony was over (before anyone even sat down to eat dinner) because, although we had paid for and chosen a separate dessert, they were using the cake as the dessert and they had to start cutting it right away. The ENTIRE STAFF LEFT THE WEDDING so that, at the end of the night (the entire wedding lasted about 3 hours- it was only about 10 pm), THERE WAS LITERALLY NO STAFF AT THE VENUE- seriously- they left myself and my guests just at the venue by ourselves without even notifying us that they were leaving. I had to go to the entrance of the venue, find a "phone station," and call for a bus to come get us to take us back to the main part of the resort.
Other examples of my honeymoon experience at Caneel Bay include: ordering ice cream room service and not bringing us spoons and then being pissed that they had to send someone back to our room to bring us spoons (they suggested that we go to the front and get spoons ourselves); At the wedding, when my husband asked a member of the staff to remember to put the drink garnishes that we provided on the drinks, he was literally ignored; When we asked to use a sailboat (which Caneel Bay touts as being complimentary to guests), we were told that the "owner's children" were using the only one that was not broken (although there were 3 other sailboats in the rental area, we were told they were all broken) and so we would have to wait until the children were done; Total lack of communication/coordination leading up to and including the wedding.
The above examples are merely events that are at the top of my head right now- we were there for a week and a half and there are many more examples of the terrible service. Overall, they just treated us like we were a burden that they had to deal with.
There was one woman that seemed to work at the front desk a lot and she was the only staff member that seemed to care about anything- in fact, she went out of her way to get us a golf cat when we were running late for the pre-wedding rehearsal. She was the one person whose attitude/service would generally be deserving of "Rosewood quality" (I don't remember her name but she has very light brown eyes).
Notably, gratuity is included in everything so the staff doesn't appear to have motivation to provide good service... Frankly, I dont know what the deal was- maybe everyone was being lazy because it was the end of their season or maybe I got the "skeleton crew" because the normal staff was on vacation but, in any event, it doesnt matter- the entire experience was simply overshadowed by the staff's general rude attitude and carelessness. read more