Omni Amelia Island Resort & Spa — Hotel in Fernandina Beach

Every thing we have done at the hotel so far has been messed up all the from check in. Most egregiously, my wife has had a massage booked for weeks. She takes the bus to the spa, starts looking around but the entire place is closed and obviously under construction. The bus is now gone. She calls the spa and they say oops sorry! Forgot to tell you the spa is closed and we are doing the sessions in a hotel room back at the main hotel. Not even the bus driver knew! On top of this, the rooms they are doing sessions in are not completely separate, so you get to hear other people talking the whole time!

Our omni experience started when we first pull up when the bellman asks if we are doing self parking for $25/night or valet for $40/night. Which is a fun little surprise they keep from you. It seems crazy to me that they want this to be your first impression on your vacation. Self parking is about 100 yards away in a parking deck that smells like a wet dumpster. We get to the check in counter after 4pm, but we get to learn that our room is not available yet! But they’ll text us when it’s ready and will take our luggage to our room for us when it is. Ok fine. We hit up the pool for a while, they text us about 30 minuted later but we enjoy the pool for about 1.5 hours. We go to pick up the keys but now there is a huge line because they only have 2 people at the counter during prime check in time. We wait in this line, finally get our keys, and trek to our room which is on the far side of the hotel. When we get to the room, the room keys don’t work! We have to call the hotel, talk to an operator to get us to someone that can help reset the lock for us. We finally get that resolved and get in the room, and our luggage isn’t there! It’s been 1.5 hours since the room was ready. Unreal. It shows up about 5 minutes later. What are they doing?

The next morning we get a text from Omni asking how our experience has been so far and if there is anything they can do for our experience. So, I detail the above for them so they know about our check in experience, and they never sent a response of any kind! Why ask if you don’t care? It’s a simple thing to apologize for.

We’ve ordered 3 times at the poolside restaurant and each time they’ve added something to the check we didn’t order or messed up the food that has come out.

Water bottles in the room are free, they are free at the pool (this is nice). When we ordered room service we asked for more water bottles for the room. They bring the check with them, and water bottles through room service are $6 a bottle (not mentioned to me)! There is also a $6 delivery charge and a 21% gratuity (which is fine). But, I said to the guy “oh okay there is a tip included.” He tells me no that’s not a tip for him. Then what the heck is 21% gratuity already on the check for! Just more bad service and gotcha fees.

We ate at the Verandah restaurant for dinner. I got the peas and carrots dish. It was the most disappointing dish I’ve probably ever had at a restaurant. It was a few cut up peas (with the pods) and some thinly cut carrots and a few pieces of baby squash. It was not seasoned and there was about one spoonful of sauce that had basically no flavor. This was a $28 dish I believe. I got some butter noodles for my 2 yo son with a little cheese on it. He put one bite in his mouth and said “ew” and spit it out. I think that sums up the quality of the food. How do you make bad noodles? This is a common theme at all the restaurants. The quality does not match the description or the pricing.

The toddler splash pad has been closed each day and no one we’ve asked knows when it will be open again.

The condition of the entire hotel is poor. There are obvious cosmetic repairs and cleaning needed all over the place. Fountains don’t work properly. There is rust/mildew in a good bit of places. There are parts of the hotel that just don’t look like they ever get cleaned. Around the ice machines it is disgusting, they obviously never move it over/pull it out to clean. There is mold on the...

I posted a previous review that wasn't quite so flattering. Some stuff just wasn't up to par. We had some issues. But, like most things in life, the important thing isn't the failure, it's how you recover from the failure. The Omni may have fumbled the ball to start out with, but they certainly scored a touchdown later on.

So, here goes, my amended review, warts and all:

We booked our stay back in April for our 20th wedding anniversary here in December. We'd been here before and liked it, but never in December. There was some confusion about the type of room we thought we were booking. No problem, the room we wanted was an extra $100 a night. The money wasn't a big deal, but the room just wasn't very nice and there were loud guests on either side of us preventing us from sleeping. The next morning, they upgraded our room to a much nicer room at no additional charge. We didn't really want or need the bigger room, but it was much nicer, much cleaner and much, much quieter. They also sent up champagne and a card for my wife and I which was unexpected and very nice.

Again, we booked months in advance. The last time we were here, we had breakfast a couple of times at their beautiful breakfast place, so when there was a package offered to eat at that breakfast place, we bought it. Normally, it would've even about $80 each day for us to eat there, but buying the package in advance saved us a few bucks. The money wasn't super important; we were buying that experience. Well, when we checked in, we were informed that they shut down the super nice breakfast place for renovations 2 days before we got there. A stripped down version of the breakfast was available in one of the poolside areas. I'm sure it was OK, but definitely not worth the money. We wanted the experience we had the last time, and this just wasn't the same. So, we didn't eat breakfast on-site. We asked for the breakfast package fee to be refunded and that was promised to us. I don't know if it's actually been done as I haven't seen the final invoice yet, but I have no reason to doubt it.

