Booked a week at the Jolly Beach - Feb 2nd to 9th - as a belated Honeymoon.
Having read the reviews from this website after we had booked, we were left with the feeling ' What have we done!'
However we were pleasantly surprised with what we found. I wouldn't say this is the best place we have stayed at but all in all we had a great week
The room was pretty basic but the view from the balcony was to die for. We requested a high floor (got top floor - 4th) and this helped to make the holiday - sunsets were spectacular as the room faced west. Be aware that there are no lifts and it's quite a few steps to the top floor.
Room was clean, shower not great but served its purpose. Air conditoning worked well.
We ate most nights at the Hemisphere buffet restaurant and once each at Lydias (seafood), Utsav(Indian) and Bocciolos(Italian). The food was pretty good in the buffet if a little repetative. Could see how people who are a little picky with their food may struggle.
Utsav was excellent and quite spicy which we like. Bocciolos was good but had a dissapointing meal at Lydias. Think this was an exception as other people we spoke to said they really enjoyed it and the location on the beach is superb.
Most of the staff were pretty friendly and helpful although there did seem to be a shortage of happy pills with some of them. Again as with many other places we have visited we found making an effort to get to know them helped a lot.
The beach was great but you have to be up early to guarantee a spot with shade as the number of places are limited and are soon reserved with the obligatory towels. Hate to admit we adopted an attitude of 'If you can't beat them...'
The local traders were no problem, a quick 'No Thankyou' sent them on their way. Sand flies were a bit of a problem and the normal spray I use did not stop me getting bitten - wife got away with just a single bite. Both were clear of mossie bites.
Only did one trip which was the Virgin Ahoy boat trip that I would highly recommend.
Overall the place can be described as a bit 'tired' but we found it a great place to spend a week relaxing, eating and drinking.
Would definitely go back to Antigua but will probably check out some other resorts first.

If the Jolly Beach was a council estate in South London it would have been demolished years ago. This hotel is way past it's sell by date reminiscent of 1 star properties in Benidorm.

I know many readers of these reviews, like me prior to our trip, will have booked and then started to read the reviews. You will no doubt be dismayed by the large number of reviews rating this resort poorly. Every now and again a good review appears and you feel better. If you are in this camp you are heading for a big disappointment. I found most of the critical reviews accurate and the good ones hopelessly optimistic. My review relates to a one week stay between 9th and 16th February 2007.

If you are travelling from the UK you will have endured a 9 hour flight and then up to a 2 hour free for all in what substitutes for Immigration in Antigua. A short 30 minute taxi ride (US$8 per person) delivers you to Jolly Beach reception. You will have read about being welcomed with Rum Punch and perhaps you imagine a friendly cocktail waiter mixing your drink on arrival? The reality is you a served punch drawn from a cooler in a plastic cup. Later during my stay I saw a bird hanging on the side of the cooler drinking drips from the pourer, My guess is that that the punch is designed to get you through the stress of the next half hour - being taken to your room.

ROOM
We stayed in a Standard Triple Room in the St Lucia block. I understand that standard rooms are the most prevelent at Jolly Beach. Reviews based on superior rooms are not realy representitive unless of course you are staying in one. You are taken to your room by porters. The door looks like a door to a bin cupboard. Once inside the true horror begins to sink in. Your room is like a cave constructed out of roughly textured concrete. There is no furniture as such save a bed. The dresser, bedside tables and wardrobe are made of concrete. The walls were a dirty white, the wardrobe doors were wooden louvered doors with layers and layers of yellowing gloss paint slapped on them. The curtains were a drab mid brown colour. The flooring is industrial looking mid brown tiles.

The bathroom at least shows that fittings manufatured in the 1970s had some longevity built into them. Your sink is likely to be minus a plug. If you have a shower (apparently some rooms have a bath instead of a shower) it has a plain white curtain drawn by the maid to hide the mildew and mould beyond.

In short the rooms are disgusting. The rose coloured glasses brigade will say that you don't holiday in your room - it's only a place to lay your head - and so on. It took my wife three days to overcome the overwhelming disappointment of the room.

