Sandals Whitehouse – Jamaica

Sandals in Whitehouse Jamaica is where we chose to go for our honeymoon. We flew first class from Ottawa connecting through Toronto to Montego Bay. Total flying time was roughly 4.45 hours. When we arrived in Montego Bay we weren’t expecting the long wait time we experienced getting through customs. We waited 1.5 hours before we got through and could go pick up our bags. After talking to other people at the resort this length of time to get through customs is typical so expect it if you’re planning to fly into Montego Bay Jamaica. If it ends up taking less time, you got lucky, enjoy!

Once we picked up our bags we went to the Sandals waiting lounge in the airport where you can relax, use the bathroom and help yourself to a beer on tap. Your choices are Red Stripe and Red Stripe Light. We didn’t wait long in the lounge before the bus was ready to go. Our bags were brought to the bus by a porter who will remind you to tip them.

The ride to Sandals in Whitehouse Jamaica took 1.5 hours through narrow, windy, hilly, bumpy roads. I didn’t realize that they drive on the left side of the road there. The first part of the drive is the most interesting going through Montego Bay, the closer you get to the resort the less scenic it becomes. There are an amazing amount of huge potholes on the roads, ones that would wreck your car if you were to hit one. The bus stops once at a rest stop sanctioned by Sandals roughly halfway. The bus company/driver isn’t directly employed by Sandals but are contracted and therefore expect a tip and they will remind you of this as well.

On arrival at the resort as you get off the bus you’re told that your bags will be taken to your room for you. You then gather in the lobby and someone will come around to gather your voucher and check you in. We found out once we got our room number that we received a free upgrade to the Dutch village. We had originally booked in the French village. After that you can leave a credit card number at the front desk for room charges. They will place a hold of $400 USD on your credit card. As we were told our bags would be brought to our room for us we headed to our room to get settled in. Our bags weren’t in the room yet so we waited a while and no one came so we headed back to the front desk in the lobby to see where our bags where. They advised they had been waiting for us but couldn’t find us which was strange as there was no bellboy waiting in the lobby or by the doors with our bags. At any rate we headed back to our room and shortly after our bags arrived.

Our room was a Grand Luxury walkout, obviously on the ground floor which was nice. There were sliding glass doors with a small patio just large enough for a little table and two chairs. We had a beachfront view and there was a hot tub right in front of our room between us and the beach which throughout the course of our stay was rarely used so we had it to ourselves most of the time. The room had a loveseat couch, coffee table, desk and chair, king size bed, and TV. Surprisingly the TV wasn’t a flat screen which was a little disappointing. The room has a large safe to store valuables and is big enough to fit a 16 inch laptop. There is also a large ceiling fan and air conditioning which worked splendidly.

There is WiFi available throughout the resort and in the rooms. WiFi does cost $38.99 for the week which is a better deal versus paying for a 24 hour period which is roughly $15. There is no bandwidth limit imposed but you’ll see that with the speeds you get there’s no chance you’ll be racking up large data downloads. Due to placement of the wireless antennas you will get best reception either outside on your patio or towards the outside edge of your room facing the beach. The Internet speeds are not very fast, in low reception areas you can expect 50 to 75 KBps or lower and in high reception areas upwards to 170 KBps. The speeds are more then adequate for email and web surfing. Anything that’s graphically intense or streaming video/radio will choke.

The Sandals in Whitehouse had a variety of restaurants to choose from. All of them except for one are grouped together located in the same section of the resort. There is Giuseppe’s which is an Italian restaurant where you can eat pizza for lunch dressed in causal attire or otherwise dinner which requires smart casual attire. The food here is pretty good but not amazing. Jasmine’s is an Asian restaurant which is only open for dinner and requires smart casual attire. The food here is delicious and we ate there twice. Eleanor’s serves Caribbean cuisine and is open for a la carte breakfast and dinner. We didn’t like a lot of the choices on the menu but what we did have was quite good. Neptune’s serves Mediterranean cuisine which was quite good. The Bayside restaurant serves international fare and is the main restaurant which serves buffet style breakfast and lunch and a seated dinner. The food there is delicious with a large variety, they change a few of the dishes everyday. Café de Paris is a Parisian-style patisserie with lots of choices and will definitely satisfy your need for sweets and caffeine. Bluefield Beach Club which is at the opposite end of the resort in the French village serves typical Jamaican food which is quite good. The Jerk chicken there is amazing. Service in all of the restaurants was exceptional, you can expect to be greeted, seated, chair pulled out for you, napkin draped across your lap. Drinks and meals are served promptly as well as dishes being cleared away. Reservations are not required at any of the restaurants and we never experienced any wait although we’ve heard that during busy season you can wait sometimes up to two hours to be seated at certain restaurants.

