My wife and I (both late 20’s) traveled to Club St. Lucia during the week of March 12th and had a less than good time. Upon arriving at 9:30 pm, we were told to outside and wait for our representative. After 30 minutes of standing around, we went back to the front office and were told that the reps were gone for the night. We then waited another 20 minutes for a shuttle to our rooms. We were anticipating a bright colorful room like the ones depicted on the Club’s website. Boy were we wrong! Our one and only door was a sliding glass door, with no screen. The odor in the room was intolerable. The ceiling in the bathroom was peeling and smelled of mildew. There were no wall hangings or paintings of any kind. Just a plain, boring room that smelled bad. However, we were determined to go and make the best of what was left of the night. We made it to a bar for some drinks and were greeted by a fantastic bartender. He was easily one of the few bright spots in the week. That night my wife had to sleep with a T-shirt over her face due to the horrible smell. The next day, we asked to be moved and were moved to another plain room, but without the smell. As far as the restaurants go, they tell you up front to make reservations on your first day for the entire week!!!!! Who goes on vacation and within 24 hours knows where they want to eat all week long? So needless to say, we didn’t make one reservation all week. The food was OK, if you want breakfast, eat nowhere but the International Grill. This is the only place to get fresh food. However, should you dare to venture to any of the grills for food, avoid the hamburgers.

We spent the week of January 23, 2005 at Club St Lucia by Splash and had a wonderful vacation.

The ride from Hewanorra Airport to Club St Lucia took approximately 1.5 hours. We asked our taxi driver to stop along the way to pick up refreshments and he kindly obliged. The Island is absolutely lush and beautiful. We felt that the taxi ride from the airport was a tour in itself as we saw many villages and banana plantations along the way.

We arrived at Club St Lucia around 5:00pm. There was a bit of confusion as there were several taxi vans arriving at the same time. We were instructed to leave our luggage on the side walk and proceed to registration where we were given the keys to our room, a key for the in-room safe (with US$20 deposit), towel cards (deposit was also required) and stickers with our room number for our luggage. They asked us to wait with our luggage and one of the bellman would take us to our room. After several minutes of confusion among the many new arrivals, we were shown to our room, not too far from the front desk. We made a small circle around what I thought was just some buildings for laundry etc. As it turned out, it is also the area that houses a central sewer system which emitted a very strong, pungent odour all week that was quite strong as we would walk back to our room. Luckily, we were beside rather than down wind of it. Often during the day, we would also get a whiff of that same odour down at the beach and sometimes at the Piton bar!

Our rooms were in the Hummingbird section and we found them to be clean, large in size, but basic. The cathedral ceiling did have cracks that during the day you could see daylight through and at night the mosquitoes got in. We did have to ask at the front desk to have the room sprayed one night so that we could sleep without being bitten!

The resort is spread out over several acres and is very nice. There are enough al a carte restaurants to enjoy including Thai and Italian! The International Buffet for Saturday night's main "protein" was very large Prawns that were fabulous and you could keep going back for more! The same night they also served Beef Wellington! There was always a Creole section on the buffet and then other "usual" buffet fare. Breakfast was wonderful with fresh made to order pancakes (or French Toast) daily. We did not go hungry.

The staff were wonderful - entertainment, catering, bars - there always a friendly smile for those who treat them with respect (unfortunately some people treat them with a lot less than respect!). The entertainment staff work very hard every day to ensure everyone enjoys themselves, but they were not 'in your face'. You can choose a quiet pool area including an adult only or one in the thick of things - there are 5 pools to choose from.

The beach does not have "sugar white sand", but is still nice. There are rocks in the water which make it very difficult to get in so it would go a long way if the management would "rake' them out and remove them.

We spent almost every day on the beach for as long as we possibly could from 9 in the morning until at least 5 pm. The "sun flies" or "noseeums" whatever they are called were out in full force. We were quite bit up and the bites are very itchy. But we went to the nurses station and she applied a cream that seems to relieve the itching. It was called Phenergan Cream and is apparently only available from Martinique. If I knew what the medicinal ingredient was it would help to find a replacement or similar type in Canada.