Once you have been intoduced to your room the race is on to complain about it at reception. The queues you saw at check in have been replaced by queues of people complaining about the rooms. We tried to pay for an upgrade to a superior room without sucess as none were available. Ultimately we were condemed to stay in our original room for the week. During the week we heard anecdotally from a couple of New Yorkers that if you were prepared to raise merry hell persistantly at reception you may get an improved room. It seems that rooms at the northern side of the hotel are more likely to have been refurbished.

FOOD
Breakfast is served at Hemispheres. This is the main buffet restaurant and is constructed in the same style as your room. As a result many people eat in area outside of the restaurant. Inside or out you will be plagued with birds. You will notice that all the outside furniture is stained with bird droppings. The birds will attempt to steal food from your plate whilst you are eating. Attempts have been made to keep the birds out of the inside part but they have found a way in and it has become an aviary. Food hygine and wild birds do not go hand in hand. I had serious concerns about eating here.

Lunch could be had in the aviary or at the Coconut Grill by the beach and main pool. The food was deep fried chicken, burgers or similar. If you ordered more than one item (i.e. you ordered food for all your family at one time) the staff often got confused and prepared some items way ahead of the others. These items would then be left standing. During this time flies alighted on the food. No attempt was made by the staff to prevent this or even waft the flies away.

Dinner was to be found in the main buffet, the indian, Italian or seafood restaurants. We visited the main buffet once. Tasteless luke warm food was on offer- eat as much as you like! We found the best to be Lydias the seafood restaurant. The italian had a ridiculous dress code that required a matre-de to look you up and down in sneering fashion prior to you being seated. The menu was too ambitious for the chefs, most of the food being very overcooked.

Stranglely out of eleven main courses at the Italian five were seafood. Only one dish included pasta. At the seafood restaurant two dishes were served with pasta although one of them was chicken curry served on a bed of spaghetti. This leads nicely to the Indian however no pizza to be be found! Seriously I am not a lover of Indian food but I would say the best cooked food was here if you liked it hotly spiced.

DRINK
Local watered down beer or cocktails were the order of the day. You could buy premium brand drinks if you wished.

BEACH
The Jolly Beach's saving grace. The beach is fantastic and is no doubt one of Antigua's better beaches. However all beaches in Antigua are public beaches and there are 365 of them.