While we where at the Sandals resort in Whitehouse it was only at roughly 70% capacity and they would rotate closing one of the restaurants for dinner each night. They notify you which restaurant it will be in the Daily Breeze newsletter that they print and deliver to your room each evening. The Daily Breeze also notifies you of activities coming up, weather, changes etc.

At Sandals Whitehouse there are no children, just couples and adults. It’s nice and quiet and peaceful and there’s no rowdy drunken teenagers or adults for that matter running around. Most couples there are on their honeymoon or anniversary although there were a lot of older couples there just on holidays.

Sandals Whitehouse has three pools. The main pool which is the largest is located in front of the lobby. It was easy to get lounge chairs although guests who have concierge service have lounge chairs reserved for them. Again we heard that during busy season it can be difficult to get a lounge chair at the main pool as so many end up being reserved. The other pools are located in the Italian and French village and are quite smaller. The French village pool has a volleyball net across it. For some reason the French village pool deck has the most comfortable lounge chairs, they’re almost beds in fact and are quite nice.

The beach that runs the full stretch of the resort is quite narrow and the sand is hard packed. It’s interesting to note that there is not much of a tide at all. I’m not sure if that’s typical for all of Jamaica or just the part of the island where we were located. If you go for a walk on the beach once you get to the end of the resort property a guard will come out of the guardhouse immediately and notify you nicely that if you decide to continue walking on it’s at your own risk etc. The water is very shallow and quite warm, sadly almost the entire beach is full of sea grass and seaweed. They have 3 different sections buoyed off for swimming and except for the section in front of the French village you’ll want to avoid swimming in the other areas unless for some reason you love being coated in seaweed.

Basic water sports like hobie catting, wind surfing, wake boarding, water skiing etc. are free and first come first serve. You can also go on a glass bottom boat ride which is informative. You will get to see some sea life but it’s not overly impressive and the coral there is all a uniform murky brown colour.

To do anything else at the resort is quite expensive including extras in the room and any of their spa services. For instance a relaxation massage will cost $139 USD which is outrageous as you can get an hour long massage from an RMT for half that price here in Canada. People from the Spa will come around and solicit you while you’re lying around the pool. It’s constant everyday although they’re pretty good once you tell them no thank you. They do get paid commission though for Spa services which makes them quite active in their solicitation.

The weather we experienced while at Sandals Whitehouse was pretty good. They have a weird weather pattern that repeats everyday. In the morning it’s sunny and clear, towards the middle of the day clouds begin to gather and it gets very windy and may or may not rain. In the evening it may clear up or remain cloudy with lightening at night. It was quite humid, so much so that walking out of your room will result in glasses and camera lenses fogging up.

While restaurant and food service was exceptional, room service was lacking. Housekeeping would forget to leave coffee for the next morning or place garbage bags in the cans. We received curdled creamers. Calling the front desk to have bottled water sent to the room took 3 phone calls over the course of six hours before we received it. There was also an issue with the rubber weather stripping that runs around the door jamb of the front door. A section of it at the top had come unglued and was hanging off. We had called multiple times to the front desk to have someone fix it before someone actually came. When they did instead of gluing it back in place they ripped the whole strip off which resulted in no seal along that side of the door. It was never replaced during our stay.

Sandals Whitehouse has a couple of duty free resort shops which carry a variety of the usual items. I bought a few bottles of hot sauce as they had a deal for buy 3 get 1 free. Even still they were expensive at $9.00 USD per bottle. Their alcohol is over priced for a duty free shop and I would recommend purchasing alcohol at the duty free at the airport on the way down or if you want alcohol to bring home wait until you’re at the airport to buy it. A 20 oz. bottle of Appleton rum was $21 and we bought a 1.75L bottle of Appleton rum at the airport for $22.00.

Sandals Whitehouse also employs photographers, presumably professionals that will walk around all day even in the restaurants and solicit you for pictures. There’s no obligation to buy them but either way they will give you a tag with a number on it to go view your photos. If you do choose to go view your photographs they’re not cheap. They charge $16.00 USD per picture although I believe they cap it at $299 USD for all your photos on a CD.

Sandals Whitehouse does have a few resident Peacocks which are pretty but can be quite loud at times. It’s also not unsual to see Sea crabs wondering around on land at night through the first time you see one it does give you a start. We enjoyed our stay on the whole after all it was our honeymoon, having said that we don’t think we would go back a second time to Sandals Whitehouse in Jamaica.