Stayed here for the past two weeks and am checking out tomorrow so thought this would be a good time to post a review. I’m not going to go too in-depth into the individual food options as I am going to rate those that I visited individually. This review was also very long as I wanted to make it comprehensive but I reached the limit on the reviews so I have added more in-depth points as photos so please view them!

The Good:

Staff: First off, the staff are excellent, everyone was extremely friendly, always saying hello and being pleasant no matter whether it was a housekeeper, security, croupier’s or lifeguards. Really friendly and helpful and often going above or beyond.

Lifeguards: I want to make a specific point regarding the Lifeguards. As a swimmer, one thing I love about my local pool back in the U.K. is that the lifeguards are really on the ball and proactive, and that’s the same here, always friendly but make sure that the rules are being followed and everyone is safe. Very good lifeguarding.

Hotel grounds and water park: What a setting this hotel is in! A beautiful beach, awesome water park, aquarium and super yachts! The water park brilliant, really fun rides and a good number of them, my advice for the leap of faith is don’t look before you sit down on the slide, it’s quite steep!

The marina village is lovely and one of my favourite things to do has been to photograph the different yachts that come in and out.

The cleanliness of the site is immaculate, no rubbish laying around, all the grounds are kept neat and tidy and is a very pleasant place to be around.

The Dig: The dig is the hotel’s aquarium (along with the predator lagoon but this was sadly closed for the duration of our stay due to renovations). It’s really unique to have in the hotel and I hadn’t been in an aquarium in years so it was a bit of a treat.

The Bad:

The price: Yes I know the Caribbean and Bahamas in general is expensive, but this hotel is incredibly expensive. For the 4 of us, the cheapest meal was $100 and most of the nights it was $170+.

Service charges and tax: Mandatory tipping is rare in the U.K., but having gone to the US a lot, I understand it, the Bahamas though seems to take it to the next level. Anything to do with food and drink, expect to pay at least a 12.5% gratuity, whether that be a meal, or purchasing a bottle of water, this also goes up to 15% in some venues. I have no issues with tipping for good service, but I like to know where my tips are going, and putting it on the bill automatically makes me think the bosses will just be taking it for themselves. The other thing with tipping, they put a space when signing the receipt for extra gratuity, this moves around the receipt depending on the venue, almost in a way to trick you into filling it in. You have to ask yourself if it’s worth adding an extra tip when they are already taking 15% tip, I only did that for exceptional service 2 of 3 times. As for tax, pretty standard comment but as with the US, what you see is not the price you pay.

Restaurant selection: Whilst there are several restaurants, they are all very similar (burgers, Italian, bar food) and in our first week, we were really struggling to find food options due to restaurants that should have been open, being closed (no one seemed to know why either, we were even told by concierge that they would be open).

To summarise:

Whilst we enjoyed our holiday and the resort, we feel that two weeks was too much here. We were sold this holiday by virgin holidays as virgin have just opened the Bahamas route and honestly this wasn’t right for two weeks, the price alone on that. It felt like a lot of people are long weekenders from Miami and honestly if I was to return, I’d probably do it like that off the back of a US trip. Alternatively I would return and stay at the Cove, as this is the quieter hotel and is a stunning property, I would like to return for a week at the Cove in the future, but for the Royal, I may do a long weekend off the back of a US trip.