We snorkeled right off the beach to get practiced up for later in the week for snorkeling at the Marine sanctuary. The hotel does have life jackets and snorkel equipment. But, you had to sign out any snorkel equipment and only for 2 hours at a time. We found that to be very limited and really inconvenient. We also took kayaks out onto the bay and tried to ride the waves in. The whole bay is really quite shallow and there is lots of rocks on the bottom, so it could be a bit tricky. We enjoyed every minute of it, including a couple of days where the waves on shore were quite strong and lots of fun as you were first swept up onto the sand and then immediately dragged back out into the water.

There is also another beach called "Smugglers Cove" that was advertised. We walked over there one morning and found it was not at all convenient to the resort. To get to the beach you have to walk a little ways to what seems like not part of the hotel and then because of the cliff, take the stairs down to the beach (a pretty good decent). There is nothing there other than the beach and a couple of vendor huts. We didn't stay, but did see someone beginning to open up just as we were leaving. I believe they had beach chairs and a few other items, but we don't know if they were through the hotel or for rent.

We took Captain Typhoon's speed boat tour along with his assistant "Ontime". It was a pretty good day. He toured through several bays along the shore on our way to the volcano. The ride was scenic especially when you get near the Pitons. It was a great tour, but Typhoon didn't mention to us at the time of booking that once we got to the volcano, we would be expected to pay the park entrance fee of US$3 /person and then at the Mineral Waterfall another US$2/person. Not that we wouldn't have gone, but it would have been nice to know ahead of time. We snorkeled at the Marine sanctuary which was very nice and then headed northward back to Dr. Dolittle restaurant on one of the bays where apparently Mick Jagger and George Foreman have vacation homes. Given the choice, we would have skipped stopping there for lunch as it was already 2:00 in the afternoon and we would have just as soon gone back to Club St Lucia. But, we took advantage of the time to visit a little with Typhoon and Ontime who are very pleasant young men.

Club St Lucia was nice, really no major complaints, we would say it would compare with the Jolly Harbour in Antigua but not as nice as the Almond Beach in Barbados or La Cabana in Aruba.

We found St LUCIA very very nice one of the better islands, people very friendly and polite. We did find it hotter and more humid than the other places we have booked with you, this may be a detraction for some. Also, there are mosquitoes on the island, "no seeums" and they bite many people leaving red itchy spots all over their bodies. This also could be an issue for some. The ride from the airport is long at least 90 min,( you can get a helicopter shuttle for $115 US SAVING 75 MIN) arriving late in the dark was not as nice, apparently Air Canada flies in earlier Sun and we would recommend that and would have taken that had we known.. The AC flight was delayed 45 min going south due to weather. No problems coming back except they still are slow getting luggage and we could have missed our connection to Ottawa.

At first we were disappointed with the " romantic room" we checked in to. Not romantic at all. The sink was plugged, the outside light did not work, no bedspread, etc etc in addition to it being out of the way and in a treed area. We politely complained and Anthony, one of the managers, said give him some time to see what he could do. In 2 hours, our second night, he upgraded us at no cost to a Jr suite. This was much nicer and WE WOULD RECOMMEND this as the minimum standard to stay.The room had a sitting area, King size bed and a large tiled bathroom with walk in shower and large jacuzzi style tub. I think he may have upgraded us on the price we paid, not sure but others stayed there for @ 1100 on last min specials. Also the ocean view suites are SUPERB but much more expensive

There were 5 restaurants, all quite nice except the International grill which was buffet, we only went there the first night as we could not make reservations that night as we just arrived.We would not recommend that. The othere restaurants were Thai (very nice, the best they had) Italian also nice, a seafood and another restuarant on the beach. Dinners were nice, lunch and breakfast were fine. The beach was small, but most of the beaches in St Lucia were small. not a real issue with us Watersports were fine, we went kayaking and snorkelling, you could also sail and windsurf for free. The tours arranged by the Air Canada rep was great. its called land and sea we saw the volcano, a banana plantation, wood carvers and a catarmaran tour coming back, Jump up Fri nights are a must to see at Gros Inlet. Pigeon Island is also nice and market day in Castries is great

We saw SANDALS GRAND and it was very fancy. The Windjammer was also quite nice and built by a Canadian developer, the owner of Ellis Don.