Good overall trip as a whole, but unimpressed with the beach/water.
Dec 30, 2025 Joshua H Howey in the Hills, Florida
We booked the Royal Seaside Crystal Lagoon Swim-up One Bedroom Butler Suite w/ Patio Tranquility Soaking Tub – 1SUP for a 7-night stay from December 6-13, 2025.
Arrival:
We arrived at BGI airport via American Airlines from Miami. Arrival at the airport was around 1:20PM local time. We had zero issues retrieving bags and getting through customs.…
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We booked the Royal Seaside Crystal Lagoon Swim-up One Bedroom Butler Suite w/ Patio Tranquility Soaking Tub – 1SUP for a 7-night stay from December 6-13, 2025.
Arrival:
We arrived at BGI airport via American Airlines from Miami. Arrival at the airport was around 1:20PM local time. We had zero issues retrieving bags and getting through customs. It took us about 30 minutes total to get to the Sandals desk outside the airport. We waited about 15 minutes total before our bags were loaded and we were on a shuttle to the resort with a full bus of people. It took about 15 minutes to get from the airport to the resort, and the drive was not bad at all. Arrival at the resort was simple, and the front desk verified our online check-in, and then called our butlers to give us a tour of the property, get lunch, and then escort us to our room. We had requested the butler team of De’Angelo and Bernard, and we did receive them as our butlers, with the third being Shanna Kay.
Room:
This was our first stay in a swim-up room, so we were not 100% sure what to expect. We were in room 7115 (middle of the Wahoo building). The room was a more updated room, and very spacious, more modern décor and not the older mahogany-style furniture. The bathroom was updated, and the shower was very large. The patio was a good size and lead right to the steps for the swim-up. We are not sure if it was the time of year or not, but the swim-up was mostly unusable at a paltry 78º. This room got almost no sun at the pool, and we found the only way it was usable was to keep moving to increase your blood flow and not be too cold. We used the swim-up pool 2-3 days, but not for any length of time at all. We had heard from others that some swim-up rooms tend to get very damp, so we brought a damp-rid bag to err on the side of caution. We didn’t experience too many dampness issues in our room and ended up just putting the bag in our bathroom to help with the humidity in there.
Food:
Breakfast was usually the American Tavern, but we did go to Spices a couple days when we asked our butlers to reserve chairs at the Barbados-side main pool. Standard buffet style food at both places. Lunch was typically jerk shack or pizza. Pizza was very flour heavy, so we ate it way less than normal and asked for jerk shack more often. We almost always ask our butlers to bring us lunch and rarely go to the restaurants to eat. We did go to Neptunes one day and found the lunch less than ideal, so we did not attempt it a second time. Dinners were spread out between Soy, Schooners, Butch’s Island Chop House, Bombay, Butch’s Steak and Seafood, La Parisienne, and the returning guest dinner (not impressed with the RTG meal). We enjoyed all our dinners, but Bombay was our favorite, by far! Both Butch’s meals were solid, so was La Parisienne. Schooners we were hoping for more, but it was still a good meal, and the same with Soy. For snacks, we spent far too much time at Sweet n’ Saltys and Café De Paris, but we did enjoy their iced coffees and treats. Our butlers did end up bringing us coconut shrimp one day and random snacks other days (chicken tenders were very good), although we were spoiled at SRC with the coconut shrimp and kebabs almost daily earlier this year, which only happened once during our stay here.
Beach:
We spent only a few hours at the beach in Barbados. It was very windy, to the point where it was blowing sand at your feet. The water was very rough and wavy, so after maybe an hour or so we left and went to the infinity pool. We did not attempt the beach again because of the winds, and it was one of our least favorite beaches at any of the Sandals’ resorts.
Pool(s):
We spent time at the royal side infinity pool, south seas pool, and rooftop pool, the main pool on the Barbados side, and the European pool as well. We did two days each at the European and main pool, and one day each at the others. You cannot get chairs reserved by butlers at the infinity pool or south seas pool, so keep that in mind if you want prime seating. We did not get up early on those days and did not have any issues finding chairs. Pool temperatures were all mostly the same, but the European pool was the warmest of all of them. The rooftop pool was rather chilly the day we went up there, but it was also an overcast day with rain, so that could have attributed to the cooler temps. We did use the hot tub at the south seas pool and on the roof top. Both had issues with the jets not working. Not sure if that is the norm, but neither worked when we tried to use them.
Tours:
We did ask to be scheduled for the complimentary snorkeling tour. It was supposed to be 10:30AM on Thursday, and Shanna Kay booked it and confirmed for us on the day we arrived (Saturday). On Thursday we showed up at the dive shop at 10:15 to only be told they left at 10AM. It seems they recently changed from 10:30 departure to 10AM, but they did not let our butlers know, or anyone else, so we missed the morning tour. They did manage to get us on the 1PM tour, but it was a bit frustrating that there was some miscommunication, as when we relayed this to our butler team, they seemed surprised of the change. Hopefully this is something they remedy to avoid the confusion of the departure time.
Service:
We had mixed feelings about potential service, as Barbados was an island we had been avoiding due to hearing the mixed feedback on service. While we understand Sandals is no-tipping at all resorts, we also know that local laws allow tipping to happen at this resort. We only saw one person being tipped during our 7-night stay and she put it directly into a jar where it seems others had done the same. We did not feel pressured to tip at all, and we did not feel like we received lower service because we did not tip. Everyone was very friendly at this resort, and we had ZERO service issues. Our butler team of Bernard, De’Angelo, and Shanna Kay were OUTSTANDING! We were very happy that others had recommended them, and they showed why so many folks say they’re the best!
Departure:
Our flight was scheduled for 5:45PM departure via Caribbean Airlines to St Vincent. We found out the day before via Caribbean Air that our flight was moved up to 5PM departure because the airport at SVD was closing early. We were informed bag pick up was at 9:30AM, check out was 11AM, and we needed to be on the bus at 3:30PM. With the change in flight, it ended up moving up our bus departure to around 1:30PM (no fault of the resort on our flight change, and it was likely when they had another bus that would be leaving). Since it changed our departure time by a couple hours, we opted to not use the departure lounge and just hung out in the butler lounge after checking out of our room, then grabbing lunch. Check in at BGI was simple and easy, almost no line to check in, but security was very long. It was about 1.5-2 hours to get through the security line. Once through, we still had a while before our flight was boarding, so we grabbed some food and hung out. Our gate was one of the ones away from the main terminal, and they finally called us towards their around 4:15, but we ended up waiting around for quite a while before boarding started. We ended up not leaving until closer to the 5:45PM original time, so it made for a very long departure day, which we likely could have kept our 3:30PM departure (again, not Sandals fault).
Overall, our stay at Royal Barbados was a good one. We have another swim-up booked in the future, so we are interested to see if it’s warmer, and it’s also not in December. The staff at Barbados and Royal Barbados were very friendly and there were no service issues at all, which really put our minds at ease. Our butler team of Bernard, De’Angelo, and Shanna Kay are what made this stay for us. They were very attentive without being overly intrusive, and they picked up quickly on what we did and didn’t like. We are not sure how soon we would return to Barbados again with still needing to knock off more properties from our list, but it was a good stay overall!
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