I keep checking this website on and off to see if this place has finally been closed down.
Please be careful if you chose to stay here. We went to Jolly Beach a year ago and it still affects me. I wake up in the middle of the night, feeling like someone is in my room all the time.The stay was quiet and peaceful basically. Boring as a matter of fact. We stayed 3 days and pretty much kept to ourselves.We have a vacation house in Saba,but we usually like to explore other islands while were there so we chose Antiqua this time.
So here's the scenerio, picture it.On our last night,my family
went to bed early, we had 1 room with double beds. The room was nothing like I expected.My husband got stuck in the bathroom because the door knob came off.We laughed about it though because it actually was funny.The toilet broke too.Pretty run down rooms. Weird color too.Old looking.No big deal.
I stayed up until 1:30am packing,on our last night and then just laid in bed watching TV. My husband was right next to me and the kids were in the other bed. I knew I had to get up early (6:00am) so I knew I would sleep light. I put a pillow over my head because my husband snores. Sometime during the night I heard something, but i thought it was one of the kids going to the bathroom.
The alarm went off and I got everyone up. I had put all the suitcases at the end of my bed and my daughters and my pocketbooks on the table. I took everything out of the safe so i wouldn't forget it and put it in my purse.
As I got up I notice my purse was gone and it was on the table on the deck outside. It still didn't hit me what had happened and i opened the sliding door and asked my family "why are the purses out here." My daughters purse actually was just full of makeup nothing else. Then I realized, we were robbed.
Someone actually came in to our room, while we were asleep and stolen all our money . Even the kids xmas money, which I had set apart with a label for each kid,that was taken.About $1000.00 cash.I was in a panic. We didn't have a dime. We didn't even have money to get to the airport. We immediately called the security and they called the police. What happen next made me realize that we were in another country. They all came into our room, searched our room, our suitcases. One security person made a snid remark that she saw my husband wandering around the grounds at 3 in the morning. I was so mad. I knew my husband was in the room with me, remember he snores and he was next to me, and anyway what if he was? what does that have to do with anything.What am I stupid?? I had sent him to get me something to drink around 11:30pm.thats it. They took us to the lobby and then took us into a small room, and proceeded to body search us. I was so angry, I told them no one is going to touch my 13 year old daughter, how dare you. We were treated like criminals.
Not an appologize, not an offer to help us get to the airport.No offer of any kind of help.Nothing.
We were robbed in their hotel!!! Didn't anyone get that? We were in the room when it happened, didn't anyone get that??
I started thinking about the "what ifs" after that. What If I woke up and saw him/her. What if my daughter did?
I'm crying , scared ,my daughters crying and scared and my husband and I are separated and he was searched and interigated.
We just kept saying why would we steal our own money we called you for help. I had an american express card. I was hysterical and begging the woman at the desk to let
me use the phone and call Amex for money or something. I am not the kind of person that yells and screams at people to make a scene, on the contrary, I don't like drawing attention to myself. I am a very private person so I wasn't rude in anyway. All I was saying was"Please, let me call my american express company to help. I have travel insurance. Please."
She coldly told me no to calm down or she will call the security over if I don't leave the desk. It was a nightmare! All our money was in our passport folder.
THANK GOD THEY DIDN'T TAKE OUR PASSPORTS!!!
Finally , I just said to my husband, lets just get out of here somehow . All I wanted to do was get back to our home in Saba where we could be safe with our friends.
Luckily, a taxi driver came over to us and quietly said "I'll take you,don't worry". We got out of there as quickly as we could.By that time we knew nothing was going to be done.
I started to think we were going to be arrested. The police and security became very secretive and it scared me.In the car , the taxi driver explained to us , what happens here is its the staff and the front desk. They work together. I had gone into my room the day before when the maid was in the room. I went into the safe and took some money out. I think that was my mistake.I don't remember if I took it out infront of her before putting it back. Actually, last year I read a post that someone questioned that problem and the hotel responded with,"Yes we did have that problem but it was rectified .Those people were fired" and then it happened to us so it hasn't stopped.If you decided to ignore my post, please please be very careful.Its not very friendly, and I know I willl get flack for this but its British . There is a big difference. We travel to Carribbean islands all the time. NEVER, have I been afraid.Security sucks,people there suck and I will forever periodically keep post ing just to warn travellers.I actually do wake up at night . Every little noise. Its such a creepy feeling to know someone was in my room while i was a sleep.I always thought when people get killed while sleeping, how can you not hear someone come into your room? It happens.My family is proof. This is a long review,but i feel it needs to be told.
Take it for what it is. This is the complete truth.
Be aware.I hope this review will stop at least one family from a possible,fearful vacation. This is more of a 1 star resort. Badly labeled as a 3 star.My plea is to everyone to read reviews,
stay in gated resorts. Much higher security. better trained security.Where the staff are more service oriented.I never heard from this hotel again. Nothing.Not even a letter of appologe.Remember this review when you are thinking of travelling there.I hope this helps someone out there.

We went to Antigua for a week before Christmas 15th-23rd we did enjoy our stay but a week was more than enough. The room was small but we were only there to sleep so it was fine. The main pool was lovely with plenty of room, as was the smaller pool. We both normally prefer the beach to the pool the vendors were fine if you just told them no thank you, but the people trying to sell trips and aloe Vera were incredibly annoying think this may have had something to do with us being young. The food at the hotel was fine I did get a bit bored with breakfast toward the end of the week, my boyfriend didn’t. We did not go to any of the specialty restaurants as my boyfriend did not take any shoes, the buffet was fine and we had delicious roast beef and Yorkshire puddings on the Sunday night. The beach was lovely picture perfect the water was cloudy and no good for snorkeling, we went on a jeep tour around the island which was a great way to see everything, our tour guide was an ex school teacher and was so knowledgeable. He says the cloudy water at Jolly Beach Hotel is down to the creation of Jolly Harbor because they took out the mangroves and apparently Jolly Beach used to be as clear as all the other beaches. The harbor was lovely to walk around. We went to Shirley's Height on the Sunday evening which was fantastic. Your holiday is what you make it; we both agreed that we would not be returning but did have a lovely time.