Although we were stopping on the Royal Barbados side we thought we would submit a whistle stop review covering our experience with the Barbados side of the resort. We have already submitted a thorough review of the Royal and has already been published 15th August 2026.
Although they are registered as two separate hotels, you can’t tell. There isn’t any physical border or boundary and is like a huge mega resort. Apart from your assigned accommodation you’re allowed to use the facilities of each hotel. This was one of the main reasons we booked this holiday. This was our 5th Sandals (previously been to St Lucia La Toc, Grenada, Curacao and St Vincent) and has become our favourite.
The bars/watering holes and eateries are in abundance. It was good to be reunited with a pub as the previous 2 Sandals didn’t have one (Curacao and St Vincent). They had the same drinks as per St Lucia and Grenada i.e. bottles of Stella, bottles of Strongbow cider and cans of Guinness (plenty of Irish car bombs went down the hatch). The pub was quite a size and featured a snooker table and a pool table. We tried the English Sunday dinner and give it 10/10, the Yorkshire puddings were spot on and were crispy, light and fluffy, the gravy was authentic too. We just need to say a massive thanks to David who was one of the food and beverage managers. We got talking to him one afternoon outside the pub and he was intrigued why we were putting cassis in our cider. We told him that we love cider and black (black is short for black current cordial/squash) and because they don’t have any blackcurrant cordial/squash available it’s the next best thing. After returning to the pub on the evening the bartender presented a carton of Ribena for us. He said David had managed to get his hands on a carton so we could have our pint of cider and black. We were absolutely overjoyed with this lovely gesture. This happened on our last night, and David wasn’t there on the evening so we couldn’t thank him in person. We told the bar tender to thank him, and we also said we would thank him in our review and on GINA– thanks again David xx
The restaurants on the Barbados side were all fantastic and all complimented by a hard-working dedicated crew. Not sure if it’s just this resort or if it’s just recently been introduced but Sandals seem to have changed the a la carte reservation system and applied limits to the number of visits allowed (were no limits last year). They said this has been changed to allow other guests a chance of visiting the restaurants that require reservations. You are therefore only allowed 1 visit per a la carte restaurant per week (so 4 a week as there are 4 restaurants that require reservations). On the first week we did all 4 but on the second week we only did 2 (didn’t want a repeat visit to Fusion or the French). We asked if we could do the two Butches again in lieu of not wanting to visit the Fusion/French but weren’t allowed. We went to Fusion one night and they were serving bottles of Japanese Kirin beer. We looked at Dino’s pizza menu prior to arrival, and the menu was different to the other Sandals ones, most of the choices we weren’t keen on. When we ordered at Dino’s we seen that they have the other pizzas choices on the order form, the one we loved from the previous Sandals i.e. the meat lovers. We normally got a pizza about 5ish (closed at 6pm) and we had to wait about 15-20 minutes which wasn’t long. Each pizza was so tasty and perfectly crafted. One thing we noticed was the dress code in the a la cartes weren’t being adhered to, and plenty of male guests wearing shorts. Sandals might as well ditch the trouser dress code.
Building work is ongoing on blocks 17 and 18 which did impact our stay by removing access to certain elements of 3 restaurants. Our review on the Royal side does into more detail but the work isn’t aesthetically pleasing to the eye, is very noisy and removed the element of having breakfast at the French Restaurant (Royal side) as it was closed due to the noisy construction work (we weren’t informed of this and was showing as being open on the app), Spices was closed completely (Barbados side) and although they said the French breakfast menu was being put on alternatively in Scrimshaws (Barbados side) we turned up to Scrimshaws and it was closed (even though we were told it would be open) also due to the work that was going on in Spices.
Pools/beach - there are an excellent selection of pools at this resort catering for everyone’s needs. The direction of the sun rose from where the airport is and went directly over so that it set just where Butches on the Barbados side is. As with the other Sandals we have visited the towel cabinets are plentiful, all fully stocked and replenished by the attentive pool lads. All the pools were open during our visit. It does take the weight off when you don’t need to get up the crack of dawn to reserve a sunbed. The sand was just as good as we remembered it when we last visited Barbados in 2019, white, fluffy and soft. You literally have to walk down to the shoreline to see any of the seaweed even then it’s just a small amount, there was no seaweed on the main beach itself. There was plenty of sunbeds on the beaches too. They didn’t have the yellow floating rings like they had in Curacao or St Vincent, so we missed them. We also loved the tubing that they did in St Vincent but didn’t do it here.
The Groundsmen keep both sites beautifully maintained. The hygiene attendants /clean team also did a cracking job with keeping all the areas such as bins, floors and toilets all nip and clean.
Although it features on the Royal side it’s just to make guests of the Barbados side aware that there is a daily hotdog stall outside lovers’ lane 12pm to 2pm. Lovers Lane also features the following international beers - Barbados brew house mahogany bay stout, Brew house Round rock IPA, Belgium Duvel, Canada Molson Canadian pale lager, Germany Becks, Paulaner Hefe Weiss, Italy Peroni, Netherlands Grolsch, USA – Anchor Steam, Blue Moon, Sam Adams Boston Lager, Shiner Rock, Sierra Nevada, Jamaica Red Stripe and Mexico Pacifico. Please note that the international drinks in stock will be presented on the bowling alley bar, if one of the beers on the list isn’t on the bar then it isn’t available.
We loved our stay and would return in a heart beat, thanks to all the staff who worked on the Barbados side