On our third day here, housekeeping skipped our room for some reason. Not a huge deal, but we at least needed some fresh towels and washcloths for the day, so I went downstairs and asked for some. They were supposed to bring some up right away, but nearly an hour later, no towels. I went down again, and this time, towels appeared out of every orifice!

The spa - my wife wanted to have her nails done at the spa. The person who did nails at the spa either quit or was fired, we don't really know which. So, couldn't get nails done on-site. But the concierge recommended a place off-site and made the appointment for my wife.

Again, spa - a day later, my wife wants her hair styled for us to go out to dinner for our anniversary. No dice. No availability. But, the concierge made some off-site recommendations for us.

We wanted a nice place to eat dinner on our anniversary. Now, the hotel will recommend Bob's to you as an upscale on-site restaurant. We ate at Bob's the last time we were here and were not impressed especially for the price, so we asked for another recommendation. The concierge recommended David's in town. She booked the reservation and booked a car to take us to and from the restaurant.

Here's where it gets even better. When we arrive at David's, the host wishes us a happy anniversary. Our server informs us that the Omni has covered the cost of our appetizers and deserts for our anniversary dinner. David's is freaking awesome, and we had no idea that the Omni was going to do that for us. It was amazingly kind.

But it gets even better. Remember the missing towels? Well, while we were out to dinner, the housekeeping staff came in and cleaned up. They decorated the bed with rose petals and left us a couple of bottles of wine! Never, ever, has a hotel anywhere done anything like this for us. Omni definitely pulled out all the stops to make a potentially mediocre stay an...

I’m going to review this as a 30year old dad with a wife and two young kids on a vacation here with 4 or so nights left. I’ve been to many resorts in Florida, Mexico, North Carolina, Vegas etc. If you’re a senior citizen, coming for a wedding, young kid etc, your expectations and views may be different. Here’s how i feel. Let’s start off with the good. The employees are friendly. The decor, aesthetics, the pool is all beautifully put together. The Alfredo pasta from room service is excellent…well…. Yes, excellent but there is a down side to that….will get to later. Anyways, beautiful place! Now let’s get to some of the flaws Upon booking it cost $2800 and said it included resort fees. Upon checking in we were charged for $3800. Everything is an additional charge, nothing but the pool and your room comes with your stay. It’s nice when you go to a resort and you can wake up early a few nights and get a complimentary meal. I would recommend making sure your room has a kitchen if you do not want to be stuck paying for the meals. Ours doesn’t even have a microwave. For breakfast lunch and dinner for 2 adults and 2 kids it is about $400 a day. For 3-$5000 a week depending on your room I think breakfast should be included. What you get was no different from the average Aloft or Holiday Inn Breakfast. So let’s move on, the room is super stuffy. It may show that it’s set at 60degrees and is holding 60degrees but i was sweating and slept with no blankets. At home i sleep with my thermostat at 68 degrees and freeze my tail off under 2 blankets. I like a room i can be cold in. The shower is good if you’re not tall i guess. I miss my shower and bathroom at home where i don’t have to bend over to get under the water or squeeze between the tight walls to comfortably take a morning OMni. Oops, i mean poop! Ocean view is beautiful. Nothing different from any other east coast beach view. The right window seems like the seal may be broke, might be why it’s stuffy in here. There was always fog in it. Hopefully they can check that out for the next person. I’m scared to ask where the complimentary water comes from, it tast like they got it from a puddle. Not just the complementary water in the lobby but also the cup at breakfast. The first day at the pool, I was in the hot tub and my kid was sitting in the chair next to me watching her tablet. A lady came up to inform me that it was a 18 and up spa. Believe she worked there or was a resident here. Either way, my kid was in the pool chair and not in the spa. I just said okay and she went on. Then I went to go into the pool with my kids. A worker or resident came up to inform me that the pool I was in is an adult only pool. I didn’t read the rules, that was my fault. So we went to the kids pool and hung out. Just felt odd to be kicked out of a pool on vacation at 9:45pm when I was the only one in it and no employees around, i was in the hotel relaxing. I had the back door open to listen to the ocean. I had ordered my daughter room service. She went to open the door and peep outside because she’s a child and impatient. I heard a boom that sounded louder than a 9mm handgun. I honestly thought something tragic happened. The suction from the back door let it swing open and then slammed it shut. She was not able to hold on. I went to look at it myself, noticed i was hardly able to keep it from slamming and I’m 6ft1 230lbs. This door is deadly. If a kid was walking through and that hit them in the head it would kill them. The fact they know of the concern and don’t add door closures to the door is very concerning. I’m going to say this is not a kid friendly place. It is more of a wedding venue than anything. We should have done more homework and that’s our fault. But in writing this in hops to help another young family looking to bring there kids on a vacation to Florida.

Update, left after the first night and went to Hyatt resort and i couldn’t have been...